ugaarguy
Member
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2006
- Messages
- 13,828
Yes, my Sport will shoot steel cased ammo, as will my Daniel Defense M4V1. Outside of rifles with tight chambers, I've seen very few, if any, AR-15s that won't shoot steel cased ammo. Locally I can get Tula steel case for $5 / box of 20 vs. brass case ammo at $7-$8 / box of 20. If the steel cased ammo will do anything, it might wear on the extractor slightly faster than brass cased ammo. An extractor takes all of about 55 seconds to replace. A DPMS extractor is $15, and Brownell's sells Colt extractors for $37 each. PSA sells their extractor, spring, pin, and rubber spring insert kit for $16 as another example. At a $2 to $3 per box savings, it only takes a couple hundred rounds for the steel cased ammo to pay for a spare extractor, just in case.
The steel cased ammo is still within SAAMI spec as well. S&W lifetime warrants all 5.56 M&P rifles to shoot any SAAMI spec 5.56 NATO or .223 Rem ammo. If you shoot it enough to wear out an extractor (thousands of $ in ammo), S&W will send you one for free.
Just clean the chamber well after shooting steel case ammo, before you switch back to brass case. In short, I have no worries about steel cased ammo as cheap blasting ammo. The brass cased stuff from the major companies tends to be more accurate when you want to shoot tiny groups.
