This is the Rock River arms LAR-15 Car A4. This is Rock River Arms's sort of
entry-level model I've had this for about five years now I've put lots of
rounds through it I've hit lots of prairie dogs with it I've punched lots of
targets with it and it's still a very accurate and very reliable firearm
overall this time that's the short version but let's take a look at the
accuracy right now now bear in mind that this has had thousands of rounds through
that barrel it's probably due for a barrel change sometime soon the groups
have been walking up on me just a little bit but I think it's still going to turn
out some pretty good results let's see what happens alright let's check out
these results yeah not as pretty as what I'm used to seeing it's a little bit
disappointing
but I guess it's not too bad let's take a look at this alright it looks like our
our best group was the 55 grain Full Metal Jacket boattail and that's coming
in a little bit over an inch and a half just a tiny bit over an inch and a half
these were the 62-grain ss109 these were pulled bullets and okay we're getting a
bit over two inches there let's see if this one's a little long yeah definitely
I was like two and a quarter almost two and a quarter there this right here is
the 75 grain boat tail hollow points
that's almost two inches across right there this is more what I'm used to
seeing it could be that I'm either aiming badly today or it could be that
the barrel is just getting a little bit old it's had quite a few rounds through
it this one opened up to three inches this is the silver bear steel case
and this one's about 1 and 3/4 this is the the 55 grain mid-south hollow point
and all of these are custom loaded through here all this stuff the steel case of
course is not ham loaded but everything else is my own custom loads so take that
for what it's worth this group I printed a few weeks ago with my usual 75 grain
boat tail hollow points is a better representation of what I usually see
when I'm out in the field now this may look like a similar sized group that it's one
and a half inches across but this is at 200 yards so it's effectively 3/4 MOA
now let's address some matters of practical accuracy every time I come out
here what I do is I set up this human silhouette target this is a full-size er
and I get back at the 600 yard range and take five rounds at him so we'll see how
well I can do today
since I don't have a spotter today I had to take my own sighter rounds so three
ended up on paper and two fell off but once I figured out what the wind was
doing I went back and fired the next string so I have these five rounds
they're all in the black and this is what I would call minute of man let's
get a few things straight this is a commercial-grade rifle it is in no way
milspec I don't think a single part on this would be considered milspec nothing
is magnetic particle inspected or anything like that Rock River just does
a good job of selecting commercial manufactured parts and putting them
together in these rifles as such okay this is going to cost a bit more than a
Smith and Wesson M&P or say a Deltan or a Palmetto state armory or ATI those
kinds of rifles n MN P 15 you can get for about 650 now I believe and this
comes in probably just the shade below $1,000 you know it's definitely not
going to cost near as much as a mill specs where I feel like a B cm or as
much as a race gun like a JP Enterprises or anything like that
the competition for Rock River Arms has traditionally been DPMS Bushmaster
Olympic arms maybe stag these guys all produce very good quality products at
similar price points now the reason why I bought a Rock River instead of all the
others largely comes down to this right here this trigger is one of the nicest
triggers that I have ever felt on a semi-automatic rifle it is a match
two-stage trigger and this comes pretty much standard on all the rifles just to
give you an idea of what a two-stage matched trigger looks like it is a
little freewheeling slack right here and then you apply about four and a half
pounds of pressure in my case right here and then very tiny over travel really
sharp snap this is an excellent excellent trigger not quite awesome for
Varman ting I use it for Varman ting but it does a pretty good job and some of
the other things that make this really stand out to me we have a stainless
barrel up here that's generally it's it's heavier than
most of the other barrels that you find out there it's a stainless with a 223
wild chamber and you can see under the handguard that it's a pretty fat barrel
under that handguard it's a little bit thicker than your average pencil barrel
out front and this is what gives Rock River arms rifles the accuracy that
they've been showing up in the public eye for those of you that are unfamiliar
with the 223 Wylde chamber what it is is it is a match chamber that excels at
handling heavier bullets it'll handle the some of the smaller 55 grain Full
Metal Jacket bullets just fine and like the five five six chamber it'll also
handle some of the different ogives some of the longer bullets like the the ss109
and this 75 grain boat tail hollow point now the 223 Wylde has a kind of conical
lead in there and it has a longer throat so that it can handle these longer
bullets very very well it also handles them with more accuracy than you would
typically get out of a 556 chamber when you combine that trigger and the barrel
with the reliability of all the parts in here then you end up with a really fine
rifle in this I have had no failures to eject and no failures to ignite I have
had a couple failures to feed and actually I believe the first occurred
today earlier today I was doing a load work up with some 55 grain hollow-point
bullets and it didn't like the magazine that I was using so I swapped out this
little DPMS right here for AP mag and
everything was fixed it just didn't like the bullets eating that I had on those
custom loads aside from that though I have had no issues with this whatsoever one
of the unique facets of a Rock River Arms rifle is that the catalog has a lot
of different parts that you can swap out right there in the shop when you order
your rifle some of the upgrades that I did to this rifle over the standard car
a4 is I got the the heavier stainless barrel and I got this flip front sight
and that's pretty much it I went with other kind of bog-standard parts I got
the the typical a2 grip on the back I eventually put this Hogue on there
wasn't too crazy about it and right now I am using this Mako fab defense it's a
much more vertical grip I like a very vertical grip since I do a lot of prone
work these things that lay back a whole bunch they kind of get annoying on
the wrist they they start to fatigue the wrist a lot I also got the just the
basic hand grips up front with the the usual Delta ring on the back and then I
free floated it later to get a little bit more accuracy out of it and to be
able to mount stuff like this magpul afg in addition to upgrading the ergonomics
of the rifle you can do all kinds of things to make this the rifle you want
you can get all kinds of different barrel lengths anything from 16 inches
up to 24 inches they offer different barrel weights like bull barrels for
Varman ting or some lighter weight barrels this one's kind of a medium
medium heavy and you can get all kinds of chamberings to some of the stuff they
offer now you have the the two to three 556 chamber which is pretty standard
everywhere but you can also get that 223 wild they make rifles in 308 or 7.62 by
51 6.8 spc 300 blackout 458 so nine millimeter 40 Smith & Wesson and
now 7.62 by 39 my rifle uses direct gas impingement to run the action but Rock
River also does offer some piston models and that includes both rifle lengths and
pistol styles of rifles and that's especially cool on the pistol one since
you don't have to have a tube on the back it's just nice and flush the bottom
line here is that if you lie awake at night wondering if your rifle is milspec
or not this isn't the rifle for you but if you want something that works very
well it's very accurate very reliable then rocker arms might be the one for
you and now I mentioned at the beginning of
this review that you can't actually buy this rifle anymore they still make the
car a four but you can't get this 16 inch stainless barrel the good news
there is that they've actually upgraded it if you get the Elite cholerae for
free for a few extra bucks you get a 16 inch stainless barrel 223 wild chamber
but what they've done is they've actually moved the gas port further
forward so it's a mid length rifle you're gonna get probably a better gas
impulse and a more reliable rifle over time and that's a win to me
you