Does anyone else have AR trouble when using steel cased ammo?

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PunchinPaper

New member
My dad picked up 500 rds of Wolf steel case ammo cheap.
We get to the range to fire it in his AR ,and it turned his rifle into a bolt action...
We tryed 10 different mags and it did the same thing.
It would fire but not cycle the rifle.
When we use Brass cased ammo it fires and fictions fine.
We tried the wolf in another AR and it shot without a any issues.
I am just wondering if this is common or if there is an underling problem with his rifle. Anyone ever have this happen?
 
Only time I ever fired steel through an ar, it jammed frequently. Then I looked it up and saw that very often the ar didn't like steel. Its not uncommon, id just stick with brass.
 
I had some feeding issues with Brown Bear and Wolf WPA (cammo box). Both seem to have the same identical polymer coated steel case. This was in a Mini 30. They fired fine, and extracted fine, but were getting hung up in the loading process, seemingly not feeding out of the magazine smoothly. On the other hand, the Silver Bear and Golden Bear were flawless (ditto for some corrosive surplus Yugo brass case ammo).

The silver and golden bear are also steel case, but are coated with what I believe is zinc (silver bear) and brass (golden bear). It might be that the polymer drags in the magazine, and perhaps the action of one rifle is stronger than the other and overcomes this drag. Just a theory. I don't know.
 
When I bought my Bushmaster, the guy behind the counter told me not to try it. He had 3 bushmaster's, and none of them liked it at all, and he wanted me to have a positive experience with my rifle, so I was advised to steer clear, never tried it.
 
Try replacing your extractor or replacing the d-ring and spring in the extractor. I did this a couple of yrs ago with wolf ammo and it did great afterwards.
 
chris in va said:
I really wish someone would get to the bottom of this and find out why steel case won't run properly.
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:D:D:D:D


It's the computer effect, garbage in, garbage out.

Many AR's choke on steel case when new. Run 500-1000 rounds if nato spec ammo (that's what's it's designed to shoot) then try the cheap crap.
 
If an AR (like any gun as far as Im concerned) wont run steel case ammo its time to get rid of that gun or fix it so it will.
 
Before I knew better, I used steel cased Monarchs from Academy as my first 100 rounds through my M&P 15OR. Zero malfunctions. I did clean it after every 20 rounds. Then I read somewhere (probably here) that steel case ammo coated with lacquer will gum up your rifle and I stopped using them.

One of the guys I know who used steel case polymer coated Wolf ammo, had a failure to extract. It fired and left the case jammed tight in his M&P 15 Sport.

I recently bought some Hornady Steel Match, have not tried it with my AR as I bought it for my Rem 700. Might just give it a a whirl to see how it works.
 
I fire steel cased Wolfe in my Bushmaster all of the time. It has never had a malfunction with it. I have also purchased 500 rounds of Silver Bear but haven't got a chance to try it yet.
 
Of my four 5.56 AR's, only one has an issue with some Russian steel case ammo. My non-CL Delton will run all of the Bear ammo's (Brown, Silver and Gold) plus WPA without issues. It chokes on Tula consistently.
 
You can get good inexpensive brass ammo for your AR. I dont see why people want to use the worst ammo they can find if it will save a few bucks:confused:
 
You can get good inexpensive brass ammo for your AR. I dont see why people want to use the worst ammo they can find if it will save a few bucks
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What exactly makes it the worst ammo? Your opinion?
If an AR (like any gun as far as Im concerned) wont run steel case ammo its time to get rid of that gun or fix it so it will.
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Right, exactly. If your feed ramps aren't cut properly or your chamber isn't cut to proper dimensions, don't blame the ammo.
 
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Wolf 223/5.56 ammo is the pits. They jam (piece of case head broken off and stuck in the chamber) in pretty much every rifle I have shot them in.. The only rifle that seems to like wolf is my Daewoo. And in that the "non-corrosive" wolf almost rusted my bore, did not clean it same day, 2 days later I had fuzzy things growing in my barrrel.
 
If you want to fix it I would try a true milspec bolt and a heavy buffer or an H2 buffer. Let that pressure go down before extraction gets real active. And I would definitely use good mags and keep the thing clean, which can be hard to do with russian ammo. Its almost a bad combo to start with.
 
My 20" DPMS would feed and extract fine but would often short stroke and not pick up a new round from the magazine. My 16" DSA upper on the DPMS lower with carbine length gas tube seemed to run it fine.

Just be careful not to shoot brass-cased ammo through the gun after steel without cleaning the chamber first. Cases can get seriously stuck from the lacquer residue and extra powder fouling.
 
My last AR hated steel cased ammo. And I agree that the Wolf ammo is garbage. It hos shot badly and cycled badly in every gun I've shot it in. But my last AR would have trouble extracting the Wolf steel ammo, sometimes ripping the rim off and leaving me beating on a cleaning rod to get the case out. That is, when it fed.
 
I would love to know, just out of curiosity what particular types or brands of guns it is that everyone has problems feeding steel case ammo, and I would also like to know if any of you can honestly say that you have never had any problems feeding any brand of brass case ammo. For one thing, extraction problems are almost always gun related problems and not ammo related, if the gun will feed it and fire it, it is not generally an ammo issue. Now, I can see back when Wolfe was lacquer coated that it could be an issue if you didn't clean your chamber and bore like you should but, they are not still making lacquer coated ammo, so you can't use that excuse. The only times I have ever had a problem with my Bushmaster is when I was working up loads and ran 20 rounds through it that were a little light and caused short stroking, but that was with brass ammo. As someone said earlier if you are having a failure to extract, you are not running the proper buffer/buffer spring or bolt in my honest opinion. Or you are not cleaning it like you should. Just because many of you agree that something is crap ammo doesn't make it a fact, it just makes it a consensus of opinion.
 
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