How often do you clean your AR gas tubes?

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PigPknHeat

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Just wondering, a buddy gave me a tiny brush thing to clean it with. I said "just take off the block and tube and run it through?" He said "don't know never cleaned it"

anyway how often do you clean yours? Need to disassemble completely?
 
Once every 3-4 range trips, so every 800-1000rds. I run it wet though. You can't over lube an AR [grin]

And when I say clean I mean fully disassembled, some Hoppes, a bore brush, rags and box of Qtips.
 
If I recall correctly, in the Armalite armorer's class, they were emphatic that it did not need cleaning, and that anything that would be stiff enough to prevent the pressure (north of 50k PSI, from the barrel length vs residual pressure chart I was seeing on AR15.com) from actuating the bolt would also be stiff enough to prevent you from cleaning it with any reasonable tool.

That said, I just posted in the LTR thread in Appleseed forum that my loaner AR has seen AT LEAST 2500 rounds of .223/5.56 plus AT LEAST 5000-7500 rounds of .22LR through a conversion, which uses the same gas tube. (As I'm thinking about it and looking at the space that the ammo has occupied in the safe today, I'm thinking .223/5.56 count is somewhere between 2500 and 5000 rounds, more toward the 2500 end, and the .22LR count is more toward the 10k round mark. And I've got a lot more wear on that rifle than I thought I did.)

In all of that, I've confirmed that .22LR is dirty. Nasty, sooty, waxy (CCI), cruddy, and terribly unreliable compared to good centerfire ammo. IIRC, there's ground glass in the primer to make sure it ignites, and I'm positive that at least some of that has found its way back through the tube on a rainy day. I really keep expecting it to clog, but I've never cleaned the gas tube, and I've never had a failure attributable to the tube or any component of the gas system. Really.

I'm going to give the same advice I got in the Armalite course - If it's bad enough that you're considering ways of cleaning it, spend the $10 or so on a new one. If you still feel you must clean it, go ahead and hose it out with some kind of carbon/soot cutting solvent...But don't expect any magical results.
 
Cleaning an AR's gas tube is a great way to get something stuck inside it and end up with an inoperative rifle.

-Mike
 
We're talking about the gas tube, right? Not the gas key? I've never cleaned the gas tube, nor has it ever occurred to me to do so. We didn't even clean them in the Marine Corps, and our Battalion Sergeant Major came to us from 8th and I and would actually white glove inspect our M-16's.
 
I've never cleaned any of mine and I Don't plan to. Armorer class I took said it not necessary per several big manufacturers. Something about the fouling passing straight through. With that said I don't know what 22 LR fouling world do in a gas tube
 
If u are talking about the gas tube that is part of the upper receiver that goes into the actual bore......never. 20 years in the army never cleaned it and was never trained to clean it. If you are talking about the tube on the bolt itself that matches up to the tube on the receiver I just give that a swipe out with a qtip and CLP every time I clean the bolt.

Something tells me that it it needed to be cleaned we would have been trained to clean it in advanced infantry training......we were not.
 
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I bought a package of those extra long pipe cleaners designed for cleaning AR gas tubes back when I built my first AR over 10 years ago. They come in a pack of 20, I still have 18 left. That ought to give you some indication.
 
As others have said, the gas tube was the only part of the platform we NEVER cleaned in the Army. The only thing. That's gotta mean something in an organization as obsessive about weapons cleaning as the Army is.
 
I cleaned the tube in my first AR a couple of times, but haven't since then. I don't think it's worth the effort to do so. As already mentioned, the kind of pressures moving through the tube should keep it clear of crap.

I have started to use melonite nitride treated gas tubes (and gas blocks) in my AR builds. From what I've read about that treatment, it should keep the tube clear even better than the normal stainless steel. Plus they're black, so they don't show like stainless tubes do under most free float handguards (those with rails at least). I plan to, eventually, have all the gas tubes on my AR's the melonite nitride treated version. Cost is pretty low, so it's just a matter of getting to it.
 
I've never cleaned a gas tube in tens of thousands of rounds fired out of ARs.

I religiously change extractor springs, but the gas tube never gets any attention. My 10.5" LMT SBR has seen probably 5000 .22 LR rounds fired through it. I figure that the first .223 fired in it after .22 use will blow any crap out of there.

If I shot it a lot with .22 and considered it to be my go-to gun, I might clean it. Just to be safe.
 

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