Stake the castle nut?

[The Annoyed Man]

I recently re-staked mine when I mounted one of those Magpul ASAP plates, and it just wasn't that big of a deal.

I look at it as being kind of like safety-wiring stuff on a race-bike. You could locktite your brake caliper bolts, but what happens if they vibrate loose at 160 mph, setting up for Turn 8 at Willow Springs? With safety-wiring, you'll never have to worry about it.

Staking versus loctiting your castle nut is kind of like that.

[RECIT]

If its for work and not for fun then why not stake it? Yeah it can be a pain the get off, but so is the red lock-tite. Blue is strong but the red is stronger. Black I would never use on something you EVER want to take apart again. The blue lock-tite is great for everything with threads on it that is not intended to loosen.

[grim-bob]

staking it is not permanent problem and can be undone when necessary. I will say that blue should hold fine in most cases. My rifles with blue hold fine through being bounced all over the place on four wheelers. Never had them even begin to become loose. If I was using it for real work I'd be Ok with the blue but probably prefer staked as it creates a better hold in my opinion. In short I guess you can't go wrong with either and just need to determine what makes you comfortable.

What you don't want to happen is the castle nut getting a little loose then allowing the plate to back out and releasing the spring to the takedown pin. It doesn't take much space/"looseness"at all for the spring to slip past the plate. If it get's loose it could be easily overlooked. next thing you'll experience is picking up your rifle with a missing pin and have it fold in half as you shoulder it.

[Afff_667]

I agree...why wouldn't you want to properly stake the castle nut? I guess it boils down to what one plans to do with the weapon and how acceptable a potential failure would be in those circumstances.

[big 54r]

stake!
If you can stake and loctite.