Quote Originally Posted by armakraut View Post
Why not build two "for abuse" AR's? Make one out of the nicest, most expensive, latest & greatest durable components. Make the other as low budget and knuckle dragging as possible.
I like the way you think, but finances prevent me from doing this. I had thought about buying an off the shelf Oly Arms, RRA, DPMS, or other basic AR15 to run and duplicate the testing process. I even kicked around the idea of taking one of my current basic carbines and using it, but decided that while I was willing to possibly destroy one weapon or its parts, I wasn't willing to do two.

Besides, I want to build one which isn't going to be destroyed in testing, and I think the standard configurations would fare poorly in drop testing when the stocks/ tubes and handguards were hit.