Per this thread, Dan of Dan's Sporting Goods (Dan's Ammo) was kind enough to send several of us samples of this lot of Greek “Olympic” brand ammo for testing (THANKS DAN!).  This ammo was supposedly made on a foreign military contract, so the hope was that this ammo would have higher quality/consistency than previous lots of Olympic ammo, which have caused lots of problems in the past.  The original offerings were 2001 and 2002 headstamps.

The ammo ships in 50-round, standard Olympic orange and white boxes, with the ammo loose inside.  It is 55gr FMJ and is labeled “M193”, 5.56x45mm, and .223 Remington.  Visually, it looks pretty much like any military ammo; the cases are not polished and occasional bits of sealant are present, but otherwise it looks as you would expect.  The headstamp is marked:

H P A  9 9
5.56x45

See the pic below.



One of the main sources of problems that was discovered with earlier Olympic offerings was inconsistent case sizing.  AR15.com member Imbroglio was the one who first documented this problem, and subsequent tests by others, including myself, confirmed it.  There were examples of the brass being sized too long (distance between shoulder and case head being too long) and of being too short (leaving the neck too long).

I brought this up as a concern initially about two weeks ago when this “1999/military” lot of Olympic was first mentioned.  As you can see from the thread, several of the vendors were aware of those earlier problems, and were assured that this lot of ammo was better, due to it having been made for a military contract as opposed to being intended for civilian sales.

Unfortunately, I have some bad news…

Today was my first chance to look at the ammo, and the first thing I wanted to do was run some of this ammo through a case gauge.  For those unfamiliar with a case gauge, it is a reloading tool that is precision machined to the SAAMI max brass dimensions, and gauges case size (shoulder to case head) and overall length (neck to case head), as well as the diameters of the case in several places.  Ideally, you can drop a properly-sized round into the gauge and it will stop with the case head somewhere between flush with the top of the gauge and flush with the groove in the top of the gauge, which represents the tolerance between minimum and maximum length.  There is also a cut-away in the bottom of the gauge so that you can see if the neck is too long, and if the bullet tip sticks out the bottom of the gauge, then it is longer than SAAMI spec and won’t fit in a magazine (80 and 90gr long-range match rounds are often loaded longer than mag length for 1,000 shooting, and must be single-loaded).

This first pic is a round that is properly sized, and fits into the gauge properly.  I appoligize for the bad lighting in some of these pics, but I wanted to get this review out today, and you can still see enough to see what I’m talking about.





This pic shows rounds that are sized too long.  Note that the case head sticks out the top of the case gauge.  This is even after forcing the round into the gauge with my thumb as far as it would go.  This isn’t even close to being in-spec; the tolerance is .005”, and many of these rounds are over .04” or .05” too long, an order of magnitude out of the tolerance range.  One round wouldn’t even go all the way into the gauge due to being improperly crimped and/or having the neck poorly trimmed.





In this pic, I’ve tried to show that you can VISIBLY see a difference in the height of the shoulders on two rounds.  The round on the left fits the gauge; the round on the right does not.





So, what’s the over-all score?  Well, remember I’ve only had about 30 minutes with this ammo so far, and I’ve only gauged a single box of 50 rounds.  The results:

In-Spec – 31 Rounds
Too Long – 18 Rounds
Improper Crimp – 1 Round


What does this mean?  It means that there’s a good chance that your bolt won’t close on many of these rounds, or that if it does, then your headspace is WAY out of spec, and your rifle would probably eat a FIELD headspace gauge.  Most likely, though, the bolt simply won’t close and lock, and you’d need to manually cycle the action and load another round that (hopefully) is in-spec.

Sadly, it doesn’t appear that this ammo is any better than the earlier lots, except perhaps that I didn’t find any undersized rounds.  Like everyone, including the ammo dealers, we would ALL like to have as many sources of quality, inexpensive ammo as we possibly can.  Based on this initial examination, though, I cannot recommend this ammo.

I’m planning to shoot some of the ammo that gauged properly this weekend, so hopefully there will be more on this report in the next few days.

-Troy

Quoted: Mine came in 50 round boxes and your box says 50 rounds yet you have only 40 rounds. WTF?

ACK!  I can't seem to count today.  Actually, I was in a hurry to get this up while I had a chance and I didn't actually count the good ones; I just subtracted the bad ones.  I'll fix it.

-Troy

Quoted: I am curious as to what you think about the varyation between boxes?

I only checked one box at random this afternoon.  Tonight I'm going to try to get through at least a few more boxes so that I can get a better idea of the problem percentage.  But, to give you an idea, I've gauged 90-round samples (3 x 30) of IMI and 100-round samples (5x20) of XM193 in the past without having a single round out-of-spec.  Testing a single box gives me a 38% failure rate.  That's not "a little bit off", that's a LOT off.

Is this basically the same crap-shoot of good and bad that has always beent the deal with Olympic?

Well, incorrectly-sized cases were the main problem with the other (2001-2002) lots of Olympic ammo in the past, but there were also reports of inconsistant loads and velocities and other problems (like the round that wasn't crimped correctly).  I was really hoping this lot would be better, but alas it doesn't seem so.

BTW, there is no lot number that I could find anywhere on this ammo.

-Troy

Okay, I ran another 3 boxes (150 rounds) through the case gauge, bringing the total to 200.  Here's the breakdown:

In-Spec – 100 Rounds
Too Long – 98 Rounds
Improper Crimp – 2 Round

Yes, that's correct.  Exactly 50% failure rate.  

-Troy

Did you read the link you posted?  Let me quote the first bullet point:

The cartridge casings for both calibers have basically the same length and exterior dimensions.

In fact, the external dimensions of the case are identical.  The difference between .223 and 5.56 lies in how much chamber pressure is generated.  SAAMI specs for .223 specify a lower max chamber pressure than the military 5.56 loading.  The other difference is in the chamber itself, specifically the leade or throat.  I've documented all this in the Ammo Oracle, including diagrams of the differences.

There are no 5.56 case gauges because they would be identical to .223 gauges.

-Troy

1) BASICALLY or NEARLY IDENTICAL is not the same as EXACTLY IDENTICAL!

Don't blame me for some Winchester guy's poorly worded explanation.

The 5.56mm and .223 Rem chambers are nearly identical. The difference is in the "Leade". Leade is defined as the portion of the barrel directly in front of the chamber where the rifling has been conically removed to allow room for the seated bullet. It is also more commonly known as the throat. Leade in a .223 Rem chamber is usually .085". In a 5.56mm chamber the leade is typically .162", or almost twice as much as in the 223 Rem chamber.

Do you understand that the problem here is that the length between the case head and the shoulder of the casing is too long?  And that due to this fact, the length of the leade is irrelevant?

Here is where there is a difference in the chamber dimensions between .223 and 5.56:




And here is a drawing of the cartridge dimensions:



The main problem with this Olympic ammo is that it significantly exceeds the 38.10mm dimension.  That has nothing to do with the leade, which isn't an issue here.

-Troy

No, the longer leade only reduces chamber pressure by giving a little more room between the bullet and the rifling.  This is important due to the higher pressures that military 5.56mm ammo is loaded to.  Using 5.56 in a .223 chamber means that the rifling is very close to the bullet, with very little "jump" before the bullet is engaged by the rifling, and this causes an increase in the chamber pressure beyond the increase that 5.56 ammo already has over .223.

The case gauge does not measure anything related to the leade, or really anything related to the bullet other than the total overall cartridge length, which isn't a problem with this Olympic ammo.

Again, the main issue is the case head to shoulder dimension.  This is the same dimension measured by a headspace gauge on your rifle, except that a headspace gauge is checking the rifle itself, not the cartridge.

And again, please note that other 5.56 ammo, including Q3131A, IMI M193 and M855, and Federal XM193 all fit correctly into this same case gauge.  And, so does 50% of the Olympic ammo that I've tested so far.  Surely you can understand that if 50% of it fits exactly as it's supposed to, and the other 50% is significantly far from fitting, that there's a problem, right?

Believe me, I understand that you don't like the results of this test, and neither do I.  I was very much hoping to post that the ammo passed the test with flying colors.  I know you personally had absolutely nothing to do with the problem; this is OLYMPIC's problem, as it has been all along.  Remember: this is the same problem that affected earlier lots of Olympic ammo, and that, if you look at the main thread linked to at the top of this post, you'll see that I warned people that I suspected that this would be a problem even before I was offered a sample, and encouraged several vendors to get a case gauge and test themselves.  Dan wanted to send me some ammo to test anyway, so I agreed to take the ammo and give it a fair test.  I believe I have.

The same Frankford Arsenal .223 Remington case gauges that I used are $15 at Midway.  The test results will be reproducable by anyone, so anyone that questions my results can perform the test for themselves, and I encourage anyone who is unsure about what I've written here to do so.  I do NOT require anyone to believe me.

There is nothing personal here.  I am taking no sides, and put no blame on anyone.  I'm simply reporting the facts.

-Troy

Quoted: Ordered mine today... Sinclair has em too but made by Wilson... AR15_finatik

Just FYI, the Wilson gauges are slightly different, in that they are cut off at the point where the FA gauge has the slot.  Thus, they can measure only the case, and not offer an overall length evaluation.  It won't make any difference in testing the Oly ammo because it is the case that we're interested in, and overall length isn't a problem, but I figured you might want to know.

-Troy

Something to keep in mind regarding those stuck cases: oversize rounds may be chambering, with the bolt and chamber acting as a sizing die to set the shoulder on the brass back enough for the bolt to lock.  With the force of the bolt moving at speed, it can probably do this, which is why there are fewer stoppages than the percentage mis-sized brass.  The problem with that is that you have zero headspace for the brass to expand in, so there's no "snap back" to loosen the brass once the bullet has been fired.

Take a look at your brass if you have it and see if there are signs of difficult extraction.  You're looking for deformaties, gouges, or cuts from the extractor having to yank the brass out of the chamber.

-Troy

Now THAT's a nice gauge!  It would be much harder to gauge 200 rounds with that thing, but then again, you can tell EXACTLY what each round's measurement is.  IM me your address and I'll send you a few rounds to measure.

-Troy

That's pretty much what I expected, Ken.  Thanks for posting the pics.

-Troy

Dan sent some of this ammo to B&T Ammo Labs, but I have been away on vacation.

As soon as possible, I will take case measurements and shoot through a chronograph.

Thanks for your work, Troy.

thezman,

You've got ammo inbound.  I look forward to seeing what your gauge says.  

-Troy