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Thank you very much to Rburro2 who kindly lent me a replacement trigger and encouraged me to have a go myself. I was anxious I might break something but I can report the trigger is now installed and working. I cleaned, polished and lubed all surfaces and then fitted the new trigger. Only a couple of pins holding it all in there. At worst it was fiddly but 20 mins later... Done. All working well and feels pretty smooth for a factory unit. This has given me the confidence to carry out future work myself when possible. Loving the AR platform for its simplicity and user friendly modular build.

Your welcome Paul and glad your all sorted now

There is nothing complicated about tinkering with an AR. If you have any engineering or mechanical background you should be able to swap out lower and upper parts quite easily; some specialist tools are required but are relatively cheap or can usually be borrowed if you know someone well enough.

The only thing I don’t do myself is chambering and thread cutting, I have had good turn around on machining jobs done by both Bradley Arms and one job on a Bolt carrier by LanTac.

The beauty of 'modern' firearms

Always worth learning to do as much as possible yourself.

For simplicity try an AK!.They don't break, they break you!

AR15's are simple enough.
But for future reference, one good way to learn , is if you've got a camera.
Is to take photos before you start, and at every step you take, and just write down everything you do, with sketches too if you can draw.
For general "gunsmithing", get yourself a decent set of Brass & steel punches, and a good quality set of screwdrivers, not some crap you get from Aldi.

Cheers

Northumbrian bigteeth

What trigger did you install? I've never liked the single pull trigger on the AR/M16 and bought a Rock River two stage trigger for mine. It is a bargain basement 2 stage but so far it is working fine and gives a great crisp 2 stage pull.