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BAD AMMO????

5K views 53 replies 15 participants last post by  soundguy 
#1 ·
I took my new Ruger Mini 30 to the range and suffered about 30% misfires. All but one fired on the second or third pass through the gun. All had good hard hits by the firing pin and the bolt was fully closed and locked. 40 shots on the target at 50 yd covered an 8 inch circle. The gun was being shot with a 9X scope! There is a possibility it is the gun’s barrel but I think it is the ammo. I put a fresh crown on the new barrel and it is pristine.

The ammo was 7.62 x 39 Wolf 112 gr FMJ 20 steel cased cartridges to the paper box that I purchased maybe 5 or more years ago. I am convinced it is not the gun but bad ammo. I intended to shoot up this stuff I had and then start load development for my own reloads. In fact, I am totally set up and only need to pull the handle of the press to start.

Now, the question is what to do with the remaining 240 rounds of the ammo?

Do I try to sell it and risk an angry buyer when he finds it has a problem?

Do I give it away? But I do not want to ship it anywhere…It would have to be local.

I have no interest in tearing it down as none of the components have any value to me.

How do I dispose of it without risk to anyone? I certainly can’t dump it into the trash or into the campfire.

Anyone got any ideas on proper disposal?

LDBennett
 
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#36 ·
I would purchase a box of premium ammo to determine if the problem is ammo or gun related (if all of the good stuff fires and is accurate, it ain't the gun). I know I too hate to buy factory fodder, but sometimes I gotta. Sometimes Ican be "Mr. Cheap" and I'd just put the "unusable" ammo on a shelf somewhere out of the way. May find a use for it someday...
 
#38 ·
Why should I not just start my load development and see how it compares? I think it might be as good (when I finish) as commercial ammo (??).

I ran into my first problem with the reloading effort. The book load (repeated in several manuals) will not fit inside the case. Even the starting load has to be compressed. That is H335 powder. I posted the problem here and I wonder if others have ever encountered it for this cartridge. Plan B is to use IMR4227 of which I have plenty. I can't find any of the other listed Hodgdon Reloading Center powders (4198 for example).

Why do I think I'm blazing a new trail in reloading 7.62 x 39 ?????

LDBennett
 
#40 ·
The Gun Clinger:

My range time is valuable to me and I do not need it to be a frustration fest.

I bought and paid for this ammo years ago and tossing it is no more costly than a nigh on the town or a tank or two of gas for my truck.....all pocket change. With the discovery of hard primers in this Wolf ammo (as per Brownells) I think it is sale-able. Or if I give it away I'll not feel bad that it has a performance problem solvable by use in a Russian military gun. It should be noted that when I shot it in my now gone SKS there was no Failures to Fire that I remember.

LDBennett
 
#41 ·
The Gun Clinger:

My range time is valuable to me and I do not need it to be a frustration fest.

I bought and paid for this ammo years ago and tossing it is no more costly than a nigh on the town or a tank or two of gas for my truck.....all pocket change. With the discovery of hard primers in this Wolf ammo (as per Brownells) I think it is sale-able. Or if I give it away I'll not feel bad that it has a performance problem solvable by use in a Russian military gun. It should be noted that when I shot it in my now gone SKS there was no Failures to Fire that I remember.

LDBennett
I'd be willing to bet an sks even more so than an AK variant will digest that fine
 
#44 · (Edited)
Back when I bought my first SKS a Yugo M56/66A1 with night sights and grenade launcher spigot I also purchased a 500 rd. case of Wolf Black Box ammo along with it. I had problems right off the bat with the Wolf.

I had no failures to fire in the Yugo but I did have a few failures to eject,part of that was due to the leaky gas valve system on the Yugo but that was an easy fix the Yugo functioned fine with handloads an a variety of other Russian ammo so the Wolf was slightly underpowered.

Just in case some don't know Wolf is just an importer out of CA they mfg. nothing,all there ammo lines are made by other companies in Russian and Serbia. As far as there Russian mfg. go it can be anyone but the primary mfg. of there steel case X39 is Tula that is subject to change at anytime from one lot to the next. Over on the SKS board Wolf and Tula seem to be the two brand names that give the most issues but it's not always a constant things so it's kind of the luck of the draw.

I've tested a lot different brands of Russian x39 ammo over the years when I first got my SKS rifles to find which was most consistent and my stash of steel case ammo contains mainly Golden Tiger and Bear but thats rainy day ammo and the bulk of my shooting is done with my handloads mainly cast lead or powder coated lead bullets nowadays.

Here is a target I shot at 50 yds. for ammo testing with the Yugo off a bag using GT.Bear and my cast loads. You will notice one hole outside each main group which is for some reason typical for the first hand chambered rd. The cast loads are moving around 500 fps. slower so they topically shoot lower.



I would suspect the FTF issues comes from the hard military spec primer used in Russian ammo mfg. since the free floating firing pin is the norm in SKS and now the AK style rifle the ammo is used in. US and commercial foreign made brass case ammo as well as your handloads using standard cup primers should not be an issue in the Mini 30.
 
#45 ·
about 20-25% of the x39 i shoot is tula, and the rest is milsurp. I've yet had a fail to fire or eject in various sks, various ak and vz type actions, including oddies like mak 90, including a colt AR... ( using promag mags at that. whoda thunk! ).

the last wolf i bought was years ago but had a black coating on it that got everywhere ( polymere coating? ) It fired, but made everything it and then you touched dirty..
 
#46 ·
sound guy:

The FTF problem in the Ruger Mini-30 is so well know that Brownells sells and Wolff manufactures an extra power hammer spring that supposedly solves the problem. I had no problem with the same ammo in my SKS that I recently sold.

It may be because of poor ignition with the hard primers but the accuracy of the 60 rounds I fired (some once through the gun and some multiple times) in the Ruger Mini-30 was not that great. I'm working on my own reloads and using them may reveal much better accuracy.

LDBennett
 
#47 ·
After all the discussions on your issue,I'm anxious to find out the results of your reloads.
 
#48 ·
accident:

When I started to do the reloading I ran into a problem: more powder than room in the case. I thought it might be a mis-print but lots of further investigation revealed that the German RWS cases (heavy duty cases similar to our military Lake City brass) have less volume than the industry specification. That, I suppose, is for durability. Then I had to figure out how to use my powder of choice in the smaller volume cases. Since the difference was about 8% I will modify the starting and Max loads by 8% downward. I was waiting for case volume data from other sample of other manufacturers but only Winchester came in and they matched the SAAMI specs, not my cases. For military cases they reduce the charges by 10% so my 8% might just be OK. This may have to wait until next week.

LDBennett
 
#50 ·
Trip to the range with my reloads>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

There are more details on this post:

http://www.thefirearmsforum.com/threads/trouble-reloading-7-62-x-39-russian.143548/page-2

But the bottom line is the Wolf ammo gave groups that just fit on a 8 inch pie plate and the best of my reloads shot an average of two five shot groups of 1.63 inches.

So all you surplus ammo shooters and Russian Wolf ammo shooters are paying a tremendous price accuracy wise!

LDBennett
 
#51 ·
So maybe all the claims about the AK with ×39 ammo, it's a powerful round if you can hit what you're aimming at, is more about combloc ammo than the rifle. Just using the AK as a reference. Glad to hear that your own performed well.
 
#53 ·
May bee, may bee not.

I have a couple late fish 50s ruskies that open sites at 150yds hit 1 foot triangular targets with repeatable accuracy.

Perhaps late surplus X39 is junk, but old russkie sealed stuff I've been shooting is click band target type stuff. I only shot the old mlsurp in SKS and ask types. For my at I shoot tula as I don't want corrosive in the at.

The ask, make, and vz don't do any target shooting, just tin can plinking, I don't consider them target quality guns. The SKS on the other hand surely could be.
 
#52 ·
Not all surplus ammo is bad. My son-in-law has tons of Mauser 8mm ammo in tuna cans that has no problem hitting gongs at 300 yards with open sights when a blow heart shooter beside him with a scoped modern gun can't get his prime reloads to do the same. And the surplus ammo was 1943 head stamp!

I don't have a good reference point for surplus or commercial ammo because with only a couple exceptions I reload for more than 30 different cartridges. Guns that don't shoot to my expectations are passed on once load development does not reveal a good load. I actually have only had to sell a couple of my guns for that reason. But My expectation for accuracy have to be modulated by what the gun is and what it was designed for. I can not expect a lever 30-30 to shoot like a varmint gun.

LDBennett
 
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