Originally Posted By freerider04:

Originally Posted By 82nd_Sapper:

Originally Posted By shocktrp:

Originally Posted By freerider04:

240 smokes the 60 any day of the week in my opinion.



240 is much more reliable.

240 is far easier to make repairs and do maintenance on. It only goes together one way.

You can have rounds on the feed tray with the bolt forward (make sure the bolt is forward before you put the rounds on the tray )

240 has a much lower risk of a runaway

I find the 240 to be much more accurate and controllable





The 60 is much easier to fire from a standing offhand, and is lighter. thats about all I will give it. 240 smokes the 60 any day of the week in my opinion.240 is much more reliable.240 is far easier to make repairs and do maintenance on.You can have rounds on the feed tray with the bolt forward (make sure the bolt is forward before you put the rounds on the tray240 has a much lower risk of a runawayI find the 240 to be much more accurate and controllableThe 60 is much easier to fire from a standing offhand, and is lighter. thats about all I will give it.



Put the firing pin in the 60 backwards and then couldn't figure out why it wouldn't fire? Put the firing pin in the 60 backwards and then couldn't figure out why it wouldn't fire?



Gas piston in backwards = now bolt-action machine gun?



We had that happen once. Our platoon was ordered to lend an M60 to the maintenance platoon so they could send a truck out on a recovery mission the next day. Apparently they took it apart to clean it that night and put everything in backwards. When we got it back it was a sniper machine gun. No spare parts available, so that gun was stripped to keep our other two running. Gas piston in backwards = now bolt-action machine gun?We had that happen once. Our platoon was ordered to lend an M60 to the maintenance platoon so they could send a truck out on a recovery mission the next day. Apparently they took it apart to clean it that night and put everything in backwards. When we got it back it was a sniper machine gun.No spare parts available, so that gun was stripped to keep our other two running.



Yup, gas piston was the most popular.



I feel like there was another part that was occasionally put in backwards, but I cant remember what it was for the life of me



Yup, gas piston was the most popular.I feel like there was another part that was occasionally put in backwards, but I cant remember what it was for the life of me



After two years as an armorer, and a total of 25 years being the small arms go-to guy in most of the units I was in, mere words cannot describe the level of hatred I feel for the M60, and the people who foisted that abortion on us. The only thing saving the M60 from going down in history as the Worst Machine Gun, Ever(tm) would be the brief period of time we inflicted the Chauchat on ourselves.



Here's what you can install backwards, and still manage to assemble the weapon:



*Firing pin

*Gas piston

*Sear

*Bolt

*Firing pin sleeve and firing pin spring

*Bolt cam sleeve and firing pin retention plug (which leaves that little pin as an extra part, to get lost...)

*Pistol grip retention pins

*Spring plate that retains the retention pins



Of these parts, the worst choice of things to fuck up on is probably the firing pin. That leaves you with a non-firing weapon. The gas piston, you get a straight-pull, bolt-action belt-fed rifle. The sear gets you a runaway gun, assuming you're stupid enough to load a belt into a weapon the bolt won't stay back on. All the rest, well... You just have varying degrees of non-functionality and potential for parts to fall off while in the field. I once had a weapon returned to my arms room that had everything possible put back together wrong, and on top of that, the idiots had taken the safety wire off of the gas system. I still don't understand how they got the bolt onto the operating rod backwards, and then into the receiver. Took a mallet and brass drift to get that damn thing apart, afterwards...



A well-designed weapon will not allow itself to be reassembled in any other way than the one that it's meant to be. The M60 fails that test, miserably. On that factor alone, they should have sent the thing back to the designer with a big "Let's try this, again, shall we?" note applied to it. Instead, they bought tens of thousands of the damn things, and made it an issue item for decades.



Additionally, the damn things gas system required a series of fixes to be applied, because it had the habit of spontaneously self-disassembling itself. Any weapon requiring the armorer to use aircraft safety wire to hold the thing together? Well, let us simply say "Self-evident design failure". That's another point where someone should have said "Hmmm... Bad idea, start over...".



Let's not even get into the way that the bolt, operating rod, and sear had this lovely habit of beating each other to death. A set of stones had to be supplied to the armorer's tool kit, simply to keep the peening to a minimum. This problem was bad enough when they issued LSA as a lubricant, but when they went to BreakFree, the M60s started dying left, right, and center. My speculation is that the much thicker and tenacious LSA served as a cushion between the battering parts, and prevented the weapons from wearing out quickly. After BreakFree came in, the damn things suddenly demonstrated much lower reliability, higher maintenance, and much shorter serviceable lifespans. They should have stuck with LSA for everything besides the M16, in my opinion.



The M60 was an utter piece of shit, and my perennial maintenance and training nightmare for most of my career. I hear the guys who served in Vietnam laud the things to the sky, and all I can do is look at them in utter bewilderment, and wonder if we're talking about the same weapon. The M60 should never have made it out of troop trials in the form that it did, and the fact that it somehow won out over the MAG58 during those trials leads me to wonder what they were thinking. It's ironic that the MAG58 wound up being procured as the M240 for coax use in tanks, and then got back-doored into being our standard MG thirty years later, and without significant trials in that role. The success of the M240B speaks volumes as to the validity of those early trials which resulted in the M60 being fielded.



Both the M16 and M60 are indications that the Army's small arms procurement systems were broken mid-century, and the fact that those weapons were standard issue for as long as they were is something that still amazes me. After the Ichord committee got done, they should have gone through the procurement system with fire and sword, fired everyone involved, and started fresh.



That they didn't? Well, that's why we're still trying to shoehorn the M16 into the 21st century as the M4, and why the Marines and Rangers had to do an end-run around the system to get the M60 replaced with the M240G and B models. Criminal incompetence. After two years as an armorer, and a total of 25 years being the small arms go-to guy in most of the units I was in, mere words cannot describe the level of hatred I feel for the M60, and the people who foisted that abortion on us. The only thing saving the M60 from going down in history as the Worst Machine Gun, Ever(tm) would be the brief period of time we inflicted the Chauchat on ourselves.Here's what you can install backwards, and still manage to assemble the weapon:*Firing pin*Gas piston*Sear*Bolt*Firing pin sleeve and firing pin spring*Bolt cam sleeve and firing pin retention plug (which leaves that little pin as an extra part, to get lost...)*Pistol grip retention pins*Spring plate that retains the retention pinsOf these parts, the worst choice of things to fuck up on is probably the firing pin. That leaves you with a non-firing weapon. The gas piston, you get a straight-pull, bolt-action belt-fed rifle. The sear gets you a runaway gun, assuming you're stupid enough to load a belt into a weapon the bolt won't stay back on. All the rest, well... You just have varying degrees of non-functionality and potential for parts to fall off while in the field. I once had a weapon returned to my arms room that had everything possible put back together wrong, and on top of that, the idiots had taken the safety wire off of the gas system. I still don't understand how they got the bolt onto the operating rod backwards, and then into the receiver. Took a mallet and brass drift to get that damn thing apart, afterwards...A well-designed weapon will not allow itself to be reassembled in any other way than the one that it's meant to be. The M60 fails that test, miserably. On that factor alone, they should have sent the thing back to the designer with a big "Let's try this, again, shall we?" note applied to it. Instead, they bought tens of thousands of the damn things, and made it an issue item for decades.Additionally, the damn things gas system required a series of fixes to be applied, because it had the habit of spontaneously self-disassembling itself. Any weapon requiring the armorer to use aircraft safety wire to hold the thing together? Well, let us simply say "Self-evident design failure". That's another point where someone should have said "Hmmm... Bad idea, start over...".Let's not even get into the way that the bolt, operating rod, and sear had this lovely habit of beating each other to death. A set of stones had to be supplied to the armorer's tool kit, simply to keep the peening to a minimum. This problem was bad enough when they issued LSA as a lubricant, but when they went to BreakFree, the M60s started dying left, right, and center. My speculation is that the much thicker and tenacious LSA served as a cushion between the battering parts, and prevented the weapons from wearing out quickly. After BreakFree came in, the damn things suddenly demonstrated much lower reliability, higher maintenance, and much shorter serviceable lifespans. They should have stuck with LSA for everything besides the M16, in my opinion.The M60 was an utter piece of shit, and my perennial maintenance and training nightmare for most of my career. I hear the guys who served in Vietnam laud the things to the sky, and all I can do is look at them in utter bewilderment, and wonder if we're talking about the same weapon. The M60 should never have made it out of troop trials in the form that it did, and the fact that it somehow won out over the MAG58 during those trials leads me to wonder what they were thinking. It's ironic that the MAG58 wound up being procured as the M240 for coax use in tanks, and then got back-doored into being our standard MG thirty years later, and without significant trials in that role. The success of the M240B speaks volumes as to the validity of those early trials which resulted in the M60 being fielded.Both the M16 and M60 are indications that the Army's small arms procurement systems were broken mid-century, and the fact that those weapons were standard issue for as long as they were is something that still amazes me. After the Ichord committee got done, they should have gone through the procurement system with fire and sword, fired everyone involved, and started fresh.That they didn't? Well, that's why we're still trying to shoehorn the M16 into the 21st century as the M4, and why the Marines and Rangers had to do an end-run around the system to get the M60 replaced with the M240G and B models. Criminal incompetence.