AR 10 safety switch help

Suppressed in SD

Suppressed in SD

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I recently bought an AR 10 in 260 Rem, which is awesome by the way. Bought it online and it is everything I wanted except the safety. The safety switch is very difficult to turn to "fire". I think it will cause me problems in a yote situation when wearing gloves. My AR 15 safety has a very "positive" feel to it but is smooth as silk. I'm looking for advice to modify it to make it useful in winter hunting situations. It's a JP upper on a dpms lower. It has a JP fire control kit. Is it the trigger or the safety switch itself that is causing problems? Just seeing if others have had this problem before I start taking things apart to investigate.
 
The safety is the same regardless of platform (AR-10 or 15) Your detent or safety is where the problem is. Get a Bada$$ lever and you should be gtg.
 
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Pop that puppy out and clean it up, then put a little gun butter on it to make it slick. Remove the detent and the spring. Put the selector back in and be sure it operates smoothly without the detent and spring. If it does, put the spring back in, lube it first, and then the detent. Be sure there is some lube in the selector where the detent rides. Now, work it a bit to break it in. If it is still hard, make sure the detent is in correctly, pointed end up. If everything is good, but selector is still too hard, you might consider cutting a coil or two off the spring, but be careful or you'll be looking for another spring.

Good luck. My recent AR10 260 build had the same issue, this fixed it.
 
Cast has this one covered. I had a similar issue when I put in a Rock River star safety. It was very similar to what you described.
 
I ended up taking my ar 15 apart for comparison. It's a ruger. I found that the ar 10 spring was longer and made of thicker, less compressible wire. I did all the lube things you suggested but found that it needed a couple coils cut off. I went a little at a time, kinda guess and check. After the third cut it operated as expected. Glad I tried a little engineering instead of buying a new safety selector.
 
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