Does your AR15 run on steel cased ammo?

I won't use steel case ammo only as a last resort,after loading my own for 40+ years I prefer brass only. I do understand why people use the low cost steel case but if necessary I will shoot less and stick to brass.

my BCM 16" midlength has over 6,000 rounds of steel cased Wolf and Silver Bear through it with no issues at all.

Spikes Tactical middy - yes
Spikes lower/S&W carbine upper - not reliably after a few mags
Olympic (really old w/ cl bore) - yes
RRA varmint - ?haven't tried?
Bushmaster carbon15 -?haven't tried?

No problem with an Armalite and two frankenguns with Barnaul 62gr other than it being dirty, smelly, and a bit underpowered.

Colt
yes no problems

My Spike's ST 15 LE runs on Tulammo.

All of mine do. Colt, S&W DPMS, Olympic, RRA, and several parts guns.

Only one had any issues, it turned out to be an out of spec extractor that caused stovepipes completely cured by filing the "hook" to match the measurements from a know good one. I replaced it with a new factory part after my TEOTWAWKI gunsmithing exercise proved successful.

IIRC my buddy owns RRA and we both shoot Silver Bear, I shoot it in my Saiga 223, he shoots it in his AR.

My Stag digests it like a champ. It's a barebones left handed model 2. My current ammo stocking process is to buy up no less than 3 boxes of Tula every time I HAVE to go to Wal Mart (hate that place, but their .223 is cheap).

My Bushmaster Patrolman runs just fine on Wolf Military Classic. The only time it has a problem is after a lot of ammo, which results in excess carbon build up in the chamber. Run a chamber brush a few times and its good to go again.

Yes. Spikes middy ~ 1500 rnds, half of that was steel cased.

+2 on heavier buffer as well as extractor and spring upgrades.

If an AR didn't run on all 5.56 ammo, I'd get rid of it.

My rifles work just fine with Silver Bear ammo.
Unfortunately it is getting harder and harder to find in my area.
Actually locating any heavy ball ammo is becoming quite difficult here and I may have to resort to more online ordering.

Spikes

I asked Spikes Tactical if it was ok to shoot steel case in my 16" Spikes Middy. They said yes............ ............ No problems so far. I use mostly Silver Bear ammo though.

Bushmaster-yes
DPMS-yes
Aero lower/Stag upper-no
Aero lower/LMT upper-yes

On a side note all of my other 223/5.56 guns runs steel fine.
MSAR, FN2000, HK93, Golani, and Mini-14

3500 rounds Wolf thru my franken AR without cleaning. zero problems

If your rifle will run Tula it will probably run any steel cased. IMO tula is about the weakest, dirtiest ammo I have shot.

funny thing happened with the recent scarcity of ammo--you shot what you got. i saw guys who swore they would never use steel ammo--especially with their machine guns--guess what they used

i have never had a problem with cheap shots.

Both of my ARs shoot steel case ammo, though I admit my "retro" XM16E1 clone hasn't had enough rounds through it to really tell. The only FTFs I had were clearly linked to a bad mag on the retro.


On top is a complete BCM 16" middy in 5.56 with a 1x7 twist chrome lined barrel & chamber on a Doublestar lower.

Bottom is a 20" XM16E1 lookalike using NoDak Spud upper and lower recievers, a Del-Ton 20" pencil barrel with a 5.56 chamber and a Young Mfg hard chromed BCG.

I have a S&W M&P 15 MOE, a Bushmaster and a CNMG lower with a BCM midlength upper. All of the guns have well over 1000 rnds through them and most of it has been Brown Bear and Silver bear. A lot of Tula has been used as well. I'm using more brass cased ammo now since I'm trying for better accuracy instead of just plinking.
I finally had a steel case get stuck in the chamber of my BCM a few months back. It was Wolf Military Classic. I don't shoot this much (no real reason why) and the gun was already pretty dirty. I punched it out and gave the rifle a quick cleaning. No more problems.
I consider the steel cased ammo decent for plinking and getting friends and family members a lot of hands on experience for a low price. Not everyone needs to learn how to operate an AR with $10-$30 per box ammo. I shot handguns today with my daughter and finished up the day with a quick walk over to the rifle range and a few mags of Tula just to get her refamiliar with the AR. The cheap stuff was good for that.
55gr Brown Bear is the most accurate of the Russian stuff that I've used. Tula is the least accurate. I'll continue to use it in my guns but I would not want to trust it for self defense or anything important. I'd rather get a lot of range time for the price as long as I'm not having a lot of issues. One stuck case in the last 3000+ rounds is acceptable for playing at the range.
To each his own though.

Colt 6920

I had one box of Wolf .223 laying around and ran it through the rifle and it did fine. Maybe I'll buy more in the future and really see if it'll run good using steel cased ammo.

Exactly 1 case (1000 rounds) of the cheapest steel cased ammo I could find, zero issue.

Spikes Tactical mid-length

My old chrome lined 5.56 piece-meal AR15 absolutely would not function with steel-case ammo but would run flawlessly on brass-case ammo.

My Double Star "Star-15" carbine (non-chrome lined barrel) runs very well on steel case ammo. However, this was not always the case- when I bought the rifle NIB it would only fire 5-10 rounds of steel case ammo before choking (despite a meticulously clean chamber). I added a stronger extractor spring and took the internet advise to "run the rifle wet" with good results.

To those that are having trouble running steel-case ammo and do not wish to change the extractor/spring/buffer (assuming clean chamber and good mags), try running Silver Bear .223; it has been my experience that this ammo is more forgiving in ARs that will otherwise choke on Tula/Herters/Wolf/Brown Bear.

Spikes Middy.

No problems once, I realized that she likes to be really really wet.