Frontier 5.56 55 grain

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Originally Posted by Uni-Vibe

Anybody have experience with this? It's about $2 / 20 cheaper than the competition on the shelf at the local Academy sporting goods stores. I shot about 200 rounds without incident.

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Avoid it like the plague. Several threads on TOS about the issues it’s caused. After it caused multiple blown primers, ending with one locking up my rifle, we noticed the jackets had also ruptured, causing multiple baffle strikes on my buddies Surefire 300 SPS (mounted to my rifle). The LGS I work at part time sells it and since the issues I’ve had, there have been two catastrophic failures of customers rifles it was fired in who purchased the ammunition at our store. Hornady has yet to acknowledge that there have been any known issues with the ammunition.

Pictures of the damage:

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...34d29e4511.jpg


https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...e6249f6431.jpg


https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...e7cce63a96.jpg




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I've now fired about 400 rounds of it, through the 6920 and the old Bushmaster A2 20".

Accuracy is a bit off from other M193 types.

The only bobble in 20 years of the old Bushie was one of these rounds. Bolt failed to strip a round. I thought it was a bad mag (NHMTG GI 20 known to be good) but it has worked fine since with my homebrew and Federal 55s.

I've reloaded the brass without issue.


I'm avoiding it.

Very interesting. I’ve had decent results with the 68 and 75 gr 5.56 loadings of Frontier. I wonder why two major manufacturers involved in this managed to eff it up, considering that 55gr 5.56 should be softball easy for Lake City.

I was in a class a few weeks ago where a guy running this ammo had a few baffle strikes and then a small kaboom. Case had ruptured at the rear.


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Originally Posted by CESwartz07

I was in a class a few weeks ago where a guy running this ammo had a few baffle strikes and then a small kaboom. Case had ruptured at the rear.


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Hopefully he pursues Hornady. My bad batch (which caused baffle strikes) is currently on the way back to them for testing. I’m not counting on much though... thus far their response has been a near mirror of how the soviets handled Chernobyl.


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Well I've got 1,000 more of the 5.56 and 1,000 more of the .223 to go through. Hopefully these were fairly isolated incidents.

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Originally Posted by Joker

Well I've got 1,000 more of the 5.56 and 1,000 more of the .223 to go through. Hopefully these were fairly isolated incidents.

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Hope you dont have to find out the hard way.

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Originally Posted by TomMcC

Hope you dont have to find out the hard way.

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Right?

Frontier not being the best thing since sliced bread is one of the most disappointing parts of the ammo industry in recent years.

If the lot number starts with "SMQ18C" I wouldn't touch that stuff with a 100ft pole. If it starts with anything else I'd probably try and just sell it to some idiot at the gun show for cheap and cut my losses. From what's been documented on TOS the affected lot numbers have all been "SMQ18C" lot numbers.