Which Plunger Size is Right for My Carbine?

The modular design of RIFLESPEED Gas Controls allows you to tune your Gas Control for ideal performance. Some shooters want to be able to completely cut off the gas delivered to their action in order to achieve maximum silence when shooting suppressed. Some shooters want to be 100% certain that the gas delivered to their action can not possibly be restricted to the point that their action won't cycle. Either of those configurations is possible with RIFLESPEED Gas Controls.

We currently offer ten sizes of Plungers. These are sequentially numbered and each number represents the Plunger length. Each increase in plunger size corresponds to approximately two positions on the Control Knob. To put these differences in practical terms, lets look at an example:

With Plunger #937 installed, our carbine locks back on an empty magazine when suppressed on setting #1-5 and unsuppressed on setting #1-8. This is a common result with carbines in some configurations of 5.56x45mm. We recommend adding one setting from your minimum for tactical or defensive use, so this shooter would be running on setting #1-6 and #1-9 for suppressed and unsuppressed, respectively. These settings make use of the middle portion of the adjustment range and are perfectly suitable for most purposes. However, if the shooter lives or works in a very cold climate or sometimes shoots under-powered ammo (some commercial ammo is loaded to significantly lower pressure than Milspec 5.56x45mm ammo), he may want to move the adjustment range used in temperate conditions down closer to the bottom of the adjustment range so that more positions are available for extreme cold-weather use.

Changing to Plunger #917 will allow the shooter to run on settings #1-1 or #1-2 suppressed and setting #1-4 or #1-5 unsuppressed. Now the shooter has seven positions (#1-6, #1-7, #1-8, #1-9, #1-10, #1-11, & #1-12) in the first Rotation Range of his Gas Control to increase the amount of gas delivered to his rifle's action when temperatures plummet or when unusually weak ammo is used. Since he's moved his adjustment range down to setting #1-1, there is no way to accidentally (or deliberately) restrict the gas delivered to his carbine's action enough to cause the carbine to cease functioning.

In our second example, a shooter is running a short suppressed .300 Blackout as a hunting carbine for deer and pigs. Though he usually hunts with supersonic ammo, he sometimes uses subsonic ammo when the utmost silence is required. This shooter has found that with Plunger #937 installed his carbine's action locks back on an empty magazine when shooting supersonic ammunition on setting #1-4. In order to reduce noise to the bare minimum, the shooter can switch to a longer Plunger like Plunger #979. Now his suppressed setting with supersonic ammunition will be #1-11 or #1-12. This allows him to turn all the way down to #1-1 which will restrict gas so much that his carbine will now function as a single shot rifle. Since the gas is now significantly restricted, the bolt will stay locked until the action is manually cycled. His carbine will now be as quiet with subsonic ammo as a bolt-action rifle would be. When he's ready to resume hunting with supersonic ammo he merely dials his Gas Control back to his supersonic setting of #1-11 or #1-12.