T.REX Criterion Barrel Kit

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Video Transcript

When it comes down to buying an AR-15, the question always comes down to should you buy an out-of-the-box AR, so like a complete gun, like a Daniel Defense or a BCM or a PSA, or should you build an AR? And in my opinion, I always like to go towards the build route because you kind of get exactly what you want for generally a cheaper price. So yes, there are some really good rifles out there that you can get out of the box. However, if you're someone like me and you like very particular parts, you want some very specific performance out of your gun, you want some very specific feel when it comes to your trigger, your recoil, all of that sort of stuff, generally building your gun is going to be a better option because if you just buy a gun out of box, you're going to have to replace a lot of parts. So I mentioned that because what we're going to talk about here is the T.REX ARMS Criterion Barrel Kit. So this is a kit that has been tested for quite a while now.

If you are familiar with the guns that we have in the armory, you may have heard by now in some of our content that almost all of the AR-15s that we have built in the armory have Criterion Barrels in them and that's kind of the heart of this kit. So this kit is essentially the guts of the upper receiver, so there are definitely some parts obviously that you're going to need to complete your gun. But what we wanted to provide is a kit that had all of the best parts in our opinion for that upper receiver group when you build out your AR. So what we're going to do is we're going to go through what's in the box, talk about what each component is for, and then we're going to demonstrate how to assemble an upper with these parts.

So if you buy this kit, it's going to come in a box like this. It's just a shipping box and you're going to have quite a few different items in the box. So first and foremost, what you're going to get is your Criterion Barrel. It's going to come in the Criterion box. So this kit is going to come in multiple different lengths. What we have here is just the 16-inch length. So in the box from Criterion, you're going to have a BCM bolt. So this is just the bolt and this bolt is head space to the barrel from Criterion. This is something that a lot of manufacturers, I'm going to say cheaper manufacturers, tend to skip out on during their assembly process and that is head spacing the bolt to the barrels. This ensures that the rifle is going to have optimized accuracy for the platform and then also some other things that are taking into account when you head space barrels, head space bolts the barrels to ensure reliability and durability of the weapon system. Also what you're going to get in the kit is you're going to get your badger ordnance gas block.

Inside the styrofoam wrapper you're going to have your barrel itself and also in here, generally they don't come packaged this way but sometimes I guess they do, you're going to have your BCM gas tube. So again in the Criterion box this is what we get from Criterion. You're going to get your barrel, BCM gas tube, Badger Ordnance gas block and the head space BCM bolt for this barrel. Now to be clear just because this bolt is head space for this barrel does not mean it won't work with other barrels and it does not mean if this bolt face goes down for whatever reason that you're just out of luck. Generally majority of the vast majority of BCM bolts are going to be head spaced to these criterion barrels but all this means is that this bolt has been checked for this specific barrel and it's good to go and Criterion does use a higher tolerance check for head spacing than mil-spec so you should just have some confidence in knowing that this is head spaced very well to the barrel.

The next part we're going to talk about in this kit is the bolt carrier. So in my opinion this is the most exciting part of this kit. This is the only branded, T.REX branded item in the kit and this is made from KAK. This is something that they OEM for us and this is something that we've been testing for quite a while. So I have a rifle and an upper on the table. We're going to talk about the testing that we did on this entire kit but the majority of the testing was specific to this bolt carrier. So if you guys are unfamiliar with KAK, KAK is a bigger company that OEMs a lot of parts for various companies. They also have a government contract for barrel replacements for M4s and they are one of three companies that I'm aware of as of the making of this video that offers a sand cutter style bolt carrier group. So what we did is we contacted KAK after meeting them at SHOTShow, saw what they were coming out with before these were released to the market and we started testing these about two years ago as of the making of this video. So there's only a couple companies out there like I said making the sand cutters and it is a feature that is not necessary for your gun but it's definitely something that is an improvement to the weapon system and if you're able to do it why not do it because again it doesn't, all it does is improve the system. So what these sand cuts do is essentially it's in the name so if you have debris, a lot of carbon, a lot of sand, a lot of dirt, debris, whatever the case may be, as this reciprocates in the upper receiver these sand cuts help get some of that debris out of the way of the operating system. So in theory this should increase the reliability of your weapon system.

So this bolt carrier is hard chrome so it's not nickel boron, it's not MP3 coded, this is hard chrome, this is the same coating that Knight's Armament uses on their bolt carriers and some of the other big names that use some enhanced bolt carrier groups that are generally hard chrome. So what the hard chrome gives you is a slicker surface so that just means you don't need as much lubrication on this for it to be smooth in the upper receiver basically or if you do lubricate it well like you should and you've been shooting it a while it starts to get dried up. You don't need to lubricate it as often because again this is just a slicker material. So the carrier itself like I said is chrome, it's hard chrome, it is still chrome lined, I mean well the whole thing is hard chrome. We do have a phosphate gas key that was to our request, the phosphate gas key is chrome lined as well and what we're going to do here with this is we're going to put our headspace BCM bolts in this and also in the kit we included our BCM cam pin and firing pin replacement kit so our headspace BCM bolt, our cam pin, firing pin replacement kit plus this gives you a complete bolt carrier group.

Now the last part of the kit per se is an AT flash hider, this is something we included for free with all barrel lengths. Obviously some barrel lengths like 13.9s this may not seem like it makes a lot of sense because 13.9s are really made for pin and weld muzzle devices and an AT flash hider on a 13.9 will not get you to an overall length of 16 inches but the reason why we wanted to include this is one we wanted to include a good muzzle device for these barrels but also give you guys a thread protector basically if you wanted to change this out. So again we just wanted to offer a solution that completes the kit as much as possible and the AT flash hider did that to our satisfaction and it's a very very good muzzle device both for compensation and flash hiding.

The last three things in the kit are just Loctite and solutions these are things that generally you have to buy separate and they are absolutely necessary if you're going to install an upper receiver group properly so what we have is we have Rock Set we have green 620 Loctite and then we also have aeroshell barrel grease so what these things are used for and I'll cover it again as we as I demonstrate how to assemble an upper receiver but the green Loctite is going to go on your barrel extension into the upper receiver so this is essentially a Loctite for the barrel going in the upper receiver if you have a thermal fit upper receiver like a BCM or some there's some other companies out there making thermal fit you don't necessarily need this but it doesn't hurt to add it I will say if you do have a thermal fit and you add this Loctite your barrel is going to be in there really good and it's going to take some effort to get it back out.

Aeroshell grease will go on to the threads of your upper receiver before you put your barrel nut on this is just an NEC grease that should be used every time like I said when you are installing an upper receiver group and then the Rock Set so Rock Set is usually used most commonly used on muzzle devices that are going to be suppressed so like Surefire muzzle devices they have a very low torque spec and that is to ensure that you're not stretching out the threads on the barrel and what that means is you're going to need some sort of solution to make sure that the muzzle device doesn't come off when you take your suppressor off.

The solution also does not come off or break apart under heat so again that's why it's used on muzzle devices. Now we included on the kit because you know if you want to use this if you want to replace your A2 with the Surefire you're going to use the suppressor obviously you can use it there but also we recommend using this on your gas block because a lot of manufacturers are using red Loctite for the screws on gas blocks red Loctite comes off under heat that's how you get red Loctite off is by applying heat gas blocks get very hot so obviously just makes a little bit more sense to use a solution that does not come apart under heat like Rock Set so that is why we included it.

As you notice the amount of solution that we give you on all three of these things is quite extensive the Rock Set is a two ounce bottle and I will say we install quite a few different uppers in the armory I bought two two ounce bottles about two years ago and I'm not even a quarter of the way through the first one so just understand that you have plenty of Rock Set that is coming with this kit probably for life unless you are building multiple uppers a day so as of the making this video this is the size that you get for these solutions the solution size may change over time it's just this is the smallest that we can get in the kit at this time.

Same thing with the grease this is quite a bit of grease you really don't need much at all you just need about I'll demonstrate but basically just the size of about your thumbnail worth of grease on the thread so this again will last for multiple upper receiver group installations and same thing with green like that you don't need nearly this much but again this is the smallest that we could find and we wanted to ensure that you guys have the proper solutions to properly install this upper receiver group.

We went through everything in the kit we're gonna go over to the workbench I'm going to demonstrate how to install all of these things into an upper receiver but first before we do that one more thing we do need to talk about is the testing that we did on this because when we put our name on something obviously that means there's some risk involved when it comes to basically our branding because if something like this fails the customer and has our logo on it obviously that's something that we do not want so this did go through quite a bit of testing so the upper that I have here this is a 13.9 Criterion this was the main torture test upper that I used so this guy got 6,000 rounds at 1,000 rounds per hour fire rate half suppressed and half unsuppressed and I never lubricated this gun not once the only thing I did as I shot the testing rounds through this was I wiped things down just to check for wear and stuff like that and even after 6,000 rounds with no lubrication the gas rings are still in spec on this bulk carrier group which is very very impressive we did expect to see accelerated wear on things like that but these are still holding up quite well.

The question with the barrel is going to be how did it maintain accuracy over that 6,000 rounds so to be clear generally we want to see barrels last about 10 to 12,000 rounds now that's under normal firing cycle so a thousand rounds per hour is not normal by any means that should absolutely burn barrels out and it will this barrel however yes when it was hot in the moment it groups did open up that's gonna happen with any barrel that you use but as it sits right now this is still sub form away and that's what 55 grain not even match ammunition which is very impressive so that so this is something we should talk about and that is the barrel itself so this is something should address already but we'll address it now so to avoid all of the nerdy lingo when it comes to barrels and honestly I don't know all the nerdy lingo but generally what people want to know is how barrels are made so cold hammer forged are they chrome lined are they what material is the barrel made of what you need to know about Criterion Barrels that makes them unique is they are basically mil-spec they are chrome lined they're not cold hammer forged but the Criterion Core Series of barrels they have this nice taper to them so they're very very balanced you're going to see a very similar taper with bolt gun style barrels so the idea with this barrel line from criterion and honestly all of their barrels but this line specifically is they wanted precision accuracy out of a mil-spec barrel so a barrel that can withstand high fire rates like this test upper we have here maintain its accuracy for a good amount of time but also be very well balanced and that is why we love these barrels so much because these barrels here they're not the cheapest barrel out there but in my opinion they are the best barrels for the money on the market.

So if you buy a cold hammer forged barrel that's the process that they use when they make the barrel those are going to be a little bit more expensive but that does not mean they're going to perform better than this barrel right here so if it comes down to building out an upper receiver group there's really only three barrels that I would recommend buying first and foremost Criterion Barrels specifically the core series I think again like I said best for the money next would be Daniel Defense cold hammer forged barrels Daniel Defense makes fantastic barrels they're very accurate but they are very expensive they're going to be about a hundred dollars more than these if I'm not mistaken and then the third barrel option is going to be proof research that's a very very precision barrel those are a thousand dollars a piece so much more money than these about three times the price of this so overall Criterion barrels when it comes down to how it's made the features the durability the longevity of the barrel all that sort of stuff is definitely our favorite so when you get this barrel you'll notice just a beautiful crown on the barrels that's something you're not going to see with the vast majority barrels out there you can just tell that these are machined and produced to a very very high standard and you're going to see that consistently with every cartoon barrel out there.

So aside from this test upper there is another gun that I have been using this kit on for quite a long time and that is my personal competition rifle so this is the gun that I've been using for The Tactical Games I just got back from Nationals with this gun right here and I've been using the kit and this gun for a good part of about a year now so I have a 39 pin and weld with the kit in here and I barely rarely clean this gun it has about 8,000 rounds on it and it's still trekking along so this gun is 1.8 MOA with 69 grand match ammo so even after 8,000 rounds still very very accurate and very very reliable.

I think we've talked enough about the kit um now we're going to go over to the bench and demonstrate how to build an upper with it into the carrier, pin, and retaining like to do a single ring around the middle, put it in, I'm actually going to spin this to make sure that the Loctite is kind of spread out on there. Kind of just twist it as I push it in and then put it in there specific component is going to vary based on what kind of hand guard you're using. Make sure I'm not actually loosening this thing. I'm just going to slide it on. One thing we like about the recommend using scissors and not pliers because I just made that hole way too big. I'm actually going to put quite a bit of rock set on here because I'm just going to wipe off and then I slide it back into the gas block. As you can see, I'm even dealing with a put it on crushing this. Just slide this on. All rail, but generally, you're just gonna slide the rail on over your barrel nut, put it it's gonna be kind of difficult to see, but you can kind of see where the needle's going. We're just gonna run some oil. It's kind of hard to get some lubrication in there. So if you just do it this is a big old silver spot. So we're gonna make sure that has some lubrication on it. But the nipples on the side are gonna need some.

There we have it. Built out a complete upper receiver group. Shows you guys how to install the parts that come in our kit. So if you guys have any questions regarding this kit, any of like the nerdy technical specifics that aren't clear to you on the product page, if you guys need help installing anything, if you have any questions about what rails would work, basically any questions at all regarding this or really anything at all, just shoot us an email at [email protected].