Element M16/M4 outer barrel fitment issues

[Jackarutu]

If this has been covered before please forgive I did search the threads for two hours of reading with no results.

No matter how much experience one gathers in working with Airsoft weapons there is always something new outside of their experience. For me this came in the form of a fitment issue for the Element M16/M4 steel outer barrels not aligning properly with the upper receiver. I’ve tried several of these Element outer barrels in a variety of metal upper receivers, including the inexpensive ones like the Echo1 and the more pricey G&P and VFC brands with varying results. The basic problem is the barrel base has only one alignment pin and it fits very lose into the upper receiver grove and allows the barrel to turn off center when the barrel nut is tightened and this causes the hopup to set at an angle and not align with the magazine well enough to let the BBs feed and also this causes the front sight to be out of alignment. One other problem I noticed was on the VFC upper receive the top slot in the VFC upper was cut short to allow the barrel base to set flush thus causing it to be at an angle to the upper receiver when the barrel nut it tightened.

One could take them to a machine shop and have a pin hole drilled on each side of the barrel base and install two more pins so that the barrel would set straight in the upper receiver but that seems a bit too much.

Is there something I’m overlooking here? Is there some receiver set out there these Element outer barrels meant to match up with that doesn’t have these problems? Or is there some other parts that are supposed to be used with them to help align the barrel to the upper receiver?

At this point the OEM TM multi-piece outer barrels seem much more fitted to the upper receivers despite all their short comings for overall strength.

Never had a problem with a VFC one piece metal outer barrel or a Mad Bull either.