Norinco .223 brass "holes"

I have fired about 4K rounds of this stuff and had my first case failure as noted in the above posts. Split case right at the base, fired in a DD Mk18. Accuracy isn't the greatest in this type of ammo but I have found it to be fairly reliable for me. I am on my last 2K rounds of this stuff. I think its good plinking ammo and that's about it. After it is gone I am going back to the M193 rounds from AE.
 
Had an interesting time at the range today with norinco 223. My powder charge came back through the primer;

IMG_0864_zps1b89a4f9.jpg


IMG_0866_zps091e2ab7.jpg


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White smoke from the bolt release, cocked indicator and mag & well. Pulled out bolt and found debris in the barrel. Easily cleaned out and no damage, but felt the powder on my cheek from the shot. Wear safety glasses people. That could have been bad.
 
This is almost similar to what happens in war, find the enemies ammo cache and booby trap some cartridges. Except they have us paying for it.

No more Chinese ammo.
 
Having little pressure cracks near the webbing isn't going to cause your gun to blow up, Stoner's design of the bolt and barrel extension allow for the venting of this pressure. Most AR kaboom's are user error, either a squib or over charge or the very, very rare OOB. These pressure cracks shouldn't scar any North American made chamber.
 
I hear ya. Still not buying anymore of this. I'll spend an extra 80$ for 1000 of some dirty bird. It is at least consistent. And has never given me any issue at all let alone any of the ones mentioned in this thread. As a bonus: the accuracy is better (experiences May vary)
 
Well, that's a new one!!

What is the lot# of that batch?

look at post #58 in this thread... I wonder if this is a similar incident.


Noltz said:
Had an interesting time at the range today with norinco 223. My powder charge came back through the primer;

IMG_0864_zps1b89a4f9.jpg


IMG_0866_zps091e2ab7.jpg


IMG_0868_zps5fffe7db.jpg


White smoke from the bolt release, cocked indicator and mag & well. Pulled out bolt and found debris in the barrel. Easily cleaned out and no damage, but felt the powder on my cheek from the shot. Wear safety glasses people. That could have been bad.
Click to expand...
 
Gummo said:
Had a similar incident yesterday with Norinco ammo... I've shot nearly 3000 rounds of the stuff without one single problem. Then yesterday, two rounds puffed smoke out the magwell (consecutively) of my 6920. Checked the brass and here's what I saw:

63F102F1-0EF9-4786-9C4A-1844569D0DC1-46381-0000295297DAFDEF_zpsa383390d.jpg




Fired about 6 more "test rounds" after field stripping and everything was A okay.
Click to expand...

I didn't pay much attention to this thread, but then the other day, I was reloading for .223 and one of the Norinco cases had a split just like the bottom case in the photo. I was going to take a picture, but le voila! There was already one there! In addition, there appears to be a blackened horizontal hairline crack below the hole in question, that runs several millimetres along the base of the case, right at the edge, above the extractor groove. This is an older Nork CJ 95 case from a yellow box that I had bought years ago. I have one of the new crates, too, but haven't cracked it yet.

This is the first time I've encountered this.

EDIT: I see the same crack in the bottom case in the photo. I don't know when this happened, but I do recall that there was an occasion where there was some smoke coming from the receiver after having fired a few rounds. I just assumed it was residual stuff, or burning grease. I can't place when the split case was produced, but for those that can, any unusual smoke associated with it?...and after going back and reading through a few pages, I see that the smoke signifies the failure. Okay. Other than the odd cracked case, there don't seem to be any catastrophes, or damage.
 
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Noltz said:
Had an interesting time at the range today with norinco 223. My powder charge came back through the primer;

IMG_0864_zps1b89a4f9.jpg


IMG_0866_zps091e2ab7.jpg


IMG_0868_zps5fffe7db.jpg


White smoke from the bolt release, cocked indicator and mag & well. Pulled out bolt and found debris in the barrel. Easily cleaned out and no damage, but felt the powder on my cheek from the shot. Wear safety glasses people. That could have been bad.
Click to expand...

Make sure you clean out the inside of your bolt. The little pieces of primer get in there and destroy your firing pin in short order.
 
So I have two spam cans of this stuff that I don't want to shoot in my Colt HBAR...... being the frugal guy I am I decided to see what my options are for making the best of a bad situation. Decided to pull 100 rounds apart and have some fun experimenting with it. Was quite surprised that all the pulled bullets wieghed from 54.5 to 55.5 grains, not really a bad spread over the 20 I wieghed. Next I weighed the powder from 20 rounds and all were very close to 25.9 grains +/- .3 gr on the 20 or so that I weighed.
Anyway, decided to load my winchester brass with a few different combinations of the bullet and brass.
This is out of a Colt Hbar with a cheap 3 to 9 scope, benched at 100 yards. Brass used was Winchester or Federal for the various loads.
Load 1 was 55 grain Norinco pulled bullets and 25.9 grains of Norinco powder. Groups were average 4.3 inches with both 5 and 10 shot groups. Not too shabby if used for "run and gun fun".
Load 2 was 55 grain Norinco pulled bullets and 25 to 25.5 grains of Varget. Groups averaged about 2 1/2 inches.
Load 3 was 55 grain Hornady FMJ BT (cheap bullets) and 25.9 grains of Norinco powder. Groups averaged about 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 inches.
Looks like I will be pulling the rest of the bullets and reloading them in my brass. Sucks to do this but accuracy will be acceptable for shooting IPSC targets and the peice of mind will be great also.
Rodney
 
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rodauto said:
So I have two spam cans of this stuff that I don't want to shoot in my Colt HBAR...... being the frugal guy I am I decided to see what my options are for making the best of a bad situation. Decided to pull 100 rounds apart and have some fun experimenting with it. Was quite surprised that all the pulled bullets wieghed from 54.5 to 55.5 grains, not really a bad spread over the 20 I wieghed. Next I weighed the powder from 20 rounds and all were very close to 25.9 grains +/- .3 gr on the 20 or so that I weighed.
Anyway, decided to load my winchester brass with a few different combinations of the bullet and brass.
This is out of a Colt Hbar with a cheap 3 to 9 scope, benched at 100 yards. Brass used was Winchester or Federal for the various loads.
Load 1 was 55 grain Norinco pulled bullets and 25.9 grains of Norinco powder. Groups were average 4.3 inches with both 5 and 10 shot groups. Not too shabby if used for "run and gun fun".
Load 2 was 55 grain Norinco pulled bullets and 25 to 25.5 grains of Varget. Groups averaged about 2 1/2 inches.
Load 3 was 55 grain Hornady FMJ BT (cheap bullets) and 25.9 grains of Norinco powder. Groups averaged about 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 inches.
Looks like I will be pulling the rest of the bullets and reloading them in my brass. Sucks to do this but accuracy will be acceptable for shooting IPSC targets and the peice of mind will be great also.
Rodney
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That seems like a lot of wasted time..
Why not sell the ammo and use the money to buy loading components?
 
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