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

I believe the configuration of the upper has a lot to do whether a AR will work well with metal cased ammunition. All of my AR's are manufactured by Bravo Company and have the M4 style feed ramp and the Wylde chamber. Mine will eat up any of the metal cased ammunition and I have never had problems to this day.
 
When I get my ar, ill only feed it milsurp and hunting ammo. After my experience, I almost want to say the gun is too fragile put steel through it. My ak however has handled thousands of rounds of wolf with no pammp roblem. I don't even clean the thing
I. I would suggest sticking to brass for the ar. Also you will never see me fire steel or corrosive ammo through my m1a. The way I look at it is this... if you care about a gun more and want it to last longer, give it higher quality ammo
 
if you care about a gun more and want it to last longer, give it higher quality ammo
Click to expand...
If your gun feeds fires and ejects the steel cased ammo with no problem, how are you causing any undue wear and tear on it. Other than a slight possibility of wearing out or breaking and extractor, which will take a whole 5 minutes to repair and cost $13.99 I don't see the problem.
 
My personal experience with Silver Bear 62gr steel cased ammo.

My gun......Smith M&P15T.

I started using Silver Bear steel cased ammo in the above mentioned rifle and for the first 300+ rounds I had no problems with it and I thought hey I must be lucky or I am just an exception to what I heard others say about using it. Well then I started having problems and this is what my problem was. At first I thought it was the case getting stuck in the chamber because I couldn't pull the charging handle back and pull the case out, after a little investigating I figured out that it was not the case getting stuck, but for some reason the bolt was not rotating and unlocking from the barrel when using this Silver Bear ammo. I have stated this many times, but I very rarely have any problems with brass cased ammo I am not going to BS anyone and say I don't have the occasional stoppage, but it is very rare with Brass ammo. I don't use any steel cased ammo anymore never tried it with my PSA ARs so I cant speak for any other rifle other than my Smith M&P15T
 
I shoot Wolf and Tula all the time. I believe if you're having an issue with feeding/extraction, it's probably the gun. ARs are notorious for being picky eaters so this shouldn't be a surprise.
 
actually extraction problems in an Ar or M16 can very likely be related to ammo and particularly the type and burn rate of the powder.
 
I forgot to mention...When we were shooting the wolf ammo out of the AR that it would actually run in, a spent case got stuck in the chamber and the extractor ripped a chunk of the rim off. We had to knock it out of the chamber with a cleaning rod.
I talked to dad today and he said he tried the wolf ammo in his Contender pistol and he had to knock the spent cases out of the chamber every time.
Needless to say we won't be buying anymore steel cased ammo.
 
No problems with Wolf in my two ARs (Bushmaster Dissipator w/o M4 ramps and RRA midlength). The only problem I ever had was with my AR-180B. I tried shooting brass ammo after Wolf and had a case get stuck.
 
It's probably a bad lot. Every now and then they get through. I remember buying some junk 308 Winchester from India a few years. All of the stuff was overloaded, underloaded or duds. One of the overloads caused a scope to shatter.
 
Last edited:
Does anyone else have trouble with steel cased ammo?

No, I don't use it in the first place.

Shooting is something I enjoy and I take pride in my guns and the fact that I feed them nothing but brass cased ammo {better for the guns, more reliable}

Do what you will.
 
my brother used to shoot wolf out of his 7.62x39 AR on a regular basis until he snapped the extractor on it, now he only shoots brass cased ammo out of it. I recently got my hands on a few thousand rounds of 5.56/223 ammo of various makes and materials and there was a little wolf mixed in. I have shot about 80 rounds of it out of my AR and it's all functioned better than expected. no jams to speak of and surprisingly accurate. is the AR in question chambered in 5.56 or 223?
 
If you shop around, I think you will find affordable brass cased ammo - would you run smegma fuel in your car to save a buck? And bitch that it doesn't run as good?

Sorry... I'll shut up now.
 
well i have 2 armalites A4s and it runs wolf, tula, brown bear, monarch with out a hitch. Their is some steel case ammo that will keep up with the best of the best brass. i know many of people that shoot hornady steel match all day long without a flaw and it shoot very tight groups. so again every steel case ammo isnt the same. one way to find out why it short strokes is to pull the bullet and weigh the powders to see if they are consistant.
 
It is a cartridge design issue.

I just don't hear of steel case issues with SKS's or AK47's, and that is because when the Soviets were designing the cartridge, they took into account different case materials. They expected to use steel. The 7.62 X39 was a well developed round, so the pressure curve, case hardness, case taper, primer composition, rim thickness, etc, were all studied in depth, trade off's made, and what came out was a highly tested and reliable round. An intensive and expensive development period pays off later. The AK47 and its round are well engineering and function well with brass and steel cases.

The .223 round was a wild cat. From what I have found on the web it is simply a round developed by a couple of guys at Bob Hutton's ranch in CA. They wildcatted the .222 Remington round to reach a certain velocity (I think it was 3250 fps) with a certain bullet weight.

Stoner adopted it, but he had no time or money to either wring out his rifle design or the cartridge.

It went into inventory as a commercial off the shelf item. It is what it is.

You can read about all the problems the military had, in defining the .223 round, in the referenced appendix 4.


http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/index.html

Report of the M16 Review Panel Appendix 4 Appendix 4 Ammunition Development Program.
Report of the M16 Rifle Review Panel Volume 7 Appendix 6 review and analysis of M16 System Reliability.
Report of the M16 Review Panel Appendix 5 Procurement
Report of the M16 Review Panel Appendix 7 Vietnam Surveys
Report of the M16 Panel appendix 10 the small arms program
Report of the M16 Review Panel Summary Report.

So what you are seeing is the fallout of a round and rifle that were never designed or developed to use steel as a case material. It was not a consideration. The .223 was just a wild cat developed by a couple of guys, the rifle and the round got into military inventory, and they are what they are.
 
2,000+ rounds of academy monarch steel with no problems, no real scarring issues, haven't fired anything else through it and i get a large hand size grouping of 50 rounds or so at 100 yards w/ iron sights using a backpack to help steady it (find it funny seeing people at the range with the guns in vice grips, its one thing if your testing hand loads). However if i did have issues with steel or was concerned about damage to the weapon, academy has american eagle for $1 more per box of 20

good luck
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top