New guy with a few LR-308 questions

Let me start by saying I am a long time lurker, first time poster here. This is a great sight full of information.

I have been wanting an AR type rifle for a while. A coworker had a DPMS LR-308 AP4 for sale and I picked it up. I wanted to get one just to play around with. After shooting it a little I realized just how cool the thing is. I decided I wanted to set it up for longer range shooting and hunting. After doing a little looking, I decided on a 24" stainless fluted barrel. I ordered a DPMS barrel, gas block, and barrel wrench. After I got it all on order it hit me that I may need a few more things than what I ordered.

The rifle started life as an AP4 which is the tall front sight, 16" barrel. I wanted to change the tall front sight gas block for a quad rail block. Once I got the quad rail block in I figured out I needed to either remove the barrel or the flash hider to swap the blocks. The flash hider will not budge. After some reading it turns out that DPMS put red loctite on some of their flash hiders, which seems to be the case here. I figured that if I was going to have to remove the barrel, I may as well swap it to what I wanted while it was off. That leads to my questions if any of you may have the answers.

When I swap from the 16" barrel to the 24" barrel, will that change the location for my gas port? If so, I assume I will need a longer gas tube right?

Along those same lines, if the gas port changes locations will I need to get a longer hand guard? I currently have a carbine length hand guard, so if the gas port moves further up the barrel I am assuming the gas tube will need to be longer, needing a longer hand guard to cover the gas tube.

If any of yall can shed any light on this, it would be appreciated.

You are correct. You may be as well off to build a complete new upper and sell the 16". Even if you don't, I'm sure you can sell the old parts.

By the way, welcome to the forum!

Thanks. I looked at the uppers for this gun. They are crazy in price. The upper similar to what I am wanting to build is close to what i paid for the whole setup. I will be selling the parts I remove from mine to offset the cost some. I will start looking at what hand guard I want and look for a new gas tube.

Post them up here, in the classifieds.

I sure will. The barrel, barrel wrench, and gas block are on the way. As soon as the barrel wrench gets here and I get the barrel off I will be posting all of my factory stuff on here for sale.

Any suggestions on where to look for hand guards? I understand that DPMS uses a different setup than most AR platforms that uses a thicker barrel nut with external threads that the hand guard threads onto.

Did you check DPMS' website?

Try: http://www.redxarms.com/ . They may have what you need.
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I ended up making another order from Midway. They had all of the DPMS parts I needed. I ended up getting them a little cheaper from Midway than DPMS. Now all I am waiting on is the UPS man to show up.

I also picked up a Burris PEPR scope mount while they were on sale at Optics Planet. As soon as I get everything swapped out I am going to pick up a new scope. I am leaning toward a Burris Fullfield 50mm.

Sounds like a great set up!

I hope it will be. I will post up some pictures once it is set up.