Have any old batches of Norc 5.56 been bad?

[El_Monty457]

I've seen a couple threads now that mention problems with the Norc yellow box .223 ammo (or is it 5.56?). Anyway, yellow box bad sometimes, apparently.
I have only bought a case of the white box Norc 5.56 (1120 rd case) so far, but didn't know until I opened it. A lot of people have reported no issues with the white box stuff. Is it luck of the draw, or how else would one know what one is getting inside the crate, without prying the nailed-on lid off in the store? Is there a code stenciled/stamped on the outside of the wood crates that differentiates between the yellow and white box stuff inside? Would be handy to know for future reference.

[Grove]

Continuous FTF's in a Savage Axis .223, tried several strikes to detonate and still failure. (Norc ".223" wrapped in paper")

Zero issues shootings Federal, MFS, Barnaul.

[Sinasta]

Continuous FTF's in a Savage Axis .223, tried several strikes to detonate and still failure. (Norc ".223" wrapped in paper")

Zero issues shootings Federal, MFS, Barnaul.

Norc ammo have harder primers.

[JR Hartman]

if your AR has a trigger with a lighter hammer spring or lighter hammer itself, or it has different geometry as on some nicer triggers, you may have light primer strikes on Norc or other surplus ammo. Its one of the reasons I have kept my stock trigger. I have had two dud primers, but never light strikes. I put both of them back in the gun 3-5 times each and they never went off.

[AlKidd]

at the range the morning and experienced 1 in 20 ftf in a norc cqa. I now its a cheap gun and cheap ammo but I hate that click and no go boom feeling. All yellow box and all light strikes that did go bang the second time through

[Ki3t_ly]

Norc ammo have harder primers.

+1.

[HammerHand]

I had a crate of Chinese 5.56 - but it was the brown paper wrapped, not the yellow boxed stuff. The head stamps were all CJ 95. No idea about lot number.

I found that I was losing around 5 out of every hundred rounds in my AR. Some failures to feed due to the bullet being pushed into the casing. Never had that issue with AE or PMC 5.56. Also some failures to fire due to the primer blowing out of one round, sticking on the bolt face, and preventing the firing pin from striking the next round. No cracked cases or other issues though.

It's about as accurate as a playing card thrown in a hurricane, and it's dirty as hell. It's not ammo to be relied upon - but it'll get the job done for plinking.

[Don'tkillbill]

My batch was good. I fired one spam can full plus another 10 boxes I've picked up at local gun stores.

Its 2-2.5 MOA ammo but a great value.

[Petamocto]

I am interested to hear people stating that the Norinco primers are harder. Is that enough to actually screw up the firing pin on something? My Mossberg MVP firing Norinco rounds started to have lighter and lighter primer strikes, before eventually not striking it at all. Upon disassembly, the firing pin was not coming forward at all. This required a warranty fix/replacement, which was free to me but still troubling.

I thought it was just the gun having issues, but if it may be the hard primers I may stop using it.

Until that point the only thing I was noticing was that the groupings were terrible. I don't care about close-range performance when I'm doing tactical AR stuff, but from 100-200 in the MVP I was normally getting groups of 1-3" with good ammo and 4-6" with Norinco ammo.

[copeland]

I don't think light primer strikes/harder primers would put any measurable wear and tear on the firing pin or rest of the bolt parts.

However I've burned through a couple cases of norc yellow box and I've had one jam requiring my ar15 to be mortared, two primers have fallen out after firing and couple ftf/fte. I'm guessing less then 10 per 500. Cheap foreign ammo comes at cost but nothing I've found unreasonable. Though I don't expect 100% out of cheap Chinese stuff.