- [Voiceover] Hey guys it's Alex C. with TFBTV
and for today's field strip we're going to be doing
an Armalite AR-180.
The Armalite AR-18/AR-180's were designed by
Armalite in Costa Mesa, California and made in three places,
that's going to be in the United States by Armalite,
in Japan by Howa, and in England by Sterling,
the same company that made the Patchett Sterling SMG
that everybody likes with that weird
side feeding magazine but,
basically these guns were marketed as a
cost-effective version of the AR-15.
They have similar pattern magazines, not identical.
They fire 5.56, and they have some really
nice ergonomics for the time period of course.
However they are very crude, you can see it's
stamped and you know, you can see
the welds on the outside and everything,
so not exactly the most handsome or well-finished firearm,
but they had some cool features like a nice folding stock
on there which is actually quite nice, not the most solid,
but definitely not the worst.
The rear sight is stamped, but has the nice AR-15, F16
flips, features and is similarly adjustable,
with a reasonably standard front sight post,
nothing spectacular there, but
the ergonomics, if you shot an M16 AR-15 will be
pretty familiar to you, the magazines like I said,
are not interchangeable because of mostly the way
that the magazines are retained.
They do have a reciprocating charging handle,
and they are right-side charging, but as you can see
they do have a dust cover reminiscent of one found
on an M16 AR-15 which is kind of nice.
The safety is also ambidextrous which was kind of unusual
in the 60's so, that's a plus for this gun.
Now of course to begin the field strip process,
you're going to press this little D tent located on this arm
behind the rear sight, and push that in,
and open the receiver up.
This will allow you to separate the two halves,
and at this point it's easiest to remove
the front pivot pin.
Now it is not captive like an M16's front pivot pin,
so be careful and don't lose that.
What I like to do is pull that out of there,
and then stick it right back in the lower,
so it doesn't roll off whatever surface you're working with.
Now here you'll notice that even the ejector is stamped,
the hammer is stamped, I mean this gun made very liberal use
of stampings to give countries that didn't have
appropriate milling technology the ability to basically
produce a comparable rifle in terms of performance.
Now at this point remove the recoil springs and guide rods,
plural, which is kind of unusual.
Pull the bolt to the rear, and then remove the
charging handle once it is stopped.
At this point you can go ahead and push the bolt carrier
and bolt out from the rear of the upper receiver.
Now here you're going to remove the firing pin,
retaining pin, usually you would use a bullet tip,
however I didn't have one handy, kind of hard to believe
I guess, but I just used a pin and pushed it
right out of there.
At this point remove the firing pin
and spring from the rear,
push the bolt in, and you can pull the cam pin
right out of there,
at which point you can pull the actual bolt
out of the carrier assembly.
So not wildly different than taking a M16 AR-15 bolts apart.
Now to remove the gas system, first pull off
the top hand guard,
pull the actuator/op-rod to the rear,
remove the connecting rod,
pull the piston out,
and then pull the op-rod out.
Now this is this weapon's greatest feature,
you hear a lot of people say XYZ gun has an
AR-18 derived gas system.
And it is true, the Howa 89, the SA 80, and a lot of guns
like that pretty much copy this directly.
Very, you know, simple guns, relatively speaking,
nowadays it seems ludacris that stamping was inexpensive,
because nowadays milling aluminum is cost-effective which
was a far cry from what they thought would be possible
in the 60's but,
this gun was a product of circumstance.
People needed a rifle that had the capabilities
of an M16 AR-15 but was also cost-effective
and can be made on older tooling,
in the days when stamping was king,
and the AR-18 was born, unfortunately it
never really found a lucrative military contract,
they are actually reasonably hot civilian firearms,
but they never really caught up to the AR-15 M16's
despite being cheaper so.
Big thanks to Ventura Munitions for helping us out
with our shooting videos guys.
This is Alex C. with TFBTV,
hope to see you next time.