Anyone Seen These Drawings Before?

[Bruce_in_Oz]

The AUG (Tupperware Rifle) was sold on the claim that it was low maintenance, low parts consumption.

Maybe if you are wandering about the Alps, picking Edelweiss, or something.

I had been black-smithing L1A1s for a few years before the little green rifles arrived.

Some clown in the "paperwork" department authorised, in the official manual, "traditional" lubrication for these things. That went as well as you wold expect. Dust plus oil equals grinding paste, just what you need on plastic firing mechanism components.

My boss, a VERY experienced Warrant Officer, decided that the best way to thoroughly clean all the sundry plastic bits was to chuck them in a washing machine, en masse. It worked a treat. The cleaned parts would then be inspected for wear or damage and "triaged". Got some funny looks from the "greasers" (vehicle mechanics). We used to keep boxes of firing-mech "packs", ready lubed with GRAPHITE, in a locker. Modular repair; whip out the suspect unit, drop in the "new", tweak the trigger extension rod adjustment and away you go.

The return springs inside those tubes were a challenge as well, especially as the proper tool for stripping them was a bit slow in filtering down. Early springs were lubed with a special light grease. This of course, made things interesting when water got inside, just like the old L1A1 return springs. It didn't take much water to start causing a "hydraulic lock" effect whilst firing. The solution was to pre-coat the spring as the factory with some sort of "moly" compound. This, of course wore off rapidly and it was quite common to see gun-plumbers re-spraying the springs with "moly in a can". Or just shrugging their shoulders and dropping in a complete new set.

One of the more interesting "issues" was that of parallax in some of the optics. Bear in mind that this is a 1.5 magnification job, about the last place one would expect such a problem. But it could be clearly observed when the offending unit was held in a firm mount and you moved you head slightly whilst looking at a test target about 200m away. The reticule would move, relative to the target. For "government work" out to 300m this appears to have been of no concern to anyone further up the food-chain. The more fussy users found that a slightly different cheek-weld would produce interesting results. At 300m, your fist-sized group on the centre of the bull, was suddenly a fist-sized group, somewhere in the "3" ring, or COMPLETELY OFF the Figure 12 "Hun's Head". On top of that, in the original AUG / F-88, the scope was a dinky optical tube mounted inside the "carry handle", cast integrally with the "body". To swap out this tube you needed a special "dry-nitrogen" flush kit to purge the interior before whacking the plug back in. Fine in a country the size of a handkerchief, but in Oz??

Cocking handle assemblies were the other horror. They would wear rapidly and fail to "hold" in the "hold-open" notch. Why? Well, because of a "perceived" problem of limp-wristed Diggers "short-stroking" the cocking handle, a new "drill" was introduced: Step ONE, haul the working parts fully to the rear and engage the handle in the "hold-open". Step TWO, flick the handle clear of the notch and allow it to fly forward freely.

All very nice, BUT: the PLASTIC cocking handle engages in the cast-aluminium "hold-open" notch with a VERY small actual engagement area. Add to this the requirement for regular "safety" checks and, first, the plastic cocking handles would wear and then the "lug" on the cast-aluminium body would wear and pretty soon your "hold-open" wouldn't. The body was die-cast. There are only a few Aluminium alloys that can be die-cast: 7075, as used in the M-16 uppers and lowers, is NOT one of them. NONE of the die-casting alloys can also be "solution hardened" as can 7075. These "castable" alloys are also almost impossible to anodize, as well.

Then there were the "upgrades", ALL of which, in succession, added weight. The addition of a M-1913 "Picatinny" rail was special thing. The "manufacturers" took a huge batch of standard (mostly pre-loved) bodies and and machined off the "carry handle' bit and milled a special slot in the top of the body.

To this was added a "rail" unit, which, of course, could not be welded to the die-cast body, so it was "locked in place" with a "spring plunger". Oh, goody!! The boys and girls in the unit and field workshops quickly found out which anaerobic sealant held it there the longest. Of course, this rail extended, unsupported, back over the plastic "butt" assembly. Why? Because it had to be able to accommodate the optics unit of choice far enough back to obtain correct eye relief. Standard optic unit was the same old inner tube mounted in a substantially heavier, (how unusual), housing that clamped to the new "rail". Thus, the next "common fault" to appear was BENT scope rails.

Then someone decided that more bits had to be attached to the front end to accommodate IR lasers and such, and let's not forget the saga of the "modified" M203 equipped variant. That thing needed wheels.

So, someone decides to ditch the "plastic fantastic" and go with the M-4. Promptly, of course, loading IT down with Gucci gizmos until it weighs as much a loaded L1A1, but without the down-range "wallop" of the old girl.

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