I decided on building one for myself as well, and began to gather all of the parts I needed from my parts box, and ordered the rest of the parts online. For the lower, I went oi a local shop that usually had a good selection of Aero Precision lowers.
No such luck for me, they were out of Aeros, but had Great Lakes Firearms lowers for $70, and Rugers for $100. I had seen GLF lowers before, and they kind of reminded me of Rguns lowers. The roll marks and engravings looked like the anodizing had been applied too thick, as opposed tho the crisp lettering on most receivers. This gun was going to get the Krylon treatment, so I didn't care about the looks, and I took it home.
I'm glad I went out of order and did the fire control group first. When I threaded the grip screw through the pistol grip and into the receiver, it went about half way and stopped. This was the mil-spec grip screw from a new Anderson parts kit.
I've never seen this before, so I backed the screw all the way out, confirmed proper alignment and went in again. This time it only went in about a quarter before locking up.
At this point I removed the grip and the screw, and tried a Magpul screw. As it went in, there were metal flakes coming out around the screw shaft. The screw, which had started at the proper angle, was now at an off angle and would not budge.
I stopped work on the lower and emailed GLFA. Matt responded and offered to send me an RMA ticked and ship the lower back in exchange for a new one.
As I live 30 minutes away from their shop, we agreed to meet there and swap out the lowers with the associated paperwork.
I'll skip over the interaction at the shop as a lot of the discussion was subjective and I don't want to go off on a tangent.
To be clear, Matt from GLFA did the right thing and replaced the out of spec lower.
Assembly and thoughts
The original lower had shown signs of poor machining, with visible machine marks on the inside surface of the magwell. I've not seen these on any of the lowers I've built.
Sadly, the new lower had them too. Between the machine marks, the out of spec screw pocket, and the anodizing looking like it was applied with a fire hose, I didn't feel confident in building the lower.
My fears were unfounded as the lower went together nicely. So where did that leave me? With a lower receiver that has machine marks where no one will see, and thick, indistinct roll marks.
I tested the magwell thoroughly and the marks don't interfere with operation. What bothers me is that every other company I have seen removes these machining marks before selling their products.
What irks me more is the fact that I bought this for around the same cost as an Aero Precision lower, but the store was out. Even worse, I drove an hour out another store and they had Aero and Anderson lowers for days at the same price..
I would honestly rather have any other lower (except RGuns) than what I have. But at least I did get a lower that went together properly.
I know I sound down about the experience, and I am, but if anyone from GLFA is reading this, take this review and learn from it. They obviously have the manufacturing capacity to turn these out by the truckload. Just take a little more time on the product.
By cleaning up the machining marks and making the roll marks crisper, it would go a long way to making a product the consumer feels good about.
So that's it. What have you dealt with in the past with product issues in general? Be sure to leave a comment and we can all learn together.
Stay accurate.
-Ben
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