FR-8 hates surplus ammo!

8

8200 rpm

New member
A couple trips to the range and I started to believe that my FR-8 was a POS...

-Chilean surplus ($4/box), bolt gets sticky extracting rounds.
-South African surplus ($5/box), bolt gets stuck after firing rounds.
-Argentine surplus ($2/box), bolts gets sticky extracting rounds.

With any of the surplus ammo, the action is smooth when cycling unfired rounds. The bolt just binds up after the bullet leaves the barrel.

Then just for the hell of it, I thought I'd try some 150gr American Eagle (cheap Federal) .308 Win FMJ ($9.50/box). What a difference! Bolt opens and extracts as smoothly as it feeds unfired rounds! And as an added bonus I got a three shot group with all holes touching at 50 yards with open V-notch sights!

How does anyone use surplus ammo on gas guns when a bolt gun won't extract fired brass?! I guess, I'll stick to U.S. made commercial 147gr FMJ.
 
Bad headspace will often cause fired cases to stick. Look for any sort of bulging of the brass. Your rifle should work with surplus ammo.
 
My FR-8 eats British Radway Green surplus all day long. Never experienced any sort of extraction problems. My Springfield M1A has never had a problem with it either.

As Destruco6 suggests, you might want to have the headspace checked. These "surplus" rifles were never designed with American commercial ammo in mind. Matter of fact, they were designed specifically for 7.62 NATO (surplus) and not .308 WIN (commercial). To have a rifle that only likes the commercial ammo it wasn't designed for would suggest a problem with the rifle, and probably not the ammo.

Ultimately if it only likes commercial, and you're happy with that, then that's cool. But, you should probably still have it checked just to make sure it's safe.

LL
 
8200rpm, I've got a Steyr Mod. 1912 in .308 that's also very finicky with Chilean surplus; bolt gets sticky. I tried some Radway Green and no more problem. I've never shot the SA or Argentine surplus, but I can assure you that the British ammo is good stuff. If your FR-8 won't extract properly with it, you probably have some headspace issues.

Shoot straight,
freedomlover
 
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