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Last Updated: 5/27/2011 11:43:48 AM
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AR-15 Upgrades: Sights, Ejector Door, and Pins

By Erik Rodriguez

Tags: AR-15 night sights, AR-15 ejector port, ejector door installation, take down pins, broken AR-15 take down pins

This article provides information about different upgrades for the AR-15.

Iron sights

Some AR-15 rifles will come with excellent iron sites. My M&P 15 came with Troy rear sights which are considered some of the better ones. There are many different types of iron sights including fixed, fold up, and flip up sights. I don't have any experience with anything besides the troy sights, but from what I have read you get what you pay for. The sights that came on my gun are surprisingly expensive ~$130 in most cases.

Night sights

Night sights simply replace the front post sight (and detent spring) and can optionally replace the rear sights as well. This is an overly expensive upgrade that isn't really worth the money.

Ejector port

This was one of the most complicated upgrades I have done on the AR-15. I bought an after-market ejector port door from Spike's tactical. It was cheap upgrade at $10 and I thought it would look cool with the Punisher logo and American battle flag. There was some debate over how to install this thing, which I explained to another user on the Spike's Forum. Read the instructions for replacing an AR-15 ejection door.

Take down pins

This was another very hard installation. I purchased some extended takedown pins with punisher logos. They were expensive and took me about an hour and half to install them. I nearly lost the springs that hold the take down pins in place because they came shooting out and hit my ceiling. They look cool, but don't do much for the operation of the gun. It may be about 5% easier to remove my upper with the extended pins. I overpaid for these at $35. The install required me to remove the buffer tube in which I needed the AR wrench to remove the castle nut. A few months of shooting evetually cracked the front pin. I suspect it cracked due to heat where I had fired some 300+ rounds in about 10 minutes. I cannot confirm this.