Kel-Tec SU16 Review

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http://230grain.com/images/articles/su16/img/su16splash.jpg

Those of us that live in Kaliforniastan share a special pain. It starts as the dull throbbing of 10 round magazines and in its later stages inflicts sharp pains when ever a magazine fed pistol-gripped rifle appears. When it comes to a rifle chambered in .223, we have a few popular options. In investigating these options the one thing that was always made clear was that the Kel-Tec SU16 should be avoided. I heard this repeatedly, from respected people, and by and large believed it was a poorly functioning gimmick rifle. I began to look at the Mini-14, a pinned magazine AR or Beretta's RX4. Then, in a moment of inspiration I returned to the SU16 and began to ask around again. This time though, I discounted the opinions of folks who have never owned or shot one. I walked into the gunshop and made my intentions clear. The responses started with "Friends don't sell friends Kel-Tecs" and eventually ended up with "I'll sell it to you at cost so I can get it out of here."


http://230grain.com/images/articles/su16/img/sufoldco7.th.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/su16/img/sufoldco7.jpg)

It's light and folds up nicely. Room for two magazines (or 1 Freedom Magazine so I've heard) in the stock.


http://230grain.com/images/articles/su16/img/suglamorwh1.th.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/su16/img/suglamorwh1.jpg)

The front sight (unlike earlier models) is good to go. The back sight is a piece of crap: no click adjustments, you just loosen one screw and tighten the other. This was troublesome to the point I borrowed an optic.


http://230grain.com/images/articles/su16/img/reardy7.th.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/su16/img/reardy7.jpg)

I didn't care for the Bipod, it's too unstable in my opinions.


http://230grain.com/images/articles/su16/img/bipodqq8.th.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/su16/img/bipodqq8.jpg)

There's two immediate issues that I can see causing claims of unreliable function:

The manual advises that every 500 rounds you disassemble the rifle and oil/clean most of the components. The manual makes specific mention that the firing pin should be oiled, but not cleaned with solvent as it will damage some o-ring. All instruction I've ever read prior made it clear that the oiling of a firing pin (light or otherwise) would cause problems - so I'll be skipping over Keltecs advice on this one. Also, it seems that scrubbing the breach face with solvent would result in some eventually infiltrating the firing pin channel and affecting this O-ring. At least on the CA model the rear of the bolt and hammer is exposed when the rifle is folded. So, if you're going to stow the gun folded, stow it in a clean environment.

Now, a box thread is nice enough, but they're not much more then prideful masturbation. Does the rifle perform?

I started using Militec for lubrication. After 200 rounds there was more "squeak" and noticeable wear on the plastic in my opinion, so I switched to Pro-Gold grease. The gun was sighted using a Tru-Glo optic at 25 yards - it was shooting well enough:


http://230grain.com/images/articles/su16/img/25y1lx3.th.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/su16/img/25y1lx3.jpg)

I suffered three failures to extract that turned into comical triple feeds (two live rounds and one spent casing) thanks in part to the SU16's unique "Shell Deflecting" charging handle. After 400 rounds, the handle was starting to show wear from spent casings.

Rounds 161 to 210 were shot at 75 yards during some fierce wind. Because paper was unavailable (the targets flying to freedom) an 8" gong at 75 yards was used. The gun operated fine, making hits as long as I kept my consistent hold-under.

At various times I used STANAG magazines, and only in one case did give me any grief. When that mag went back to its owner it was confirmed to be a problem magazine. I spent a lot of time shooting snaps and weakside at distances out to 50 yards, but I did not spend enough time shooting at any distance. As such, when I pushed out to 100 yards the results weren't any good.


http://230grain.com/images/articles/su16/img/100yhacy7.th.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/su16/img/100yhacy7.jpg)

I played around on one of those fancy schmancy ballistic calculators and determined that a 40y zero put me at no more then +/-3" out to any reasonable range. Total round count ended up being no less then 500 rounds. I did experience one FTF while I was re-zeroing the rifle in preparation for another attempt at 100y. I also detail stripped the rifle. Detailing stripping is just as easy as the manual makes it seem. You could almost call it Glock easy, and yes a Glock tool is very handy for the Kel-Tec. I didn't get the chance to try for some long distance shots on paper though.

So here's the deal: 500 rounds into the gun, I'm digging it. If I weren't in California, I'd have an AR. Given my constraints, this gun fills the "Freedom Rifle" niche very well, and I have no regrets in my purchase.

Price Check Please!

Guns America (http://www.gunsamerica.com/Search.htm?OG=0&T=su16&AS=60&LF=0&OI=0&LTID=CL,A,AB,BA&AC=&MN=0&MX=0&F=)

Gun Broker (http://www.gunbroker.com)

Here's a few resources:

Owners Manual (http://kel-tec-cnc.com/images/downloads/su16manual.pdf)
Kel-Tec Owners Group (http://www.ktog.org/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?board=105)
3rd Party Cleaning Guide (http://www.heypete.com/pete/shooting/keltecsu16b.html)


Special thanks to our own Scarecrow411 (http://230grain.com/member.php?u=71) for this excellent writeup.

[sza]

This writeup inspired me to purchase my very own SU-16CA today!

[Scarecrow411]

Well, have you had a chance to shoot it? What do you think?

[sza]

Well, have you had a chance to shoot it? What do you think?

I pick it up Saturday, and I'll probably take it to the indoor range Monday, at which point I shall let you know my impressions.

[sza]

I took my SU16 to the range today, and I'm very pleased with it. It shot quite accurately with two of my hand loads (55gr and 65gr) and Federal American Eagle factory ammo.

I experienced no failures of any kind. I'm quite happy with my purchase. For what it is, it is an excellent rifle. If you were expecting a tacticlol AR15 you might be disappointed, but I was not.

[sza]

Here are two photos of my SU16CA:

http://www.offline.org/~burch/guns/Keltec_SU16CA_1.jpg

http://www.offline.org/~burch/guns/Keltec_SU16CA_2.jpg

Click here for gigantic (http://www.offline.org/~burch/guns/Keltec_SU16CA_2_big.jpg)

[Scarecrow411]

You have any luck with the rear sight, or am I just being overly picky?

[sza]

You have any luck with the rear sight, or am I just being overly picky?

Well it was waaay off from the factory, and I had to adjust it almost all the way to the left to sight it in, but I'm familiar with cross-screw windage adjustable rear sights so I don't have an issue with it.

My Browning BLR, for example, uses a similar system, as does the XS ghost ring on my Marlin 1895.

The key is to unscrew the screw on the opposite side of the direction you want to move the rear sight, and then screw the opposing screw in the same amount.

So, for example, if the bullets are hitting to the left of your desired point of impact, you would unscrew the left screw a little bit, say, half a turn, and then screw the right screw in half a turn. This would move the rear sight and your point of impact to the right.

Counting turns is particularly easy with the little winged screwdriver Kel-Tec gives you with the rifle.

When I got the rifle I laser boresighted it to get a rough windage zero, then at the range I had to do about a half turn adjustment to get it perfect. It's still shooting about 3" high at 25yds but I prefer to zero the elevation at 100yds and that will have to wait until I can get to an outdoor range.

[Nitrogen]

When I got my hands on a similar rifle, it felt really cheap and delicate to me.

How "hardy" would you say this rifle is?

[highmeh]

When I got my hands on a similar rifle, it felt really cheap and delicate to me.

How "hardy" would you say this rifle is?

Well it's a mostly plastic rifle....but it doesnt feel delicate or anything. I shot Scarecrow's last Friday with a (3x?) scope on it, and it helped the weight and balance quite a bit.

[sza]

When I got my hands on a similar rifle, it felt really cheap and delicate to me.

How "hardy" would you say this rifle is?

I doubt it would hold up as a main battle rifle, but normal use isn't going to break it or wear it out any faster than any other rifle.

The bolt locking system is the same as an AR15, and all of the load from the bolt carrier movement is born by the gas piston/recoil assembly. The plastic "receiver" doesn't even really guide the carrier, and there are no wear marks on the inside of the receiver after shooting the rifle.

I put receiver in quotation marks because the serialized portion of the gun is actually the barrel.

The trigger itself is plastic, but it's just a plastic trigger shoe pinned to a steel trigger group. The bolt hold-open is a piece of stamped metal. The magazine catch is plastic, but it's fairly over built and especially if you use the factory plastic magazines, likely will never wear out.

The plastic magazines flex a little bit when you're loading them but the feed lips are quite thick. Only time will tell if they wear out/break, but given the availability of STANAG mags I can't see magazine life being an issue.

The takedown pin for folding the stock is retained by a captive spring (similar to the way the trigger and hammer pins are retained in an AR15) and has a pretty ingenious slightly off-center design that keeps the stock absolutely rock solid when it's pinned in place and (I assume) will compensate for the inevitable wear in the pin holes in the stock.

The only thing with even the slightest bit of flimsiness to its feel is the bipod. When the foreend is folded, it's quite solid, but in the deployed position it's wobbly and doesn't lock at all. The foreend latch isn't all that hot to use either, but once it's locked in position it doesn't move or wobble. A lot of people ditch the bipod setup for the compact railed forend, so that's an option if the bipod bothers you.

My charging handle/shell deflector is showing some dents from empty cases hitting it during ejection, but it's an easily replaced part (no tools required) and an AR15 gets a similar amount of wear on its shell deflector.

Kel-Tec seems to have fixed the spacing of the grooves on the "picatinny" rail on the top of the receiver. My LaRue mounts fit fine fore/aft but wouldn't latch completely because the rail isn't high enough above the receiver---the locking cams dug into the side of the receiver instead of the bottom of the rails.

The parkerization on my rifle is generally pretty good but there are a couple of iffy areas on the front sight ears. There are some plastic-mold dingleberries here and there on the stock, including a little divot on the bottom of the trigger guard, but overall the fit & finish is good.

There's a meaningless but hilarious video of a couple of rednecks shooting an SU16 and immediately throwing it in a pool of ice water on Youtube. In itself, it doesn't really tell you anything but the fact that the rifle holds up to owners that idiotic probably does.

I'd be careful about mistaking the rifle's light weight for "cheapness." It seems to be a fairly well engineered gun and I can't find any obvious cost cutting measures in the manufacturing or design. People say the balance is dramatically improved if you store a loaded 20rd magazine (or the two factory 10rd mags) in the stock, but I haven't found the rifle to be particularly nose heavy. My 32" octagon barreled Sharps rifle? That's nose heavy.