Good morning, everyone, this is John with gun.deals, and today we're going to be taking a look at the Caracal 816.
Full disclosure on the Caracal 816, this was sent in by a viewer of the channel and we have absolutely no relationship with Caracal USA.
If you're not familiar with the Caracal 816, or Caracal in general, I believe they are a UAE company that also has Caracal USA, which is just the USA based version of it where they make this 816 upper receiver. This is kind of the Gen 3 HK416, I believe they got a lot of the engineers and designers, and people who worked on the original HK416, and then a lot of those got translated into the Sig 516, and then Caracal has come out with their essentially Gen 3 upgraded version with some of the same bones of the HK416 with the Caracal 816.
Wikiarms.com Search Engine Results
Want to see your products here? Click this
link.
Product
Price
Store
MPN
UPC
CARACAL CAR816 A2 16" RIFLE
$1,499.99
Guns.com
-
819558020176
CARCAL CAR816 A2 5.56 NATO / 223 Rem 16" 30rd Semi-Auto AR15 Rifle | Black M-LOK + Magpul STR Stock
$1,755.00
KyGunCo
U80021041
819558020176
Caracal CAR816 A2 223 Rem/ 5.56 NATO U80021041 819558020176
$1,755.00
Gunprime
U80021041
819558020176
See more results
for Caracal 816 on Wikiarms.com
Powered by Wikiarms.com
Getting into basics of what this 816 model is, this is the 11-inch 5.56 version, so we have a fairly heavy 11-inch 5.56 chambering 1:7 twist, this is a 4150 Chrome Moly Vanadium steel and is a black nitride finish, all of that is perfectly fine, some people are going to prefer like Chrome line, cold Hammer-Forge, but as long as everything is coated and machined properly and the base steel is high quality you're going to get a very long lasting, very durable barrel out of it.
Moving on to the gas system, this is a very interesting component of the rifle, you have a 3-position adjustable gas block, so essentially you have your most adverse, and then it goes down from there. The third position is locked behind a little tab, and that is going to be your most restrictive so for say suppressor’s really hot ammo, something like that, you might want to use that setting. If you ever need to clean or maintain your piston operating system, because this does have a short-stroke piston operating system underneath the handguard, you can simply continue to rotate it and the entire piston assembly will come out the front, and on the bottom of it you have three differ sized gas ports on the piston itself, and that is what limits or extends your flow. It is a completely contained system that you can operate on without taking your handguard off, which is an improvement.
On the actual piston itself you have these three little gas rings that help to seal up your piston to your piston housing to make sure that that gas flow is as efficient as possible, and they've done a lot to make sure that the seal between the gas block and the barrel, and then your piston to your piston housing is very, very tight so that you can run the system with as little gas as possible, and you don't need any tools or to take anything apart to access that piston system if you ever needed to work on it.
Talking about the handguard for just a minute, this is a 9-inch M-LOK handguard with M-LOK at 3, 6, and 9, and then you have full Picatinny on top. It is a fairly tall handguard so it's not going to be the slimmest on the market. I don't mind it personally, even with my smaller hands, and using an iron sight up front, I believe these are Troy micro iron sights, and I can still get a full seat clamp grip. They are not the thinnest handguards on the market, but the handguards need to be big enough to work around that very large adjustable gas block and the short-stroke piston operating system. On top of that, the actual material thickness of the handguard itself is very thick so it is a very rigid handguard.
Moving back to the lockup, you have an extension on the handguard that fits into a notch on the upper receiver. On top of that you then have the handguard directly bolted into the top of the barrel that there's a little extension that goes over your short-stroke gas piston system. So, as far as that goes the handguard should never shift on you, I mean it's bolted into place, it's incredibly thick it's a very, very robust system, just keep in mind that the trade-off there is going to be weight. You also have QDs on the top left and right, I think that is a great position for QDs that's where I personally like to run mine most of the time. The only downside of these QD positions is that they do not appear to be anti-rotation.
Talking about the upper receiver briefly, this is a mil-spec-ish 7075 T6 aluminum forged upper receiver, so all good there. There are a few differences between it and an actual mil-spec upper receiver, but for all intents and purposes it's designed essentially the same way.
Moving on to the bolt carrier group, this is a very interesting component on the rifle. It is a short-stroke piston so you do have your strike face machined into the carrier itself. The carrier is 8620 and has all of these very aesthetic and functional lightweight cuts as well, but it still has your sear trip for a full auto device, if you were lucky enough to own one of those, and it also has a flare in the back, so even though there is a lot of material cut out of the BCG it is an anti-tilt carrier as well. The bolt is true Carpenter 158 so that is the mil-spec material for a bolt, which is all good as far as I'm concerned, and everything is coated in this black nitride.
Another interesting facet of this upper receiver is that when you combine a lightweight anti-tilt BCG with a short-stroke piston operating system you get a very unique recoil impulse. One thing that we do need to talk about is going to be shootability, and that is going to greatly depend on your ammo, your suppressor, your gas setting, and the lightweight BCG kind of helps with all of that.
You have three settings, the far left setting is going to be your most open and on the gas block you actually have the actual dots themselves get slightly bigger and slightly smaller to denote which setting you're on, so you can visually see if you're on the most open setting or the most restrictive setting. One thing that I do need to note before we move on, the full 816 rifles come with a Tungsten filled buffer, so not solid Tungsten weights, but like a Tungsten sand in their buffer, so it is a heavy buffer with a carbine spring to give it a really soft recoil impulse and to slow down the bolt carrier group.
What I am using here this is a KAK K-Spec buffer, so it is a longed buffer in a longer tube, it is very heavy, it's an H4 weight so it is very heavy, but I'm also just using a standard carbine spring not the longer heavier spring that would come with this system. This is an extended buffer, extended tube as well with that dual stage on the KAK buffer, it's also very, very heavy as well. This is not apples to apples what you would get on a Caracal 816, but it is at least kind of in the same vein or at least in the same idea it.
Wikiarms.com Search Engine Results
Want to see your products here? Click this
link.
See more results
for KAK on Wikiarms.com
Powered by Wikiarms.com
Talking about how it was to shoot unsuppressed on the most open setting with the heavy buffer standard carbine spring, it was very, very smooth, ejecting at about 3:30 to 4:00 o’clock, which is kind of on the bleeding edge of reliability. You can definitely shoot it unsuppressed just fine, keep in mind that I'm using mostly Callaway 55 grain Reman, which is not the hottest ammo on the market.
When using a suppressor that is where a lot of the times I would move it onto either the middle flow setting, which I think is the suppressed setting, if you're using super hot ammo or some sort of really high back pressure can or some other situation, you're using a lightweight buffer, lightweight spring or whatever lower you happen to put this on, and you need that extra restriction, there is a third lower setting. The gas system settings are not what I would consider to be perfectly spaced, my favorite spaced settings are on the PWS series whether that's the Mark 111, Mark 116, those three position gas blocks I think are spaced perfectly. Basically it get a medium setting, a medium low, and then a low setting whereas this is kind of like your medium setting, your low setting, and then your ultra restrictive setting, so most of the time you're only going to be using two of those. You do have three settings, most of the time you're probably going to be on either setting two or three, but it's going to depend on how you're running it.
With all that out of the way, when you're shooting it on the correct setting for your setup, it is a very soft shooting upper receiver. It's not going to be quite as soft as the best DI guns on the market, but it is going to be better than most piston systems on the market, whether they're short-stroke or long stroke, and it is a very pleasant gun to shoot. On top of that, I did shoot it mostly suppressed, this is a Griffin Armament Dual-LOK system, so I have a Dual-LOK adapter on my Turbo K from YHM, that is a heavy back pressure can so it does accelerate the system quite a bit, and even when shooting suppressed you get very little gas back in the face due to that short-stroke piston operating system, the adjustable gas block, the very efficient seal on everything in there. You are going to notice a little bit of gas blowback if you're using it on a higher setting, for instance on the highest flow setting I would get gas back in my face, tune it down a little bit and it felt very, very nice.
Wikiarms.com Search Engine Results
Want to see your products here? Click this
link.
See more results
for Griffin Armament on Wikiarms.com
Powered by Wikiarms.com
When it comes to accuracy I haven't done dedicated accuracy testing on it yet just because I actually didn't bring any match ammo out with me on the range trip with this upper receiver, so this is definitely more of a first impressions, and we will continue to do testing on this upper receiver.
Getting into price, you might think that with a lot of these features it's going to be incredibly expensive, but this is actually one of the cheaper short-stroke piston operating system uppers on the market. I believe the MSRP is 1250, and you can often find them for under that, depending on where you're looking. So, for a piston operating system I think PWS starts at 1100, and then moves up to 1450 for some of their upper receivers. This is going to be a little bit cheaper than a lot of the other piston operating systems on the market, not necessarily the cheapest, certainly not the cheapest out there. For that money you're getting a system that runs very well that's put together very well and that's going to be one of the most important things when you're buying a system this expensive as that everything needs to be put together well.
The part selection is very nice, the way everything comes together, I don't really have any complaints about that, and really the main downside from a user perspective, other than the proprietary parts and the cost, is going to be that the system is just quite a bit heavier than your standard DI system, so a comparable 11.5 might be a half pound lighter than this, your handguard is heavier, your gas block, your operating system is much heavier. The only area where they shaved a little bit of weight is going to be from the BCG, which does give it its unique operating system, but they're going to combo that lightweight BCG with a heavier buffer in the back, so while you might be cutting some weight from the BCG you're adding it behind, which does give you a softer recoil impulse, but it is just a very interesting very unique system that works well ,and for a short-stroke piston operating system I like it quite a bit.
While value is certainly a little subjective, I am excited to keep using and abusing this and see how it holds up over time.
