need advice from experienced AR shooters

My duty Bushmaster eats Wolf with no troubles.

Nothing melts. With polymer, such as Wolf, you get carbon build up in the chamber. How much you get depends on how much ammo you shoot and how fast you shoot it.

I have shot thousands of rounds of the Russian stuff through my AR's and never had a problem. Just clean your rifle after your range sessions and you shouldn't have a problem either.

CLP, AR Chamber brush, and a 5.56 bore snake, a rag and some Q-tips is pretty much all I ever use. I'm sure if you search Youtube on AR cleaning there is something out there for you.

I clean mine mostly with Simple Green and brake cleaner. I spray it liberally with Simple Green and brush the dirty parts and clean with q-tips, rags, or whatever. I don't even have an AR chamber brush. I just use a 12 gauge brush. After everything is clean, I rinse it with brake cleaner, run a Bore Snake thru it, oil and reassemble....I must do a pretty good job, it gets inspected by an armorer a time or two a year and I've never had any notes from them.

I am a new AR owner and had FTE issues using steel case ammo in my AR. I thought about sending the rifle down the road but decided to try the extractor upgrade provided by bravocompanyusa and hope for the best...problems went away. I found the Wolf and Barnaul polymer ammo to be decent for the price.

I know there are some people out there that won't run steel cased ammo at all and then others that thats about all they shoot. If your gun will run it go for it. If not then stick with some cheaper surplus stuff. Keep the more expensive stuff for hunting.

Of course you can just load your own. After picking up or purchasing a couple thousand brass cases the cost per round is far less than new, even the russian ammo.

My loads cost me right about $0.16 ea which works out to $160/thousand. I also get to pick the cleanest powder for my rifle and decide what kind of performance I want.

I recently chronographed some factory PMC loads. Averaged 2700 fps. My loads of 25.5 gr AA2230 and a Montana Gold 55gr FMJ-BT averaged 3100 fps.

Military 193 Nato ammo is supposed to be 3250 fps. If I maxed my load I'd be right there.

I do not recommend steel case stuff to my AR customers.

Too many issues with failure to extract and so on.

Snowy

I've run thousands upon thousands of rounds of steel cased stuff through my ARs with no negative effects. Some rifles won't run it because of various reasons, but if your rifle does run it, you just get to shoot more. I believe that Silver Bear is the best of the "cheap" ammo.

I reload for .223, but now I only load my precision stuff by hand. Silver Bear is so cheap, that it isn't worth the time to load my own. It costs me something around $175 to load 1K rounds of blasting .223. For an additional $25, I can just buy 1K rounds of Silver Bear and not have spent the hours that it took to load the stuff and the time spent keeping track of brass and processing it.

If you find loading to be fun, check out natchezzss.com for a good price on virgin lake city brass. Ramshot powders are also very economical. I use Xterminator for the 55gr bullets and TAC for the heavier bullets (for blasting ammo).

+1 jr45. BCM Solved my problem too. I bought the assembled bolt and added an H2 buffer for good measure. It shoots anything now.

Some ARs will run the steel cased stuff and some will not. Only one way to find out if yours does.

My Bushie has digested thousands of rounds of Wolf, Brown Bear, Silver Bear etc and never hiccuped once. Including during some tactical training where a few hundred rounds were fired in a few minutes on several occasions, even after rolling around in the dirt and sand with my rifle. No worries mate!

(That said, some other AR chambers just WON'T be happy on steel cased ammo. But Bushmasters eat it all day long.)

Tony Angel: I did some "environmental testing" on various brass and steel cased 5.56 ammo. Buried them in mud, half submerged them in salt water for days on end, etc.

My goal was to simulate "worst case" combat corrosion or long term storage in a bad climate.

The brown polymer stuff discolors but no real surface corrosion forms. The silver bear corrodes badly in a few days. Really ugly. BUT, it all still fires! At least, after a few days buried in mud or half-submerged in salt water. It might be ugly, but it will shoot.

There is no problem with running steel cased ammo, as long as your rifle will eat it. Be aware that Wolf is notoriously under powered. Most get the best results with Golden Bear or Silver Bear. I've heard some nightmares about Tulaammo, but nothing that I can attest to.

I've had nothing but bad luck with lake city XM193. I cant even count the number of popped primers I've pulled outta my upper in my POF P-415.

Since switching to PMC and Winchester 5.56, I haven't encountered a single failure.

Given the rave reviews of Lake City, I was surprised to say the least, but you couldn't pay me to run another round through my rifle.

Flynn, I seem to have heard something about LC having issues lately. I'll have to do more research.

I just recently built a 20" ArmaLite with a heavy barreled upper and I am looking into buying some ammo for it. I do reload but I am single stage only which would take time. Any good bulk ammo that is accurate but not too expensive? I am talking more for hunting. I too like Silver Bear at least through my '74.

Thanks Birddog. I've got the rest of the case sitting here that will definitely not be fired.



Mshootnit: Ive been paying about $6/20 rounds for PMC .223

Given the rave reviews of Lake City, I was surprised to say the least, but you couldn't pay me to run another round through my rifle.

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Lake City is cheep ammo. Think about it, Federal was the lowest bidder to run the LC ammo plant. I have never found it to be super accurate but good enough for what it is made for. I see people jumping all over it at the gun shows and the price is on the high side.

Steel cased ammo should work fine in your weapon if it is a quality gun. If it is having consistent problems with steel cased ammo it's likely the guns problem...

Travis, yeah, I forgot to mention that about the Silver Bear stuff. I usually leave it packed up in the box within the plastic bag that it comes in. Once you expose that stuff to the elements, it corrodes pretty quickly. Once I open a box, it usually isn't around for very long, so it slipped my mind.

I read where someone made mention of the chambers on some rifles not liking the steel cased stuff. Although I have seen some chambers (non chrome lined or rough) that exacerbate the problem that some rifles have with steel cased ammo, it's usually not the chamber that is the culprit. With ammo like Tula and Wolf, the problem is usually with short stroking, due to there not being enough gas. As many can attest, Wolf is notoriously underpowered. With the hotter stuff, like the Bear ammo, some have problems with extraction or stuck cases. This is usually caused by the rifle being over gassed, as is common for many carbines. Some are lucky because they can over come the problem with the addition of a better extractor spring and/or insert and/or the addition of a heavier buffer to slow things down a bit. From what I can gather, steel just doesn't contract as quickly as brass does, so it sticks in over gassed rifles. This is just a conclusion that I came to based on observations that I've made. I've found that on rifles having trouble with steel cased ammo, I've been able to alleviate the problem by using a clamp on gas block and just moving it just a bit forward or backward from the position where it's supposed to be, thereby choking off some of the gas. I've tried adjustable gas block a couple of times, but those are expensive. These days I just try to stick with good barrels with gas ports that are drilled to the proper size.