It's fun to play dress up

I keep looking at the original Vietnam era Colt M16A1 parts kits, but they're always really beat and a lot of money for what you get.  I mean, you can get a whole, complete, new AR-15 for what an M16 parts kit costs.  Even cheaper than that though is my EBR, a Mossberg 715T.  The 715T is already just a 22lr dressed up in an AR-15 shaped plastic shell, and I decided to dress it up even more.

The 715T being just a 22 in a plastic shell that it is, standard AR/M16/M4 pattern parts won't fit.  In keeping with my general theme of "lets see how cheap we can do this," I decided to use airsoft parts with 3D printed adapters.  Some airsoft parts are surprisingly high quality, those guys get as into their hobby as we get into ours.  For my dress up kit I'm using an ICS stock, but just about any airsoft M16A1 style stock should work as long as it's the style with a the long screw attaching it. For the front end I'm using a JG/Golden Eagle M16A1 handguard. The whole conversion only cost me about $40 for the parts.

Here are all the printed parts that are needed:

And here's where they go on the rifle:

The handguard adapter holes are sized to be tapped for 8-32 socket head screws. The stock adapter hole is sized to use a 10-24 screw. I didn't have the long original screw for the stock so I made one with some 10-24 all-thread and welded a screw to the end to hold the stock on. It ended up being around 10" long, basically all the way from the butt plate to the 3D printed adapter.  The front handguard cap gets screwed to the front sight post with an 8-32 screw, and the front of the handguard needs to be trimmed slightly for screw clearance like so:

The front sight post and handguard cap should be a tight slip fit over the barrel, and the original 715T sling swivel will still work. I use an optic anyway, so the front sight is just decoration for me and a little bit of movement is ok, but it you use iron sights the front sight post has two holes in the bottom for 4-40 set screws if you really want to lock it down.  Some versions of the 715T have a threaded barrel so an actual flash hider can be bought cheap and threaded on, but mine is unthreaded.  My flash hider is printed solid and is meant to be a tight press fit onto the barrel.  It took a lot of force to to get mine pressed on, and it should be more than enough for a 22lr.  It's also pretty much just for decoration anyway.  The handguards need to be glued to the two handguard adapters too.  I used hot glue, but superglue would work just fine too.

When everything is printed in black and assembled, here's what we end up with:

If you happen to have one of these rifles and want to dress it up, my printable files can be found here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3610994