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The Sig 516 A Modern Classic
Updated
2 months ago
Good morning, everyone, this is John with gun.deals, today we have another interesting part of firearms lore, this is the Sig 516.
Full disclosure on this rifle is that I did not pay for it whatsoever, I had this sent in by a viewer of the channel who knew that I was taking a look at the BRN4 and the Caracal 816, I have no relationship with Sig whatsoever. This is just another one of those interesting piston upper receivers that is cool to take a look at and compare and contrast with some of the others that I've had recently.
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Getting into basics on exactly what this is, I believe this is the Gen 2 version ‘cuz there is a couple different versions of the Sig 516, and for those of you who are much more familiar with the platform feel free to correct me as this is certainly not my forte. Starting off with the basics, this is a 16-inch 1:7 twist 5.56 NATO barrel, this is a cold hammer-forge barrel, extremely high quality. One thing about this barrel that I'm not that big of a fan of is the fact that it is kind of a Government profile, so we have this lighter section here in the middle, and then it's a little heavier out towards the end, so it's not necessarily the most weight balance profile on the market, on top of the fact that this is going to be a little bit heavier of a system in general. The barrel did perform very well. When we talk about accuracy a little bit later, it did very well in that category as well, it's just not necessarily my favorite profile.
Moving back from there to the gas block, very similar to the Caracal 816, this is a 3-position adjustable short-stroke piston operating system. The gas block itself is pinned to the barrel and it is a very big chunk of steel, you do actually have 3 Picatinny slots up front for mounting your iron sights or whatever else you want. Just keep in mind that the gas block is going to get extremely hot, which is why when I was shooting this I was using gloves the entire time because I didn't want to burn myself by putting my hand in the wrong position. On the actual regulator itself you have three different sizes of dots that denote what gas setting are on, so a bigger dot means more flow, smaller dot less flow. These are all locked whereas on the Caracal the middle two or the top two settings were unlocked, and then to get to the third most restrictive setting that one there was locked. The adjustments themselves are pretty stiff, though I have been shooting this quite a bit, so cleaning or lubrication might make them a little bit easier to do, but as it is with an Allen key or something like that, they're still easy enough to adjust.
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CARACAL CAR816 A2 16" RIFLE
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CARCAL CAR816 A2 5.56 NATO / 223 Rem 16" 30rd Semi-Auto AR15 Rifle | Black M-LOK + Magpul STR Stock
$1,755.00
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U80021041
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Caracal CAR816 A2 223 Rem/ 5.56 NATO U80021041 819558020176
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I am going to compare and contrast between the 516 and the Caracal 816 a little bit, even though I reviewed them out of orders, which is going to be a little bit confusing for me and probably for some of you as well. Like the Caracal 816, even though this one here came first, the entire piston assembly comes out the front end, so maintenance cleaning is very easy, you can see that you have your three different sizes of gas ports on the actual piston itself or on the piston sleeve I should say, and they do come apart, you have your gas rings on the inside. Basically identical, not actually identical, but very, very similar in terms of how they work, how they fit together, and reinstallation is very easy and a true tooless design.
Moving on to the handguard itself, this is a very interesting item and I don't want to call it outdated, but it's certainly a product of its time, it is a Quad rail design, very thick, very heavy and rigid, you have two QDs up front, two in the back for putting your sling, wherever you happen to want it. You do have heat shields on the bottom on the inside of the handguard, but up top you do not, so probably for better ventilation would be my guess, but you do have heat shields on the bottom to keep some of that heat away from your hand. The way that the handguard locks up to the barrel nut is you have two bolts going into the bottom here, and then four along each of the corners that kind of clamp the handguard together because it is I believe a two-piece design hence all the bolts holding it together, but, once it's all bolted together and mounted up you do have a very, very solid design. For counting ounces here we have a short-stroke piston operating system, so a steel rod moving back and forth, we have a chunky steel gas block, a thick Quad rail, so the weight is starting to add up.
Another thing that Caracal basically copy and pasted, ‘cuz they did have some of the same designers working on the project, is going to be this BCG. I should mention that this BCG is slightly different or one part different than a stock 516 BCG would be. As you can probably tell there are lightning cuts all over the BCG to reduce the reciprocating mass of the system, which is in my opinion a good thing that will help to reduce felt recoil, keep the gun a little bit flatter, and in this case also make it to where you do not need as much gas to fuel the system because you have less mass to move.
In the back you also have a flare, so it is actually a little bit thicker in the back here to reduce carrier tilt and to make sure you're not beating up your buffer to tube. I should mention that this is on one of my lowers, this is a Next Level Armory ambidextrous low receiver, which so far has been really good so it's not quite the same one that's going to come if you buy a complete 516 rifle. Very importantly, on all short-stroke piston systems is that your carrier key, or your strike face in this case, is one piece with the actual carrier itself because you have a piece of steel smacking the BCG to get the system to operate, that's basically how it works, so you want to make sure that that strike face is actually machined into the carrier itself, not a separate piece held in by two screws because that's just not quite as secure. In a DI system not a big deal, you just have hot gases flowing through it, but with short-stroke piston you have a steel rod smacking that every time you pull the trigger.
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Talking about the upper receiver briefly, this is one of the most basic components on the build barring a couple slight changes, it is for all intents and purposes a mil-spec 7075 forged aluminum upper receiver, which I have absolutely no complaint with, and it does have the Sig 516 engraving on the side. The charging handle on this build, I don't think they came with this, but this is a Geissele Airborne charging handle, great charging handle, no issues with that whatsoever. What I'm running on here, when we get talk about how it's shot suppressed, this is a Rearden just really short three-prong flash hider which fits all my Plan B suppressor adapters, and usually I was using it with a Resonator K from YHM.
Getting into shootability on the Sig 516, much like the Caracal 816 you have a little bit heavier of a system combined with a little bit less reciprocating mass, combined with gas adjustment up front, means that for a piston system these run very, very smoothly, not quite as nice as a DI gun, but very, very nice. These are incredibly easy to keep on target, soft shooting guns, the only real difference is just the fact that they are short-stroke piston guns, they tend to be a little bit snappier, a little bit punchier than their DI counterparts, but a system like this, eliminates as many of those issues or at least makes it as similar to a DI gun as possible.
The trade-off there is that instead of having hot gases flowing through your BCG and out the side, especially when suppressed, you keep most of those up front in the piston. You are always going to be getting gas back down through the bore, especially a non-flow through suppressors, but the advantage is you don't have a gas tube pointed directly at your face with all those gases coming back at you. In this configuration currently in the back all we have is a 3-ounce buffer and a regular carbine spring. However, I believe the 516 comes with a heavier buffer and a standard spring, so that is probably the ideal overall solution. However, even in this configuration it did work quite well.
Talking about our gas adjustment settings, when I was unsuppressed using remanufactured 55 grain M and M193, which is a full power military load, using the middle setting, it would eject anywhere from about 3 o’clock to about 3:30, that's utilizing just a standard carbine buffer and spring. When I was suppressed with my Resonator K, moving it on to the suppressed setting, the most restrictive setting, it worked really well with the PMC XTAC M193, ‘cuz that is a little bit of a hotter round, or at least a full power round as it should be, however, with the remanufactured ammo it was barely cycling, it was at the edge of reliability every single time I was pulling the trigger, and I believe it did fail to lock back at one point on the most restrictive setting with the weakest munition on the market basically.
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If I did end up running this with a little bit heavier of a buffer I might just leave it on the middle setting for suppressed and unsuppressed shooting as it would probably work just fine, and piston guns do tend to be a little bit more forgiving when it comes to suppressed versus unsuppressed shooting, whereas as a DI gun it's very easy to get very overdriven and over gassed, and be gassed out a little bit as the shooter with this in either the middle setting or the most restrictive setting I did not notice any gas back to the face as a shooter, which makes it very pleasant to shoot.
Getting into accuracy, I did have four different loads to test on hand, the first being 55 grain PMC XTAC, which is hotter ammunition, but it's not necessarily the most accurate. We got four-round basically touching then one about an inch apart giving us about a 2 to 3 MOA group, perfectly fine for Ball ammunition. Next up was some 69 grain Norma Golden Target that did four rounds very close and then one little flyer in there, which is a little bit annoying. Next up we had some 69 grain ADI Match, which is one of the more consistent 69 grain loads that I've had the pleasure of using, that came in right at 1 MOA, fantastic, exactly what I like to see, and then we had some 75 grain Hornady Black, and that put up a pretty mediocre group, not horrible by any means, but pretty mediocre. What that means to me is that the barrel is as accurate as it needs to be, it'll do 2 to 3 MOA with Ball, which will get you out to 4 to 500 yards, and if you're using heavier Match loads that it likes you'll be getting somewhere around 1 MOA with a good shooter, good ammunition that this specific barrel really likes.
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Talking about distance shooting, I did take this out to about 400 yards just using 55 grain PMC XTAC, and it was perfectly fine to hit a reduced size target at about 400 yards, I had no issues with it whatsoever. When it comes to reliability the only time I had any issue whatsoever was when I tuned the gas down too far with remanufactured ammo, which is on the weaker side so I don't blame that on the gun whatsoever. At this point it has been 100% reliable, and having those gas adjustments is quite nice.
When it comes to downsides there's really two downsides, it's a piston gun, so if you hate piston guns this isn't going to do it for you, and the second downside is that it's heavier, it just is, it's a big heavy Quad rail, big steel gas block on there, short-stroke piston system, so you do have a lot of mass in between the gas block and the carrier, even though there is some material removed from the carrier it's still not going to quite offset all the extra weight up front. I believe the complete rifle from Sig weighs 7.3 pounds whereas a standard-ish AR-15 is going to weigh like 6 1/2 pound, so you're sacrificing 8 to 12 ounces extra to get this piston system, especially with the chunky Quad rail up front, which is one area where the Caracal does better with the more modern slimmer M-LOK rail.
When it comes to value the complete rifle from Sig, or wherever you can find them, currently they're going for about 1,600 bucks, and there are a few different models, not a terrible price for a complete piston system. The one thing that I do want to say is the design is not quite modern let's say, it's not terrible by any means, and there are a lot of great features on it, but your handguard selection is a little lacking, I'm a huge fan of having the gas block as integrated with the rail as, again if I have my hand far forward like I like to without gloves or even with gloves, if I get this thing hot it is very uncomfortable, so I was having a vertical forgrip and kind of tucking my thumb off to the side so I'm not accidentally touching that gas block, even though I did a couple times.
I wouldn't recommend somebody rush to get this as like their main duty gun, it is a very fun gun, it's a very well performing piston system for sure, I don't have any functional issues with it other than just the minor quirks of being a little bit of an older system, certainly not the most size and weight efficient, and when we compare it to DI guns, like would I rather shoot and use this or a 16-inch Geissele Superduty, well, I would take the Superduty, especially for all the features you get with that rifle, it's going to be more accurate, lighter, just basically better all around, but if you're just a collector and you're looking for something that is legitimately cool and a little different, well, this is cool and a little different. I have very few complaints with the system, this is going to be going back to the original owner eventually when he bugs me about it, because I do want to keep it for a little bit longer and do a full evaluation between this and the Caracal 816 that I have on hand. Both very fun systems, and I'll be very sad when I have to send them back eventually.
