*Changing the Flash Hider on an AR style rifle*
I am going to go through the installation of a Yankee Hill Phantom 5C2 flash hider. The first thing I did was to unload and make safe the rifle. Next, I separated the lower receiver from the upper receiver. Then I removed my optic so that I could install the upper receiver vice clamp device that I picked up at a gun show. If you don’t have access to this type of clamp, there are instructions on the web for improvising this.
Now that the upper receiver is being held tight I used my armorer wrench to loosen the flash hider. If you don’t have an armorer wrench a ¾ inch wrench will do the trick too.
If the flash hider doesn’t immediately break loose, don’t wrench on it too hard. You don’t want to mess with the barrel indexing or bend the barrel or anything. A little bit of heat, possibly some penetrating oil like wd-40 should expedite things.
*Note- make sure that your flash hider is able to be removed. Some states require that a flash hider be permanently pinned on. Also note that if your rifle is equipped with a 14.5 inch barrel with a 1.5 inch flash hider to make it legal you need to make sure that the flash hider that you put on is at least 1.5 inches. Otherwise you are now in possession of a Short Barreled Rifle (SBR) and unless you have paid the fees to the .gov for a tax stamp your rifle may be illegal. Keep it legal folks.
Next I cleaned up the threads, making sure they were clean and free of carbon build up, or any other debris (some people have been known to use loc-tite on their flash hiders…shrug… to each their own) being careful not to damage the crown of the barrel as this can affect accuracy.
Now I slid the new crush washer onto the barrel, making sure that the tapered side is toward the barrel. Make sure to use a new crush washer as they aren’t meant to be re-used. The Phantom that I installed came with a new one, so I didn’t have to order separately.
Now you can thread the new flash hider onto the barrel. Some flash hiders like the Phantom 5C2, as well as the standard A2 style, will need to be indexed since there is a solid portion that is meant to point downward. Once the flash hider was threaded on I noticed that I had approximately ¼ turn left before the flash hider was indexed properly. That’s what the crush washer is for; turn it till it’s indexed properly. I used a torque wrench to do the final indexing since Yankee Hill recommends 15-25 lbs. Turns out that’s about all it took to do the final indexing. (go figure, right)
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