Leaderboard

So I was gonna have JK Armament make one but decided not to since their suppressor mount is made to be thread locked on and only adds about a half inch to the length. A cursory glance at other thread protector manufacturers didn't turn up anything. Maybe try McMaster Carr.

I thought it might be interesting to do a little comparison between my Dad’s 2020 M4, and my new (2023) one. After taking them both apart I took some pictures of the most prominent differences I found, so here they are: The piston plugs have a very different finish. The old ones have a polished steel look, and the new are a more opaque finish. Perhaps they tried to reduce visibility as they’re slightly exposed by the t-pro hand guard. The pins are also a little different, the old ones being a polished steel look, and the new ones having an bronze like coating. I found that the finishing work to the piston housing was slightly more refined on the older model, but this could be because of the difference in colour. There are some differences in the barrel assembly. You’ll notice that the pins are miss stamped in the newer model, I did see this on another fde t-pro, so it might be a prevailing change/mistake. Overall I would say the finishing work is close in terms of quality. I wish I had an even older model to add for more reference. None of the firing pin pictures quite show the finish change, but it’s much like the pins in the piston plugs. The old on has a polished steel finish, and the new one is a sort of bronze finish. The bolt head retaining pin has a larger notch in the new one. The bolt heads have slightly different identification marks, but in terms of workmanship they seem pretty close. My new one has some nicks on the bolt face that the old one doesn’t suffer from however. New Old There was a slight discolouration in the finish on the metal parts of the new trigger grouping in places. (New trigger group on top.) Everything else seemed to be pretty similar. The old pistons finish seemed like it had a more grey tinge, while the new ones had almost a green tinge. You might be able to see it in some of the previous photos, but I had a hard time getting a good photo of it otherwise. I’d be interested if anyone else has an old one they wouldn’t mind rating these against in terms of workmanship. Also, if anyone else has a t-pro I’d be interested to know if you’ve found that the internal parts of yours share the same finishing differences as mine. Cheers, and thanks for reading!

Very valuable advice, thank you. SBR are not allowed in country where I live and 1301 wasn’t available. Beside, I bought M4 because I wanted M4.

You can mount a rail to the OEM handguards....did it many years ago when the forum old guard were spitballing solutions. T-nuts work.