[ AR-180 Carbine ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we have a chance to take a look
at a really cool, rare variant of the ArmaLite AR-180.
That's the semi-auto version of the AR-18, that's the rifle
that Eugene Stoner designed after the AR-15.
And what we have today is an original factory police carbine version of the AR-180.
So originally of course this was designed to be an economical military rifle.
And it was something that was designed specifically to not use any of the patents
that had been used in the AR-15, because ArmaLite had sold all of those patents to Colt.
So they have to come up with something that doesn't use the same gas system.
And they decided to go with a stamped lower receiver
to be a little ... easier for smaller militaries
with smaller budgets to actually manufacture instead of an aluminium forging.
So the vast majority of AR-180s that were produced,
(I should say the 18 is the full-auto, the 180 is the semi-auto,
we're going to kind of use the terms interchangeably here today)
the vast majority of them were the standard full-length rifles.
But there was some theoretical interest in a carbine model.
And so the licence for production of the 180 was given to Sterling in England in the 1970s,
and they would produce a couple of different patterns of carbines.
Now what they did is ... (there's not a whole lot to this) they cut the barrel down to 10.5 inches,
they gave it a cool looking little conical flash hider - and that's pretty much it.
The receiver, the action, the stock are all completely identical,
even to the point that the front sight block, the gas block here,
... still has a bayonet lug even though it cannot fit a bayonet.
They made both full-auto and semi-auto versions of the carbines.
This is one of the factory semi-autos.
So let's take a little bit of a closer look at what they did up here.
So with the stock folded and the 10.5 inch barrel, this thing is extremely compact.
It's very light, the standard full-length AR-180 is a pretty light gun itself.
These feel really cool, very slick in a very retro rifle sort of way.
So like I said, the stock is exactly the same as the standard rifle.
You've got the pair of spring-loaded plungers there that snap into a stamped stock latch right there.
To open it you just squeeze them both in, and to close it you just snap it in place.
There is a little plate here with a pair of ... spring wire clamps,
and the stock locks open on this peg on the side of the receiver.
So it literally is that pin snaps into the stock.
And then you just pop it out to reopen it.
Looking at the markings, these are all marked "ArmaLite AR-180 5.56".
And then it was manufactured for ArmaLite in Costa Mesa by Sterling.
AR-180s overall were manufactured by ArmaLite, by Sterling and also by Howa in Japan.
Now Sterling is the only one that made carbines.
We have our serial number right here, it is SS 239.
They only made a bit over 100 of these
and the serial number prefixes actually have some data built into them.
So "SS" is a semi-automatic short carbine.
There was also an "AS", that was the full-auto short carbine.
And then you have the standard full rifles.
So this is in fact one of the original semi-autos.
It's not that difficult of a design to clone, because the back end is all identical.
You'll see of course here on the selector, we have a two position selector: safe and semi.
These didn't come into the US, because they were short-barrelled rifles at the time in the 1970s,
and it was difficult to sell that sort of thing.
There didn't turn out to be really much police interest in the AR-180 in the United States,
so I think most of these were actually sold
on the commercial market in Europe, and that's what happened with this one.
We can actually see the original British proof mark here on the barrel from when the gun was made.
There's our muzzle device, they added this as a flash hider
because a 10.5 inch barrelled .223 or 5.56 is going to have a fairly substantial amount of flash.
I don't know that that flash hider is going to do a ton about it,
but it's better than nothing on a gun like this.
And it's interesting that they also added a rotating plate here for a sling attachment.
And there are actually a lot of potential sling attachments on the rifle that you have to pick from.
So you can put the front swivel out here where it can swing from side to side
if you want to be able to carry the thing flat against your body.
There is also a hole drilled in the bayonet lug
that you can put a sling loop on if you want to carry it ... over the shoulder style.
The rear sling swivel for that style of carry
is here on the bottom of the pistol grip, just like on the standard rifles.
The disassembly catch here also has a hole in it for use with a sling.
And that, especially combined with this bottom pistol grip,
you could do something where you could actually keep the stock folded
and sling the gun under your shoulder under a jacket, if it needed to be covert, so to speak.
... This is the scope mounting set-up for the original ArmaLite scopes.
A proprietary design, but it's the same as you'll find on the rifles.
And the rear sight is the same as on the rifles, it's a two position flip aperture, 100 and 200 metres.
ArmaLite magazines are very similar to AR-15 magazines,
and in fact this is a dual use one.
So the magazine catch on the ... 180 ... is right over here and it locks into that slot.
If we flip it over we'll find the notch for an AR-15 magazine catch.
This one is marked Sterling on the floor plate.
... There are AR-18 mags that are specifically only AR-18,
but then there are also dual AR-18/AR-15 mags that were made.
We got a folding dust cover that pops out of the way when the bolt cycles.
The bolt handle is pivoted up to give you a little easier access to it.
And to disassemble this all we need to do is push the recoil spring guide there in.
Kind of like a Daewoo, this pivots up.
We can pull out the spring guides, dual recoil springs, pull the bolt back,
pull the charging handle out, bolt comes out.
... The AR-18 is fundamentally the base rifle for a lot of modern piston-style 5.56 rifles.
So that comes apart just like an AR-15.
On this one, ... this should have a heat shield in it like the lower does here,
but the heat shield on the upper handguard is missing unfortunately.
And then we have a short-stroke gas piston system here.
This was inherited from the Tokarev rifles, the Germans used them in the G43 as well.
And then this will go on to ... decades later
become the standard system for 5.56 gas operated rifles.
When you see AR-15 piston conversions, they are almost all working on this style of principle.
Patents on this ran out long, long ago.
The only thing unfortunately about this rifle is it actually has a replacement front sight.
The original front sight broke so they swapped that out.
But otherwise, this is an original factory-standard AR-180 carbine, which is extremely cool.
Alright, I have a second example here along with a standard AR-180.
And you can see the gas system on the carbine
has been shortened, but the design is exactly the same.
So you have your multi-part piston back here,
and what they've done is just taken this middle section of the piston and shortened it.
If we look up here at the gas blocks, you can see that they are the same on both guns.
So the full-length rifle has a bayonet lug that will actually fit a bayonet.
The carbine retains the bayonet lug, but of course there's no way to fit a bayonet on it.
And this one actually does not have the little sling loop on it.
It's also interesting to point out that on the full size 180s they have a little safety plunger here,
so you can't accidentally depress this for disassembly.
On the AR-180 carbines they got rid of that catch
in favour of having the hole through that piece for the sling connection.
Here on our full-auto carbine we have the full-auto style of serial number.
So "A" for automatic, "S" for short, 208.
The full-autos went from AS 1 through 327.
Almost 3 times as many of them being made as the semi-autos.
The semi-autos actually started at 225 and only went to 334.
Since we are looking at the full-auto carbine here anyway,
you'll see it has a 3 position selector, including the "Auto" marking which is not on the semis.
And the one easy way to distinguish the full from semi-auto AR-18s
is this, this is actually the auto-sear.
Which on the AR-18 design is built into the upper receiver
to interact with the fire control group down there.
So the semi-auto guns just don't have any of those parts included on the upper.
Alright, so we actually have a chance to do some shooting with it.
Now, the owner says that this recoils roughly like an AK, because it is so lightweight.
He also says you do still get quite a bit of flash out of it.
So I'm curious to see if I have the same experience.
It's not bad. I think it's less than an AK personally.
A qualitative thing, but it's still very pleasant to shoot.
So here is a good example of a standard AR mag, this one is Okay Industries.
That has had the magazine catch notch for an AR-180 added to it.
That's a pretty common thing because otherwise AR mags fit perfectly,
and they are a lot more accessible than original AR-180 mags.
It does have a pretty thin profile barrel that heats up a little bit quickly,
I think we're burning off a little bit of oil from the gas piston there.
These were not really desirable, popular guns.
No one actually really wanted these in the 70s when they were being manufactured.
And one of the big reasons for that in the United States
is that this of course is an SBR under US law.
... Even back then there were hurdles.
... Something like this would have to be NFA registered.
The $200 transfer tax was a significantly higher amount at that time because of inflation.
And there was a lot less common knowledge of how to ... exist in the NFA world.
Today, thanks to the internet, it's relatively speaking very easy to get into NFA firearms.
You can look up and easily learn exactly what you need to do to buy something like this.
Not like this, because these are super rare today, but an SBR.
Back in the 70s, there was a lot less of that.
In addition this thing is stupidly loud, as are all 10.5 inch 5.56 carbines.
And hearing protection was still not quite as common as it is today for shooting.
And a full-length AR-180 was a much more pleasant gun to actually go out and shoot
with no hearing protection or with minimal hearing protection.
And certainly, especially from a military perspective or a police perspective,
does the benefit of the short barrel, ...
is that really worth the discomfort of having to actually shoot it without ear protection?
Alright, we also have non mil-spec mags.
A Canadian Thermold here, again with the AR-18 hold open catch added to it.
The two protective wings are very similar in shape and size to the front sight post.
And so it's pretty easy to unintentionally grab the one of the front sight wings
as your "front sight" if you're not paying attention while you're shooting.
I think ... it's a better design system
when you have the protective wings curved, or if you have a fully enclosed front sight.
Obviously there are pros and cons to fully enclosing it.
But at least taking the protective wings and curving them at the top
so it's harder to mistake them for the sight itself.
I can get to the mag release with my trigger finger.
We do have an ambidextrous safety, which is nice.
That's standard on the 180 which is cool, not super common for guns that were this early.
So that, I would say shooting experience pretty darn good.
It kicks harder than some, certainly harder than a tuned modern 10.5 inch AR-15,
where someone's balanced the gas port and the buffer system
and the bolt weight to be very soft shooting.
But for its day, if you wanted a short little carbine this would have been a cool option.
... ArmaLite wasn't quite in the right place at the right time with the right product for it,
and so only a few hundred of these were ever made between full and semi-auto.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.