Sorry guys... I have not been very active here at all lately. I just got back from several months overseas.

Getting down to business now-- I want to discuss how things work and basically have a running thread to walk me through it as I go along. Keep in mind here I am going sheerly on memory as of right now because I haven't had the chance to go shooting yet since I have been back (2 days ago).

My SBR was approved quite a while ago and generally it ran fine but there was an occasional feeding malfunction where it would bend the brass in almost a banana shape. Also sometimes there would be deep gouges in the side of the brass (not often)...but there was enough to make me want to figure out what was going on.

I remember that I did discover that the magazine I was using (Magpul) wasn't for some reason feeding properly. So the problem could have been just a simple faulty magazine but I have not proven that yet.

***The first thing I want to do is to get a willing participant or two and do a little pass it along test, preferably with more than one gun and in various conditions...hard shooting, mag dumps, whatever... I will send you the suspected magazine (30 round magpul) and I want to see if you guys have a problem with that specific magazine as well. If so I will know for sure that was one of the problems. The mag is still pretty new and has not been abused in any way so if it winds up working just fine its is a freebie to whoever winds up with it. At the same time it will let me know what direction I need to carry on with everything.***

The other thing is, where I left off (before I left) is I thought the gun was over gassed so I have been wondering about options to tune it. Specifically I was looking at buffers and all that. I am thinking a heavier buffer might help but it is not my area of expertise. What I don't want to do is start buying a whole bunch of random parts just shooting in the dark until I happen to run across the answer. If someone has a spare heavier buffer that they would not mind if I borrow it for a while that would help out in the process of ultimate diagnosis. If anything happens I will either buy a new one, replace it, or whatever...but at this point I just want to run a simple test over a period of time.

I really don't want to try and throw everything at it at once. I kind of want to go one step at a time here. I don't mind buying parts but I don't want to buy a bunch of random parts that will ultimately just sit on the shelf. IE if I go out and spend X dollars on this and try it for 30 rounds and go 'nope'... it's just wasting money that I don't really have right now on a process that I don't fully understand (basics yes, but overall I am not the expert)...

Anyway I am going to leave the thread at that for now but you can see what direction I am trying to head with this. If there is something else I need to look at, or something else I need to try, or information I need to provide... just anything... let me know and I will do my best.