Raleigh North Carolina and surrounding areas

I have decided to put Bilstein 6112/5160s with an OME Dakar Leaf pack on my 2016 SR5. I am out of Durham. Can you guys recommend a shop for this kind of thing?

Much appreciated.

 

DIY man. A few of us can help

 

Several have that combo, and DIY with some guidance.

 

Yea that’s a fairly easy one. Plenty of folks here that will teach/help you

 

Where or what was that drive shaft shop that has been discussed?

 

I think Olivers in Winston. @Sandman614 ?

 

Thanks all. The trouble is that I have nowhere to do it. I have a short, sloped driveway and a wife and kid who have commandeered the garage (OK, the 1/5 of it that is my gunsmithing station admittedly doesn't help).

I'd have to have someone do it at a shop.

 

I messed up an AR barrel install this afternoon too, so my mechanical confidence is not exactly at an all time high.

 

time to evict wife and kid from man cave, the distractions from the other 4/5 are clearly a problem...

and HAVING to work on it at a shop is an untruth, i do axle repairs and brake jobs, cylinder head gaskets in parking lots all the time.

 

The trouble is that my wife is a name taker tactically, so that's not gonna happen.

 

What did you do?

 

Well, I got stupid and decided to "innovate". Basically, it was a Geissele install so I was using their barrel nut and barrel nut device/wrench (whatever they call it). Usually, I run the torque wrench straight out at 0 degrees (as if it was a spoke off the barrel).

Then I watched a few videos on CensorshipTu...sorry YouTube that suggested that you need to run the wrench at a 90 degree angle from that. Basically, their argument was if you run the wrench straight out the actual barrel nut torque will exceed your wrench setting. So in the past the wrench was set to 40lbs per Geissele instructions but with the wrench running straight on the Geissele barrel nut tool I was delivering somewhere north of 45 lbs torque to the barrel nut.

So this time I tried the 90 degree solution. And on top of it my son wanted to tell me something while I was doing it. I remember thinking to myself that I was putting a lot of force to it and ... snap! The tooth actually broke off the Geissele tool.

Not sure what happened. I likely massively overtorqued it. So the G. barrel nut is probably toast. The upper may be as well. Hopefully the barrel isn't (it shouldn't be).

I should have stuck to the way I usually do things. And paid attention.

But I talked to someone tonight who was an armorer and he doubted that it really matters how I run a wrench since "all of those little torque wrenches are pretty inaccurate anyway..."

I'll call Geissele on Tuesday for guidance.

 

This is hardly the first time I've messed up a gun though. Live and learn.

One of the reasons I like guns like SCARs so much is that barrel changes are so retardly easy.

 

The likelihood of you messing of the barrel due to the barrel nut is very slim. As long as you didn’t bend the barrel in anyway you should be fine. I never torque mine b/c hand tight is truly what it comes out to be anyways.

 

I used a Geissele reaction rod so if I messed up the barrel it would likely be in the extension. Two things could go wrong I guess: damage to the locking lugs and the extension moving (but to my mind that would show up with the headspace test).

I used to not worry about it but then I was at the range and a guy's barrel actually came loose!!!

I have also known someone who had a lug crack off (and incredibly that was a really good brand).

 

True. You should be ok. I haven’t had a problem yet on mine. But I do check everything when I clean it.

AR platform?

 

My guess is that by design the Geissele wrench/tool fails far short of where the barrel would be in trouble, but we'll see what they say.

Edit: Oh yeah sorry: it is an Anderson 7076-T6 forged upper and Daniel defense mid barrel. I just checked: Geissele's tool is made of "aircraft aluminum" so I suspect that little tooth on the tool would crack way, way short of where it would damage the barrel. For instance, the little ears for the punch pin that retains the bolt release on an upper is not that hard to break.

 

Yep so you should be good to go.

 

I just talked to a friend to say hi. He was in the IDF 25 years ago. I told him about this and he laughed. He said that the receivers on their M4s were so worn "you could groom yourself using the reflection" where the finish had worn off and then told me about someone he knew who was assigned to help the unit armorer with no training. His first day he was supposed to change a bunch of barrels and the armorer left unreadable instructions before he left and no one knew where the manual was. The guy just blundered his way through it but no one died (except, of course, intended targets).

 

So there is no one closer in to the Triangle who specializes in this kind of thing? Thanks.