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Larue Makes an AR of All Time
Updated
18 months ago
Good morning, everyone, this is John with gun.deals. Today we are going to be talking about an old Marky Mark and the scene of Bunch. What we have here is a Larue Stealth receiver set and a Larue Predat AR barrel. Their BCG and, a couple other, making one of the stranger yet more pleasant builds I've gotten the chance to shoot of late.
Full disclosure on this upper is that a kind viewer of the channel sent us out for me to review. I have talked with some of the people at Larue at shows, but no product from them, this is from my viewer. You might think that this is a super expensive build being Larue, but with some smart buys and some patience, on the side of the owner, I believe he was able to get this put together for around $1,000, which for a Larue is a steal. I will say up front this will mostly be a positive review as Larue didn't really give me much to complain about.
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Starting out front we have a reared and single chamber brake that doubles as a plan B suppressor mount. In terms of a brake it's pretty aggressive and actually has the perfect amount of recoil reduction for the balance of the Larue, which we'll talk about a little later.
Talking about the Predat AR barrel, this is an 18-inch 416r stainless steel barrel, chambered in 5.56 with a 1:8 twist, and finished in a black nitride, I would not use this as a super hard use barrel, but that's not its point. In the extension we have what they call their A3 feed ramps for supposedly better, more reliable feeding, so far so good in that department. The profile is not quite a pencil profile, but it's pretty darn close with a .625 gas block journal, and a total weight coming in right at 26 ounces, which for an 18-inch barrel is extremely lightweight.
The one fine Larue component on the build is the BCG. I believe this is their Texas Spec BCG, which retails for nearly $300. It's a nice BCG, machined well, it has their Larue gas seal for supposedly better efficiency, but other than that it behaves like a regular BCG. It seems nice, it seems to be of decent quality, but I don't know exactly what makes it worth $300. They're also superlight on detail, so I don't know exactly what the finish is or what the materials are, so go ahead and make your educated guesses.
Let's get to one of the best receiver sets on the market, the Larue Stealth 2.0. This is a three-piece set handguard receiver and barrel nut. The handguard bolts directly to the upper receiver and doesn't touch the barrel nut. The barrel nut sits underneath the handguard, which is going to solve a couple problems. Most AR handguards torque down on the barrel nut, which touches the barrel so they aren't technically free-floated, only mostly free-floated with the Larue system; nothing touches the barrel, and in theory that will help us with accuracy and deflection when load up on a bipod for distance shooting.
The mounting design will also help with IR devices and anything that needs to maintain zero because the handguard is bolted in place, it has little chance to rotate. It's just a very secure mounting system. Moving between the receiver and handguard we have a continuous Pick raill and you could bridge the gap if you really wanted to for some reason. You have M-LOK at the 3, 6, and 9, which the owner has covered in these M-LOK rail covers to protect it from me. Also, the light mounted up is a Olight Javelot, which is also the owner's, it's not mine, I did not put that there, it's a super bright light with a very high Candela beam, which for distance shooting is cool, and will also work as a fire starter in a pinch.
The upper itself seems to be Billet with significant geometry changes to accommodate the handguard mounting system. This is important to note because it won't fit on some of my ambi lowers that the controls reach above the lower receiver, and because of the extra width on the Larue upper they don't quite fit together, which is unfortunate, so keep that in mind. It's a good system that doesn't require any proprietary tools, and it comes with some advantages and at a price tag of about 500 bucks, which for a monolithic-like system is not bad. I might actually build something out in one of these because I like the setup.
The last piece added by the owner is the Breek micro Warhammer charging handle, which is fine for the money. I use a lot of them, there's nothing to write home about, but they are fine.
Let's talk about shooting the thing. With an 18-inch barrel, mid-length gas system, and a diminutive gas port size, the Larue system shoots amazingly well. Unsuppressed, it seems to be towards the bleeding edge of reliability. When we combo that with the reared and brake up front, this is one of those setups where the gun doesn't move much, you pull the trigger, there's an explosion, things are moving, but the dot or reticle just doesn't move. It's unbothered, moisturized, and staying in its lane, and that's awesome for a competition or target rifle.
When we throw a suppressor into the mix the thing still shoots great, no gas to the face, the ejection pattern is a little more aggressive, there is a little more movement, but even at maximum semi-auto it's super controllable. For a Duty-style gun I think a little bit more gas would be appropriate, but just a little more. For a competition rifle I wouldn't touch it. The user can mess around with brakes and buffers to make it feel the way that they want, but the barrel and BCG are working perfectly together. I was using carbine buffers and springs on my regular lowers, and then for maximum semi-auto, it was on a rifle setup, and it worked fine both ways.
Let's go ahead and talk about accuracy, or let it speak for itself.
Hack, yeah! There we go, baby!
On top of the tiny groups it was able to produce. This was also the rifle that I took the PLXC out to 630 yards on. Rarely do I get a super lightweight barrel that is also super accurate and very well gassed, but old Marky Mark somehow hit all three vectors basically perfectly. This is a lightweight 18-inch Predat AR barrel, and for a more hard-use application, they have their standard 16-inch uppers, which are rated for 10,000 rounds and use a slightly heavier profile barrel. Those are going to be much better for a hard-use or Duty-style role, but that's really not what this build is for. I'm just saying that those do exist if you wanted that flavor of Larue, but the barrel performs, the receiver set is great, the BCG is overpriced, but everything meshes together to make this thing a super fun shooter.
Is this a duty setup?
No!
But, would this make a great comp rifle?
Absolutely!
And if you wanted to build something out in the receiver set I think that it would enhance most builds out there. If I were going to personally build something with the Stealth 2.0 set it would probably be a 145 Geissele or Criterion at an AO BCG, and for under $1,000 we have one of my favorite combination of parts. If we merge the autism of Bendy Bill and Marky Mark together, well, that fusion would create something truly terrifying.
