7 or 10?

[programmatore]

Hi Guys,

I have a SIG 516 Patrol piston AR with 16" barrel. It is great -- it is accurate, reliable, and a breeze to clean. Anyway, I was browsing through the Sig Sauer website yesterday and noticed that they are selling their piston uppers now. This got me thinking about SBR'ing my SIG 516 lower and getting a short upper. My question is: should I go for the 7" PDW or the 10" CQB upper? I'd appreciate your input.

http://sigsauer.com/StoreProductList/si ... 4-106.aspx

I have no plans of running the rifle with a suppressor so that is not an issue with the 7" upper. I also plan on keeping my 16" upper and switching back and forth between that and the short upper.

Anyway, here's the obligatry pic:


Thanks for your input.

[gunderwood]

Depends on what you want to do with it. The few SBR ARs I've shot were not very accurate at even 100 yards once you started approaching the 10" point. If that's acceptable to you, shorter is probably cooler. I'd do some googling though to check on reliability. Generally some tuning has to be done to ARs to get them to work well, the SIG is probably easier, but may require some tweaking.

[SDChop]

I can only speak from AR experience. I also caught the SBR flu and built my ar. I decided to go with a noveske 10" for mine. The 7" does look pretty cool, no doubt there but I still wanted to be able to reach out a little. I built mine just as an all purpose (zombie take over) SBR. Still short, can still shoot out a little distance. The short barrel, heavy buffer, 2 stage trigger....that dog hunts

[jrswanson1]

You lose too much velocity with the 7" barrel if you're going .223 for the round to be effective. There's a reason the M4 was only cut down to 14.5" in barrel length. If you want to go short and have an effective rifle, pick a bigger caliber.

[bryanrheem]

what's the primary goal? if it's just for looks, then go with the shorter barrel. If you're actually going to try to hit targets down range, go with the longer barrel.

[programmatore]

Guys, thanks for the replies. I appreciate it.

Well, I really like my MP5 for tight quarters but sometimes I think 9mm may not have enough stopping power. That got me thinking about getting the 7" SIG 516 upper. However, the more I look into it the more I am leaning towards the 10" SIG 516 upper -- it is a good compromise between short length and long range accuracy.

BTW, I was a little bored this morning so I decided to dress the plain black SIG 516 up a little bit with some FDE accessories from Magpul.

[bryanrheem]

Looks great! How do you take such nice pictures???

Regarding your comment. I personally think a hollow point 9mm round would be as effective as a 5.56 round in CQC situations where you are engaging threats < 15m away... but I am by no means any expert.

The 10" upper still will look awesome!