[fortti51]

I bought an SU 16A last August from my FFL guy. It was new but was the older model with the funky plastic sight. Today was my second visit to the range with it. I had put thru 120 rounds of Federal .223 55 gr. FMJ on my first visit in November. Worked great out of the box. I recently came upon this forum and have read almost all the posts going back to 2011. Noticed numerous incidents of failed receivers, so today I checked the rifle every so often while shooting. After about 100 rounds I saw that there was an indent at the rear of the charging handle slot indicating the handle was hitting it with force. Packed up, went home, took out the rifle and saw that the back of the receiver where the take down pin is located was cracked clean thru. I called Kel Tec and they said send the rifle back for replacement.
I have 3 observations. The first is the casualness with which the KT rep handled my call. By that I mean he seemed like he gets calls about this receiver problem all the time and to him it's routine. My second observation is that it seems that the percentage of receiver failures is high compared to other manufacturers. I don't know how many SU's have been made but I think it doesn't equal Rugers output of mini 14's or 30's for the same time frame and those rifles don't have this problem. Third observation is that maybe it's possible that this gun was a very early manufactured one and thus it was more likely to have this problem, I want to like this gun because it has so many good things going for it but I just feel that broken receivers disqualify it even as a range toy.
Thanks for reading this post. Any constructive comments will be appreciated.

 

[Percevel]

I think it was cool that you checked and noticed a problem early.

Kel Tec will make it right.

Maybe you could ask them to replace it with a SU16-ca. I like it better then the "A"

 

[fortti51]

I live in New York State (have mercy on me). A semi automatic rifle that has a removable magazine cannot have a threaded barrel according to the NYS SAFE ACT. This law (unconstitutional as far as I am concerned) was passed in the dead of night after the Sandy Hook massacre in Ct. The Act prohibits most features of an AR platform. However the SU 16A is good to go as it is being sold by local gun shops all over NY. I really like this rifle as it is a lightweight semi automatic rifle that shoots .223 or 5.56 ammo. This ammo is cheap as opposed to 30 06 or 30 cal. carbine ammo which I shoot out of my Garand and M1 carbine.
So no SU 16 CA for me sayeth Gov. Cuomo, the rifle monkey.

 

[Percevel]

I am surprised that the CA is not legal in NY. The CA was designed to be legal in California. I thought they had the worst set of laws. Hard to believe NY is worse.

I am not doubting what you are saying just expressing surprise and disappointment for you.

 

[fortti51]

Yup. If you have a moment google NY SAFE ACT and see the restrictions placed upon the citizens of NY 2nd Amendments rights. The SU 16A is compliant with this law. That is why I want it to be a reliable rifle.

 

[850sub]

1) Calm and cool customer service is their job.
I wouldn't put too much into it.

2) only the manufacturer can tell you an accurate percentage of failures. My guess is .03 percent..

3) I'm not for sure when they discontinued the plastic sights, so not sure when it was manufactured. Keltec can tell you when they made it based on serial #.

 

[Steve912]

Misread post, disregard.

 

[fortti51]

Here are some photos of the damage, You can see that the rear of the charging handle slot is dented indicating it was hit. The inside of the piece of the receiver that is broken off shows no dimpling whatsoever which suggests that there was not a lot of hits by the receiver prior to its failure. Am I wrong in this conclusion?