[Biggun64]

Today I fired a Yugo Mauser 98 8x57 for the first time. The ammo that I was using is Turkish (I think) on stripper clips and in bandoliers (very cheap) The ammo shot well and grouped decently, But about one in ten cases split at the neck. I have never encountered this before. Is it possible that the chamber is the wrong size? Or possibly the ammo is overloaded in some way? Is it safe to continue using? The rifle seems well made and had no other functioning issues.

any help will be appreciated

[BigG]

The ammo may be fifty or more years old. I think shooting full power ammo of that age you can expect to split some of the cases. I've had 7.62X54 split and a few other calibers also.

[critter]

I think the gun is fine. I think it's the ammo. Probably the case is very hard and can't expand withoout cracking.

Neck cracks probably are not dangerous and the M98 mausers handle gas release well, BUT you are taking some chances using ammo known to be not quite right.

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

[Greg L]

My Turk ammo does that alot also. Thankfully I don't have a whole lot of it left :D . Romania makes good 8mm from what I can tell. Shoot it up & pay an extra $0.005/round for some better stuff next time. I haven't noticed any safety issues with mine.

Greg

[boofus]

Alot of the old WW2 era Turk ammo has split cases before you shoot em. Next time try wiggling the bullet inside the case and if it wobbles around look around for a crack. I usually check each round before I stick them into my Mauser. Sometimes a good 20% of the rounds from one of those Turk bandoliers has cracked cases so I just discard them and shoot the rest. Still at $4 for 70 rounds it's a great deal even if 1/5 of them are bad. :scrutiny:

[P95Carry]

I have sh*tloads of this Turk ammo ... it's about as cheap as shootin .22's!:D

It is tho worth checking rounds pre use. Must say tho my batch of 1941 and 1942 (sheesh - yeah, really that old!!) ..... and have had hardly any neck splits. I do get FTF's quite often .... put em thru again and they ''go'' ..... that is mostly thru my Hakim, which has a plenty generous pin strike too.

Turk Mauser seems to find them ''tasty'' most of the time!!:D

[mete]

Ammo companies are supposed to anneal the necks.If the cracks are there before you shoot they weren't annealed or annealed enough. Failure to anneal will result in stress corrosion cracking of the brass. The british army found out about this about 125 years ago. Stress corrosion cracking is what we metallurgists call the result of stress and corrosive elements found in the air ,moisture, oxygen and especially ammonia compounds .Ammonia is produced in thunderstorms when nitrogen and hydrogen are combined. Ammonia is very detrimental to copper alloys so keep bore cleaners containing ammonia away from your brass.

[spacemanspiff]

the batch of 700 i bought last summer had stamps from 1940 and 1943, about half and half. out of the 700, i pulled the bullets on a little more than 200 because of loose crimps, cracked cases, pitted cases, anything that didnt look right.

took quite a while to inspect them all, but the nearly 500 rounds all set off, maybe 2 dozen needed a second primer strike, no malfunctions.

[telewinz]

Split necks should be no big deal. The Turks did not start case annealing until 1950 so the case necks are brittle. I shoot most of my Turk ammo in a Hakim and FN49 (43. 41, 39) and maybe 5% have split necks after firing. At $102 per 2800 rounds it's a defect I can tolerate, accuracy is still outstanding with no failures to fire. I suspect FTF's are more the fault of the rifle than the ammo.

[GD]

I get neck splits on the lacquered steel case Romanian also. I don't consider it a problem unless it is there before I chamber it. Also, I don't used Turk in my Hakim because of the problems I have heard about it. The Turk stuff is hot and the slow burning powder causes extractor problems. I love the Turk ammo in all my mausers.