In this episode of TFBTV, James takes full advantage of the generous clearance he received from POF to torture test their Puritan gas-piston operated AR15. With all of the hype surrounding the purported reliability of the piston guns over their direct impingement counterparts, does the POF live up to the buzz? James finds out in this clip.

Transcript …

– Hey gang, James again for TFB TV.

Some of you may remember a few months back I reviewed the POF Puritan in 7.62×39.

Now, the Puritan, as with most of POF’s AR line, is a piston operated gun.

In other words, it doesn’t use the direct impingement operating system that the conventional DI AR will use.

Now, many people are of the belief that piston operated rifles and carbines like, for example, the AK-47, are inherently more reliable than the direct impingement counteparts such as the standard AR-15 or M-16.

The perception that piston operated guns are more reliable typically originates with the fact that the operating rod system and the gas tube, that takes most of the gas, the heat, the debris associated with a firing sequence and it relegates it to the gas tube area and the gas piston instead of, with a DI gun, propelling it directly back and into the breach.

For lack of a better term, a lot of people say that the AR shits where it eats, in other words it redirects all that gas, all that debris directly back into the chamber.

That said, I’m not doin’ a DI vs. piston video today, you guys can have that pecker pulling match in the comments, which I’m sure you will, and that’s fine.

Today I got the greenlight from POF to basically torture test this thing, they said, “Do whatever you want to it,” so a few weeks back, about a month ago in fact, you’re looking at this POF as it is here filthier than your mom’s basement where you’re watching this video from right now.

This gun, we threw it, we literally dragged it through the mud, behind an ATV, we threw it into a creek bed, doused it in water repeatedly, and this is what it looks like a month later.

Looks pretty cool, actually, but it’s definitely filthy.

But POF gave us the greenlight to gunk this thing up and to see what happened, so we got this thing dirty, we ran it.

First, we kinda dunked it in water, then fired a few mags through it, and it barely skipped a beat, I mean, there were no issues whatsoever after that.

There we go, perfect.

(gun firing) Of course, if you’re gonna do this at home, don’t do this at home.

Don’t do this at home, but if you are, of course, make sure that there’s no obstructions in the bore.

Submersion, it ran just fine, and I think that surprises no one.

So, that’s when we dragged this thing through the mud, and what I mean by dragged it through the mud is we literally dragged it on an ATV through the mud.

All right.

After we scraped off some of the vegetation from the gun, we picked it up, fired another mag or two through it.

Go for it. (gun firing) Is it empty? Keep goin’.

(gun firing) Now it’s empty.

And again, it did just fine.

We actually didn’t start running into problems until we threw it into the creek bed.

As long as you don’t lose it, I don’t (bleep) care.

Best catch of the day! The creek bed here, it’s all silt, I mean, it is the finest sand and if you can even call it sand, I mean, it’s silt, it’s the stuff when you step in this creek, it feels like you’re steppin’ on jelly.

Suprisingly, the POF still functioned, but it did take some manual racking to get it back into battery, but the issue was the silt accumulating in the bolt carrier area, there was a lot of silt accumulation in the chamber and the bolt carrier, and that was severely slowing down the travel and the return cycle of the bolt carrier group, which lead to a few malfunctions.

But, after manually racking and firing, the gun actually started to shoot itself clean, and what I mean by that is it seems like it was getting some of the silt out of the action the more we fired it.

And it started to function more reliably, and even at one point, the gun returned to regular function, but we had silt accumulation in the trigger group.

– It’s the trigger! It’s the trigger.

The trigger was not resetting properly in it, and I was, just kept pullin’ the trigger, and whenever it reset itself, pop.

It was the trigger.

– And so the trigger was slow to reset.

So the gun would cycle as normal, however, the trigger was slow to reset, and that, again, only lasted for about half a mag or magazine and then it started returning to normal function again, and once we sprayed out the guts with WD-40, we just got a little WD-40 and sprayed it in there, this gun was back in the fight and it was working almost perfectly.

– [Jacques] Good? – [James] It’s good to go now.

– All right, let’s see.

Still needs some lovin’, there.

(gun firing) So I play with the trigger, all right? There it goes, watch, watch it.

There it is.

– So, all in all, I think Jacques and I were really impressed with how well the POF handled all the debris and the hazardous conditions it was subjected to.

What’s the overall verdict on the POF torture test? – I’ll tell you what, I’m impressed.

We kinda beat the shit out of it, had a good time for the most part, wanna see what it could do.

Trying to get it to a point where it wouldn’t run, and overall, besides a few things here and there, things that, you know, typically, I don’t think other guns can withlast, this sucker, I mean, it’s pulled through, I dunno.

We’ve had a good time runnin’ it, but it’s showin’ us up, bottom line.

It keeps showin’ us up.

– [James] Would you say you’re impressed? – Yeah, yeah I’m impressed with it.

It’s almost to the point I find it humorous.

(laughs) I mean, you know, that it keeps on runnin’, shit man, it’s fun, havin’ a good time with it, but it’s proven its worth.

– I haven’t done anything to it in the past month, it’s just sat in the box.

As you can see, it’s still filthy, and I’m gonna shoot it again today and see what happens.

So, this poor rifle has been sitting in its box, in its own filth for the past month.

Just put about 10 rounds in here.

Let’s see if it runs.

(rifle firing) Perfectly.

No problems whatsoever.

That’s amazing, I mean, no lubrication, no cleaning, no nothing.

This was, we just ran it through all that junk that you guys just saw.

Let it sit for a month, and let’s go and let’s do that again.

(rifle firing) Yep, I mean, runs like a top.

All in all, I’ve been pretty impressed, I’m not, like I said, prepared to make any kind of sweeping conclusion that piston operated guns are better than DI guns or anything like that, but what I will say is that I have been impressed with the way that this POF, which happens to be a piston operating gun, has performed in the face of some pretty nasty and adverse conditions, so anyways, good job POF, sorry that you’re gonna get the rifle back like this, but hey, it did fine, so anyways, thanks for watching guys, I appreciate it, see you next week.

(upbeat marching band music)