Success feeding problematic Russian ammo in AR

[Leth 8]

While I normally feed my AR handloads, it always bugged me that I couldn't use the cheap Russian-made ammo without continual failures to feed. The typical experience with Wolf, Tula, etc would be be short stroking, the bolt not locking back on the final round, or rounds pinched against the bottom of the bolt.

 

It looked like not enough grunt was being applied to the bolt carrier. The carrier key was tight, I replaced the gas rings with a single spiral ring, and flushed the gas pipe with carb cleaner to no avail.

 

I finally replaced the standard recoil spring with a reduced power spring (link below) and it now feeds that crappy steel case ammo beautifully. Sure they still have craptastic accuracy, but sometimes tin cans don't need sub minute of angle handloads.

 

http://www.brownells.com/.aspx/pid=21163/Product/AR_15_M16_REDUCED_POWER_ACTION_SPRING

 

Happy shooting!

[Ray Ray 3,566]

Glad it works for you bro, make sure she gets a good scrubbing after a day at the range.

[Leth 8]

Absolutely. That is some nasty-ar**d stuff. Gave her a good scrub down to keep her happy.