You must have the early model.I also own the M4 version and have ran 2000 rounds thru it without a single FTF or FTE. I even cleaned out the old junk drawer with about 100 rounds of 25 year old remington .22lr's and no malfuntions at all. I like the weight and feel of the rifle, very close to the AR-15 of the same style.
The only thing I don't like is the 180 deg. safety. I wish it was like a traditional AR with a 90 deg. My only other gripe is the un-funtioning bolt catch/release alng with the dust cover that will not stay closed.
It is a chore to completely disassemble and clean, but it's not as bad as I first thought it would be.
All in all, a very good .22 for plinking and fun. All the fun of the AR-15 without the cost of ammo!
You must have the early model.
I've had my M-4 for a couple of months.
Mine has a 90 degree safety and the dust cover stays closed until the bolt is cycled.
The bolt release is non functional though.
Yes, the safety was changed to 90 degrees and the dust cover issue was also resolved at the 50,000 serial mark according to Colt / Umarex.
Mine has S/N 61,XXX. I may need to look into this further
JB, I picked one up in November and it works great. No problems. The only issue I had was on mine was that you don't have to loosen the barrel compensator like it says in the manual to take off tension on the take down pin. My pin comes out easily, but nothing is loose on the rifle. A Colt / Umarex tech rep told me that they made some design changes around the 50,000 serial number range to take care of that.
I'm curious--can you remove your rear takedown pin without loosening the barrel compensator on yours?
Also, if I were you I'd try to find some extra magazines. I picked up two 20-rounders two weeks before the shooting from Personal Choice Outfitters, and now they are sold out EVERYWHERE. Even the 10-rounders are sold out. You'll probably wind up having to get on a waiting list for them.
Here's a video link for complete disassembly, part 1; there's about 4 parts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8NRHODNqLw&list=PLVYjHoJwBcjOGt862bTD8UkiZ41GhIJvA&index=1
That's odd--when I emailed tech support I asked specifically about the rear takedown pin, and when the safety was changed; that's what the guy replied back with--somewhere in the 50,000 range. Mine is 77,XXX.
The guy must have been mistaken. If you find anything out, let us know!