CDD-15 D-M4

I received my Charles Daly D-M4 on Monday evening during a rain storm. I drove fast for the entire trip there. My FFL had gotten it in earlier and I had to call him to check on it because Michael Kassnar had told me it should have been there already. I had called and asked if he had received anything from Charles Daly and he said, “I think I do are you Tig...” I said yeah that’s me. Anyway I arrived safely, signed that beautiful form that we all love fill out and checked to see if everything was in the box was there and it was. Inside was an M4 flat top with carrying handle, a mag and what looked like some brochures. I drove home at an equal or greater speed to get a look at what I was going to be testing.

I got home and immediately went to the “gun room” and removed the carbine from its hardshell foam lined case. Inside was a different flat top M4 than I was used to. The finish was a deep black but not Teflon like some nor spray paint looking black like some others. The finish is similar to an HK semigloss that’s just a hair less glossy. For black rifle lovers this is a very nice black that you will love. Now it was time to see how well it was made and do a detail by detail check.

While admiring the black I began looking it over. The first thing I checked was the front sight base and the “F” was easily recognizable. I moved back to the carrying handle to be sure the sights I’ll be using would be sturdy and it was. The carrying handle is a standard A3 with the 6/3 minus one M4 rear sight. I looked towards the front and noticed that the heat shields in the handguard were black as well. I then looked over stock wondering if it used a commercial buffer tube or a mil-spec version. To check I used the Vltor stock from another AR but it wouldn’t fit. That was the first negative I found but it’s not a real negative as many stock manufacturers now make their stocks in both commercial and mil-spec versions should you decide to change stocks.


I decided it was time to field strip it and see how well the internals were made so I pushed the take down pin and was surprised at the fit. The pin was snug but didn’t need to be pushed out with extreme effort or a punch. Which is just about perfect for field use.

After having opened it up I removed the bolt carrier group and charging handle. The charging handle was the same beautifully evil black. I then removed the bolt carrier group I checked the gas key screws for staking. Many AR’s and M4's come with no staking or a cosmetic staking. The staking on the D-M4 was deep and actually extended into the gas key screws preventing walk out during extended fire.. The bolt carrier was lubed but not pouring out on my hands, just a nice coat to ship the carbine off the dealer. The bolt carrier itself is a chrome lined and parkerized. It also shrouds the firing pin which increases the life of the firing pin. Despite being parkerized it was quite smooth unlike some I’ve seen from other manufacturers. I reached for my pocket knife to remove the firing pin retaining pin when I noticed that it was a nice dark black. The pin wasn’t bent like some and came out easily by hand once clear of the recess where the head of the pin rests when assembled for use. Next I slid the firing pin out and found it was a normal AR-style firing pin, one of the few “standard” pieces in or on the carbine. Next came the cam and yet again it was a beautiful deep black unlike any I’d seen before.

Next came the bolt removal and inspection. I removed the bolt and some lube came out of the extractor area, not too much, but enough to fire it immediately after pulling it from the factory case. With the bolt removed it was easy to verify that the bolt carrier was chrome lined just as the bolt is. The last logical step is to check the extractor. The extractor pin was snug and wouldn’t walkout during hard use of the D-M4. I was able to remove the pin with a small punch to inspect the spring and insert. The spring is the extra power spring with the black insert. Also it came with the O-ring from the factory. The heavy spring and O-ring are what make the extractor snug, so you have two nice features that enhance each other. So the extractor and its constituent parts will make for a carbine with no extraction or ejection problems.

The last thing I had to check was the barrel. The chamber and bore have a nice chrome lining and I’m a chrome or go home guy so that impressed me. As for the barrel itself it’s the same beautiful, evil deep black. On top of the barrel just forward of the front sight base are the markings; “5.56 Nato 1-9 CHROME”. It’s topped of with a USGI M16A2 birdcage flash suppressor.

Pictures and my shooting impressions follow. Magpul was kind enough to send some of their new twenty round PMags so they will be tested along with the carbine. Also Gear Sector provided one of their new two points slings, the GS 2PS, for evaluation.

At this point of my review I’m comfortable in saying that if I were to buy a carbine in this price range today, I would buy Charles Daly’s D-M4 over any other brand.






I took several trips to the range to get an idea of the practical accuracy of the D-M4 in its form straight from the factory by using the carry handle and factory front sight. I zeroed it using the green and white box Remington-UMC 55 grain FMJ round. Every other load shot to the left of the Remington point of impact.

I used a variety of loads to see which I could advise as a beginning for D-M4 buyers. Among them were Black Hills 55 grain remanufactured, Hornady 55 grain TAP, Wolf M193, Prvi Partisan 55 grain FMJ M193 spec, Federal American Eagle 55 grain .223, Federal XM-193, and Winchester Q3131. All of them shot fairly well.

The best loads were the Hornady TAP, Wolf M193, Black Hills remanufactured and Federal XM-193 in that order.

I killed a lot of paper and Dr. Pepper cans with it. I put several hundred rounds through the D-M4 in this manner. I never had an issue with it during these sessions. When I was satisfied that I had determined the best rounds for it, I knew it was time for the torture test.







Today I began the first run of my torture test of the Charles Daly Defense D-M4. Someone said that putting 2000 plus rounds through an AR type weapon wasn’t a torture test. They may have a point but with no cleaning and firing as many rounds as quickly as I have and will continue to do will definitely bring out any flaws and shake anything loose that isn’t on tight enough.

For the first run I decided to use what I had left of the Adcom M855 ammo I had bought a few years back because it was the cheapest 5.56mm brass case ammo that one could find. I fired 540 rounds of this ammo. I had a bag of loaded mags including Charles Daly USGI aluminum, Bravo Company grey teflon D&H, C Products and Magpul Pmags.

I loaded the first mag, which happened to be a C Products stainless, and began the test. On the twentieth round everything stopped. I flicked the switch to safe and took a look. There was a round in the chamber and one that was stripped out of the mag. I locked the bolt open, dropped the mag out and the second round fell out. I hit the bolt release and it hit home. I pulled on the charging handle and it was a no-go. I finally got the bolt back but the round was stuck in the chamber. This wasn’t a surprise to me. The Adcom ammo had done the same thing in my DPMS M4 with the original DPMS barrel and also with the same M4 with the CMMG M4A1 SOCOM barrel. I held the weapon while my dad knocked the round out of the chamber with a cleaning rod and hammer. I broke the D-M4 open and sprayed a little lube on the bolt carrier group. To reassure myself I loaded a mag of Wolf M193 and emptied it. I then reinserted the mag with ten rounds of Adcom left in it and emptied it. I inserted another magazine of the test ammo and emptied it.

I continued to insert mags and empty them with single shots and double and triple taps. I was having fun and around the one hundred eighty round mark I had another malfunction of the same type. I also cleared it in the same manner as the first one. Again I loaded with a mag of Wolf M193 and emptied it with double and triple taps. Again there were no malfunctions with the Wolf M193. By this time I was sure it was the ammo and not the carbine.

The gun was very hot at this point. The oil had cooked off of the barrel and it looked white. I stopped long enough to take a couple of sips of Dr. Pepper and insert another mag. At the 400 round mark the handguards were “warm”.

In a little over an hour I had run six hundred rounds through the D-M4 with four identical stoppages, all of them having occurred with the Adcom ammo. The delta rings and front end of the upper receiver were hot but the D-M4 was still capable of going. All magazines functioned without a single malfunction. I doubt any civilian would ever run that many rounds through any AR for any practical purpose other than to test it, like I did.

Again, I expected this ammo to have had failures as I had encountered them in the past. The D-M4 still hasn’t been cleaned.




The second torture test took my father and I along with the D-M4 to our makeshift range in out deer lease. I had loaded a little over 500 rounds of Federal American Eagles 55 grain .223 in magazines of various manufacture. There were some of the same mags from the first test including all three thirty round Magpul Pmags, one of the C Products stainless magazines that has over one thousand rounds through it, four C Products stainless that were new, a few Charles Daly factory thirty round mags and one Colt twenty round mag. There were a few others but I don’t remember what the other few were.

We drove out to the hunting club and the “range” and started getting ready to go hot. My dad asked if I wanted a target to shoot at... I thought on it for a few seconds and told him no because we weren’t testing accuracy. The mag bag was placed on the hood of my truck I reached in and grabbed a random mag and inserted it in the mag well. We both put on our hearing protection we both yelled to see if the other was ready and nodded in agreement to one another.

I pulled the charging handle back and lit it rip a round off the mag. I started of with single shots for the first few and then went to double taps. It didn’t take long to empty the mag. I waited as my dad used his grabber to pick up the brass and put it in a pile. I grabbed another mag, inserted it and hit the bolt release. This time it was all double and triple taps. Even less time to empty. He picked the brass again. The barrel was smoking, and the handguards were a little more than warm. This continued until round two hundred(my dad was counting the shots/brass). On round two hundred I had a failure like the one from the first torture test. I released the mag and the round that tried to feed and they dropped to the ground.. The bullet was set back in the case. I laid that round on the hood of my truck. I pulled on the charging handle and surprisingly the empty round extracted. At this point I decided I might need a little more lube since I hadn’t added any lube since the first torture test. I took some pics of the gun smoking. I smoked part of a cigarette and took a drink of my usual drink. I reinserted the mag that had the problem round in it and emptied it.

Other than the one round that failed to eject, there was not a single problem. After I had finished shooting all the ammo I looked on the hood of my truck for the round that had the setback. I was surprised to see the red sealant of the Adcom ammo. I had accidentally brought a mag with the Adcom ammo and left one with the Federal ammo in it at home. It would gone more quickly without the problem with Adcom round and it would have been boring report other than the fact that I fired five hundred-nine rounds out of a great gun. I saved my Pmags until the end. None had any melting. The amount of time from arrival to leaving totaled thirty nine minutes.







This third test of five hundred rounds began essentially the same as the first two. The D-M4 had still not been cleaned. There was a mix of Federal American Eagle 55 grain .223 FMJ and Prvi Partisan Partisan 5.56 M193. My dad accompanied me to the same site that was used for the other tests. Again, there was a good bit of variation in the magazines used to assure that almost anyone who reads this will own a similar magazine.

The magazines were laid out on the hood of the truck within reach to insure quick access. The first magazine was emptied in just a few seconds. I began with one shot, then double taps and finished with a septuple tap. The next two mags were emptied just as quickly if not more so.

I kept the pace up until the three hundred round mark. I accidentally touched the area just in front of the charging handle and felt that it was quite hot. I took a short break to let the weapon cool somewhat because I feared a cook-off or gas tube failure might occur. After a sip of water and a drag on a cigarette, it was back to work.

I finished off the last two hundred rounds very quickly and the carbine was extremely hot. So hot that I could only touch the pistol grip and the sling. That gave me even more confidence in the Gear Sector GS 2PS sling as I was expecting part of it to be melted or gone. There were no malfunctions of any kind.

CDD-15 D-M4

After receiving a beautiful carbine that comes set up from the factory as one should with everything staked correctly, checked its practical accuracy and having run 2,000 plus rounds through it without cleaning I am confident that it can take any abuse a sensible civilian would subject it to. It will return to Charles Daly Defense looking almost brand new and functioning just as well. Everything is still in place, the gas key screws are still tight and the castle nut hasn’t moved. The old “trust the ABC’s” rule goes, there needs to be a CD added in for Charles Daly.


TS

A lot of shooters like to know how a rifle or carbine shoots at 100 yards. I was lucky enough that my brother came to visit on the July the 4th weekend. He brought his carbine with its ACOG. We put his ACOG on the D-M4 and his trigger finger on its trigger for just such a test. This was after the torture testing was done and this was the result.







TS

As part of my testing of the Charles Daly D-M4 I thought it would be nice to know the tolerances of the mag well. Many problems are caused by either bad magazines or out of spec lowers, especially tight mag wells. Good thing I'm a mag freak or it would have been an expensive experiment. I tested at least one of each magazine make. My test was very simple but I believe indicative of the tolerances of the mag well and the variation of magazine bodies. It was composed of a very simple action. I would insert an empty magazine in the D-M4's mag well, hold the carbine at shoulder height, and press the magazine release button. I used empty mags for two reasons. The first was to follow standard operating procedure of changing mags provided that problems don't arise. The second was to remove the effects of gravity as much as possible. My results are listed below. Only one brand had complications, Sanchez, and I tested three different Sanchez mags in the same condition and the problem occured with each of them. They had to be pulled semi-agressively from the mag well. All others dropped free immediately when the magazine release button was pressed.






* Sanchez was a USGI magazine manufacturer but made several runs that had to be recalled and destroyed. Some obviously made it to the civilian market.


TS