Perplexed with 5.45x39 AR

[ABNAK]

The heavy hammer spring has nothing to do with your problems. It's not the problem, the piston is the problem. Go DI, use the heavy hammer spring, stop blaming your piston problems on springs and ammo.

If you can get off the piston soapbox for a second long enough to address the two questions I had, neither of which involve a piston or it's use, it would be appreciated:

1) What % of duds or non-ignition do you get with Wolf and/or surplus? This has nothing to do with if it's a piston system or not. I would guesstimate mine was in the area of 5-10%, most of which fired on a second loading.

2) A standard weight buffer *should* work fine with a DI setup, correct? i.e. I should not NEED an H buffer for proper function (I'd like to buy what I need today in one trip).

Thanks.

[Littlelebowski]

If you can get off the piston soapbox for a second long enough to address the two questions I had, neither of which involve a piston or it's use, it would be appreciated:

1) What kind % of duds or non-ignition do you get with Wolf and/or surplus?

2) A standard weight buffer *should* work fine with a DI setup, correct? i.e. I should not NEED an H buffer for proper function (I'd like to buy what I need today in one trip).

Thanks.

1. Maybe 1 in 2160. In other words, the spring doesn't "wear out" and
like you had chambering/chamber issues or the wrong firing pin. In
other words, my DI 5.45 runs like a good Gen3 9mm Glock.

2. Get an H buffer for tuning, just in case.

[ABNAK]

1. Maybe 1 in 2160. In other words, the spring doesn't "wear out" and
like you had chambering/chamber issues or the wrong firing pin. In
other words, my DI 5.45 runs like a good Gen3 9mm Glock.

2. Get an H buffer for tuning, just in case.

I'll have to look at the firing pin closely. Might have to add that to the growing list......

Funny you mention the chambering issue 'cause when I called Ballistic Advantage to ask about being unable to manually extract the one case of Wolf they told me that it wasn't the first time they heard about it and that their nitrided barrels/chambers sometimes didn't "like" coated ammo. I was like Uh, there is no brass cased 5.45 so what the hell is it supposed to "like"? In fairness they said it should wear in.

Will do on the H buffer. Even if it turns out I don't need it it won't hurt to have one on hand for the future.

Thanks for the info. Now I'll send you my gunshow bill!

[Jack-O]

I'll echo LL's failure rate in 5.45. it's very very rare, like literally 1 in an entire case.

I know in every other gun aside from the AR failure to extract is generally caused by improper timing/dwell or not enough gas to the bolt at the right time. I know that in AR's if your gun wont feed steel case it's generally due to lubrication, gas, timing or tolerance issues (again, not an AR expert).

in the Mini-14, there are generally never any issues with steel case unless they are magazine issues or maybe lube.

In the XCR, if we have feed/extraction issues like you described we just turn up the gas or lube the gun.

in the AK, nobody generally messes with the gas dwell timing by cutting barrels. But if they do there are some muzzle devices that induce extra gas dwell by adding back pressure thus solving the problem. Such a device on your muzzle might do the trick.

I leave my guns mostly stock and buy a quality rifle then just lube it and use good mags and spend the remaining money on training tactics and practice ammo. Most "special situations" requiring special gear are overcome with a few moments of forethought and lots of fun training.

[ABNAK]

Well, that sucked yesterday! Loser-ass gunshow. Waste of time, gas, and money......apparently anyone worth their salt went to Knob Creek. Not one carrier or gas tube to be seen. In fact, I don't recall seeing ANY basic AR parts (sure, rails and such but no basic components). The internet isn't very fruitful either. Gas tubes, yeah, but carriers are like hens teeth.

Oh well, I'll keep looking for now.

As far as the light strikes go I played with the rifle some more and noticed that they occur when the BCG is ever-so-slightly shy of battery (what LL said to look for). Had to watch between every shot because if I could catch it a smack on the FA would pop it into battery and then dropping the hammer fired it. Definitely seemed to get less and less as I shot it some more yesterday afternoon after the unsuccessful gunshow run. May polish the chamber a bit later as even with a (future) conversion to DI the chambering issues won't be solved by doing so. Will look for burrs but it may be an overall spec issue in a brand new nitrided barrel. In fairness to Ballistic Advantage they did allude to some degree of "shoot it in" tight-chambering issues as I mentioned before.

[Littlelebowski]

One step at a time. Don't make more than one change before test firing.

[Failure2Stop]

A bolt seating during hammer drop is usually indicative of carrier-bounce.

[Clint]

As far as the light strikes go I played with the rifle some more and noticed that they occur when the BCG is ever-so-slightly shy of battery (what LL said to look for). Had to watch between every shot because if I could catch it a smack on the FA would pop it into battery and then dropping the hammer fired it. Definitely seemed to get less and less as I shot it some more yesterday afternoon after the unsuccessful gunshow run.

What buffer are you running in this? Standard CAR?

It's clear to me that the H2/A5/Rifle weight buffers do a much better job than the light CAR buffer in regards to preventing bolt bounce and extracting/cycling properly.

IMO, the CAR buffer has insufficient moving mass to stop bolt bounce and prevent early unlocking.

The only positive thing about the CAR buffer is that it's inexpensive.

My next step would be to purchase an H2 buffer and new CAR spring.

[ABNAK]

A bolt seating during hammer drop is usually indicative of carrier-bounce.

No, it wouldn't seat with hammer drop; it would go "click" and then it was a PIA to get it out (reference earlier non-firing extraction difficulties). It took a smack on the FA to fully seat it.

When I was in the Army we had teardrop FA's on our A1's. At the time (mid-80's) they were phasing them out and replacements were the round type. That damn round one will wear the heel of your hand out, especially in the retarded scenario I'm embroiled in! I took to using a tap from a rubber mallet to seat the bolt as opposed to beating my hand to death! And yeah, it took that much to seat it. Not every round but maybe every 10 or so. Of course this is the mirror image of trying to extract an unfired round, at least from the one case lot I have.

LL: one change at a time is no doubt the way to go....you can weed out one issue or another as opposed to guessing which one it was.

[ThreeFingerPete]

My buddy had a 5.45 S&W that was giving him fits. Upon a closer look, I found that he actually had two batches of ammo that he was shooting from, and some of the ammo had a squared off shoulder (almost looked like an AI cartridge compared to the normal 5.45). That was the ammo that would cause the rifle to malfunction. Generally, wouldn't eject, etc.

So knowing the sources of some of this ammo, I compare the new ammo to ammunition that runs well in the gun. (if you still have any)