16” great! but… - Faxon Firearms 5.56 NATO Gunner Rifle Barrel

I purchased the 16” barrel about a year ago to build a lightweight weapon that could be carried long distances if needed, while also being balanced with the weight not toward the front of the gun. I finished assembly, used a BCM MCMR10 handguard, and put on a spikes tactical dynacomp (the short one). The dynacomp would not time properly; I don’t know if it’s the comp, the threading on the barrel, or the thickness of my crush washer. I filed the washer down until I could get the timing correct, and then it felt like a wicked lightweight gun! Excited to try it out, after two months I was able to take it to a range…where it shot a 4” group at 25 yds… no!!! I was shooting 55g Winchester white box 5.56, which historically has shot at least 4 moa of better out of any other guns I’d shot; the best I shot was a 9 inch 5 round group at 100yds. I went home and confirmed my torque on the barrel, the rail, the flash hider, the gas block, and I took it out again and again to the same results (about 10moa on average). Then…after almost a year… then I brought some 69g .223 match ammo that I had. I put an LVPO 1-8x on the upper and took it out to see how the 69g would do. It shot sub MOA. And even after a few mags, I still got sub MOA groups with this round. And I am consistently shooting sub moa when I focus on my fundamentals (and I’m just running a mil-spec trigger). I am stoked and plan to replicate this upper to have a duplicate! My tip for all who had a bad experience in the other reviews is to try different types of ammo; the 69g seems to work well for me, and seeing the twist is 1/8, that does make sense. In addition, a small con is that it is slightly overgassed (the cases are ejected to between the 4:00 and 5:00 angle instead of to 3:00…I used the faxon low pro gas block). This doesn’t bother me too much because it helps with reliability (and I could try switching the buffer or add an adjustable gas block if I really want to mitigate it). Love this barrel now after a year of hating it and coming to the poor reviews to affirm my feelings of hatred towards faxon for giving me a 10-inch-barrel…only to have been gladly proven wrong because I was just shooting the wrong ammo! Do you know how hard it would have been to remove that bcm handguard if I needed to send it in to faxon?? So stoked it is shooting so well now! Try 69g ammo!