His & Hers Designer Colt AR-15s – Carbon Fiber & Muddy Girl

If you click to make this bigger you will see a fairly accurate color reproduction of two new patterns from Colt on their 6920 rifles. They are called Carbon Fiber, and the pink one is a licensed name, Muddy Girl. The most significant thing about these new Colts is that the patterns seem nearly indestructible. Every other dipped AR we have shot over the years shows immediate wear in these places, and after over 4 mags each neither rifle showed any sign of wear at all. Another important difference is that the stampings on the Colts are clean and crisp, as compared to most dips where the text is almost obliterated. The Muddy Girl isn’t as clean as this, but it isn’t obscured either. Mostly the guns appear the same, but there are subtle differences. Both of this are Mil-Spec designs made for different M4 rifles by Magpul. The Muddy Girl didn’t come with the Magpul foregrip, which lead me to believe that Colt is being fairly eclectic about producing these guns, grabbing runs for whatever fits the production schedule. As you can see, the mags come only partially dipped to maintain reliability, but you only get one dipped mag per gun. The foregrip didn’t come installed on this gun. The dipping process throughout the metal and plastic furniture is as perfect as you could ask. This forward assist button is dipped before it is put on, along with everything else. My only peeve on the guns is that they made them on the 6920 design which has the triangle sight in the front. It limits what you can do to trick the gun out. Colt does a great job producing guns that are above average in standards for accuracy on a Mil-Spec rifle. With open sights our groups average well under 2 MOA with several types of high quality Hornady ammo. Muddy Girl bested Carbon Fiber overall in consistency. It has a different barrel without the grenade launcher cut, for whatever that is worth. The Mil-Spec Colt triggers have been the weak link in all the guns we have tested from them. These game in around 7 lbs., with a little bit of drag before the release. All of our accuracy testing was from a Lead Sled. These are the patterns that were demo’d at SHOT Show this year. Hopefully we’ll see all of them and a few more by year’s end.

Colt’s Manufacturing
https://www.colt.com/

This has been a crazy year for guns. Back in November of 2012, the gun world was riding high on a tide of mainstream popularity, and you could buy just about anything you wanted for a reasonable price. By SHOT Show in January though, everything got flipped on its head as the anti-gunners didn’t let the tragedy of Sandy Hook go to waste, and they blamed it all on the guns. We escaped the legislation, for now, but a bi-product of this craziness is that a lot of guns we should have seen this year never materialized as the demand for any and every gun reached unprecedented levels. One of the tidbits we saw at SHOT Show was that Colt was coming out with a whole new line of “Hydro-dipped” AR-15s, and finally we have some in hand. Supply has finally caught up with demand on most guns at this point, so you should be able to find these nifty new gun toys at your local dealers now, or they could possibly order them for you. We were able to score both the “carbon fiber” and “Muddy Girl” patterns, and not only are they really sweet looking, we found them to be much more durable than other dipped guns we have tested over the years. We didn’t get an MSRP on these new dipped guns, but expect them to be a least a couple hundred dollars over normal Colt pricing. Both of our test guns are model 6920s, and they behaved just has honorably as our first test of these new consumer Colts that we did last year.

Hands up! How many people are tired of black guns? That is the strongest appeal of dipped guns, because black is black is blah after you’ve got a few of them in your safe. At some point most gun nuts would like to depart from what you see every day and get something that makes a gun distinctive. Unfortunately that usually ads up to big bucks, but it doesn’t have to. The Colt 6920 rifles you see here are among the top of the line in out of the box ARs, and because they say Colt on them, they will always retain their value more than other ARs from other manufacturers. But there is also something special about Colt that many people don’t realize. Going back to the very first Colts, in the 1840s, the company has always kept a historical record of every gun that leaves the factory. It’s complete setup is stored in the Colt archives, and you can still contact Colt today and find out in what configuration any of their guns left the factory. These dipped Colts are not guns they are making and then sending out, or so it appears. They are being dipped at Colt, and they will be recorded in the historical files as going out with that pattern. That makes them extremely collectible, and we are hoping that Colt will offer to sell us these two guns we were able to get for testing. A Colt is always a great investment.

All that wouldn’t matter though if the finish wasn’t tough. You have probably seen in our hunting articles that we have used several camo-dipped ARs over the years, and they invariably develop white rubs above the dust cover and on the ejection deflector as soon as you should them. From a collectible perspective, this is bad. It would be like the old Colt revolvers. Either they are “unturned” or they aren’t, and if they aren’t, even the minor drags that you see on the cylinder take away value. The big surprise on these Colts though was that they didn’t wear, after over 4 mags in each rifle. What a shocker that was. Whatever Colt is doing to harden these finishes, it works, and they colors are actually more durable that any standard black anodized coating we have ever seen. You can shoot these guns and keep them in pristine condition for collectible purposes, and that is the best of both worlds with any Colt.

As you can see, we got both the Carbon Fiber pattern and the Muddy Girl pattern. Both came on a 6920 variation, with only small differences between the guns. Both guns came with Magpul furniture, but the Muddy Girl uses the ACS-L model with the storage case for lipstick, and the Carbon Fiber uses the standard Mil-Spec collapsible stock. The Carbon Fiber also came with the MOE foregrip accessory, and both guns came with one magazine dipped to match the rifle. The nice thing about the dip job is that they appear to have dipped all of the parts before assembling them, so the stock doesn’t have black splotches on the inside, and the pushbutton forward assist is coated well down beyond where it sticks out.

The patterns that Colt plans to make available are:

• Muddy Girl® camouflage
• Tiger Stripe Vietnam™ camouflage
• Carbon Fiber pattern
• Silver Flame pattern
• Brushed Stainless Steel pattern
• Wildfire™ camouflage
• A-TACS FG™ (foliage green camouflage)
• Gray finish
• Bounty Hunter camouflage
• A-TACS AU™

We have no word on which patterns are going where yet, so if you want a specific pattern you should have your local dealer try to get on a list with the distributors now, as these will probably only be made in the several thousands for 2013. I would expect some of these guns to be in the big box retailers and Wal-Mart as well. I saw a 6920 with Magpul furniture in Wal-Mart today for $1,169, which is about $150 less than it was in November of 2012 before the artificial boom. We were told at SHOT that Colt had reduced their wholesale prices and now that the market is coming back down this is showing right through to the consumer.

Overall both guns performed as well as the other 6920s we have tested. This is important because of the shortage of AR parts over the last several months. The Colt triggers have never been great, but with with scratchy triggers and open sights we were able to keep most groups at 100 yards in the 1.5” range, which equates to about 1.5 MOA, or minutes of angle. If Colt had scrimped on barrels, or let down their manufacturing tolerances to make rifles quicker we wouldn’t be seeing this, so it’s a good sign that these Colts are every bit as good as the first ones in the market. My only peeve with the guns is that I wish they had focused on the 6940 line first for the dipped guns. Those are the monolithic upper guns that don’t have that silly triangle sight in the front. I’m sure it was done to make the overall cost more friendly, but it does limit your ability to upgrade the rifle with holographic sights or actual optics. The front sight can of course be removed, but who wants to do that on a gun meant to look cool out of the box?

When an AR-15 says Colt on it, you are holding essentially the same gun that is in use all over the world by the US Military. The bolt components are magnetic particle inspected and all of the components are stamped with a C because they are specifically made by or for Colt Manufacturing. There is really no other AR in the market under $3,000 that can claim all of those things, and some over that price even can’t. These new dipped patterns aren’t for everyone. But if you are tired of the same old same old black guns and you want to add a little personality and attitude to your shooting, check out these new Hydro-dipped patterns from Colt. Our tests showed they are virtually indestructible, and they have a good chance of becoming genuine collectors items in the future.