Had the opportunity to try out some Tan Follower Okay USGI aluminum mags (slightly used, got them several years back, but in good shape overall) in my M16A4 clone (FN surplus upper) recently. While the rifle itself shot beautifully, the magazines were a different story: they seemed to feed the first several rounds and the last several rounds all right, but in the middle of the magazine, they would intermittently fail to feed: the bolt would partially override the magazine and push the rounds into the feed ramp rather than into the chamber. (Caused what looked like some slight gouges in the upper receiver just below the rifle spec barrel extension too, grrr.). Felt as though the magazine didn't have enough power in the springs to feed the next round in time, and/or that the angle of the rounds was a touch too low: intermittently, even after a tap rack bang drill, hitting the bolt catch would just slam the rounds back in the feed ramp rather than into the chamber.

Swapping the magazines with a friend's USGI mag with what looked to be a Magpul follower, as well as a friend's PMag looked to fix the issue: the rifle fed flawlessly from the former and latter. Noted that the Pmag especially appeared to present rounds at a very slightly higher angle, toward the chamber, than my Okay mags.

Has anyone else encountered issues with the tan follower mags in 20" barrel ARs like the M16A4? Ammo used was Wolf Gold M193 spec; plenty hot stuff to my knowledge. I'll most likely use Pmags exclusively with this rifle going forward, but am wondering what I should do with my existing Okays: swap the followers for Magpul units perhaps?

I have never had a problem with tan follower mags of any make, Center, Brownells, or Okay.

I would look closely at the bodies to see if they’re not dented or bent in the middle.

Check the lower by swapping it onto other uppers and slowly riding a round into the feedramp until it barely touches and see how they compare.

No issues with Colt/Okay/Brownells tan follower mags either.


Try the mags in another gun?  


Pmags do offer an improved presentation angle for rounds.

I tried hand cycling 30 rounds each for 60 total from a Lancer AWM smoke and a Gen 3 Pmag; both made it through flawlessly.

Wonder if this rifle just needs some break in on the barrel extension; might fire a few hundred more rounds from those mags and then circle back on the Okay tan follower USGIs. (The Okays were somewhat used milsurp; perhaps the springs were a little worn.)

If the bullets are hitting below the ramps it’s not gonna get better.

I tried again with one of those Okay USGI tan follower aluminums and slowly rode a round into the chamber; even hand cycled 30 rounds: worked just fine this time around  ¯\_(?)_/¯

Could be that a good cleaning helped the rifle, though I don't see how coating the BCG and receiver in Ballistol would help with this sort of malfunction.

At any rate I'll try again soon with the rifle; hope it'll work fine now.

Besides cleaning the rifle, HAVE you ever disassembled and cleaned your used magazines?  I get hundreds of mags thru my hands.  I disassemble, clean and do a inspection.  Check for dings in the sidewalls (body) and check the feedlips for cracks or bent.  Wipe spring down and run a dry rag through the inside of the mag body getting rid of dirt/sand.  Stomp or shoot damaged magazines.  Do keep one or two damaged mags for failure drills (mark magazine so don't go into duty rotation).  New USGI EPM mags have a baby blue follower and tan body.

CD

An acquaintance I met on the Ohio Rifle Team said he got a huge laugh at the National Matches at Camp Perry one year when I coached a team in the National Trophy Infantry Team Match -- known as "Rattle Battle," since it's rapid-fired as a six-man firing squad at 600, 500, and 300-yards.  You win higher points and scores for hits at the farthest yard lines in a short time.

Each shooter has a set number of rounds he's supposed to fire against a bank of eight GI E-type silhouettes.  If he has a stoppage, the shooter is supposed to yell as loud as he can that others have to put some rounds on his targets or there won't be enough hits before time expires and the team's overall score suffers.  One of the shooters (a young Air Force Office of Special Investigations Special Agent) sounded off, "NEED HELP ON TARGETS SEVEN AND EIGHT!" and a couple of his team-mates shifted three or four rounds from their targets on to his, keeping the team in the running before the command CEASE FIRE and the targets disappeared behind the berm.

I ran over to him to find out what happened.  "Bad mag, I think!" as he handed two to me.

I stripped the rounds out of the two suspect mags and put some into one of his known good mags, and handed that back to him.  I passed the remaining rounds among a few of his team-mates to shoot on the next yard line (authorized less time).

It was when I proceeded to stomp the living hell out of those two suspect mags (which may have been his own private stash or reserved GI stock) and handed them back to him saying, "Don't take bad mags to combat or the National Championships" that he learned his lesson of the day.

We still came in first in our category and class.

My acquaintance said everyone got something out of that.

Had similar issues with Brownell's tan follower contract mags.  I only use pmags and Okays with magpul followers now.

I've read lots of conflicting things about the tan follower mags.  Some say they have been perfect, and others have the dreaded issue where they jam the round into the feed ramp.  It seems like I mostly hear about the Brownells  mags, but it seems like Okay might have the same issue.  I'd like to pick up some of the Okay tans, but I'm concerned about the uncertainty surrounding the followers.  Has anyone tried some they bought recently?

I don’t think they’ve made in any tan follower mags in nearly ten years, so any out there are not gonna be new.  

The feedlips and front wall of the magazine determines how high the bullet presents.  The follower is not going to make much of any difference if the spring is strong enough.  

Damn
Has it been that long already?

FWIW, out of 30+ Brownells mags with tan followers I've yet to experience any issues.

I know those that have though.

I haven’t seen a tan follower Okay newer than ‘11, maybe ‘12.

NOS ones have been available recently, and one last shipment is supposed to be in stock before too long.  I have seen the issues with a Brownells tan follower mag, and would like to avoid that, if it is common to the Okay ones, as well.

I’ve been around tan follower mags since they came out, have shot and seen a boatload of them from Center, Brownells, Okay, and even Colt, and outside of a damaged mag, never saw anything about them that was deficient.  

I think you’re gtg.

I hadn’t really thought about when exactly they stopped producing them. The Okay mags I posted about here are dated 08/12 on the bags (as can be seen in the photo) and 7-12 on the mag bodies.

I have a couple of the “Classic” magazines that Okay sold in Surefeed packaging using leftover mag bodies with the old style Okay military logo (with Surefeed logo baseplates). At the time, someone explained that they used up leftover mag bodies from when the military contract ended. Those mags are stamped 7-13.

Ok. I think Center Ind ended up with the last run of tan follower mags, I’ve seen some of those into ‘15-‘16 but hadn’t  seen an Okay that new.

@Combat_Diver

Any issues with the EPM mags that you've seen?  Have you ran various types of ammo through them as well without issue?

TIA

Out of the thousands of guns, ammo and magazines.  Have only come across one M4A1 that had any issues with M855A1 and green/tan follower USGI Mags.  Replaced upper and instructed female paratrooper 11B to use A1 with EPM or PMags.


Thats out of all USGI mags (20s, black, green, tan, blue followers), HK, PMags and Lancer mags.
Ammo includes M193, M196, M200, M855, M855A1, M856, M856A1, M995, Mk262, Mk318 and several others.  Type of firing includes semi/auto/burst both suppressed/nonsuppressed.

So, no issues with EPM magazines in my experience.  I have not used them out of a M249 SAW as learned long ago to use PMags for reliability.


CD

Great to hear, thank you sir!

I picked up a few EPM mags and a cursory search yielded questionable results.  I'll load them up and make sure they agree with my rifles first, as usual.

I've got 20 new in the bag tan follower 30 round Okays.  All bags are dated 1/13.  The mag bodies are dated 12/12.

I know I'm a little late to the party, but what type of feed ramps and barrel extension is your upper equipped with? I know M4 extensions with M4 ramps are the norm these days, but I still come across non-ramped uppers every now and then.

@Norinco22

Old reference image but still the best:

Attached File

Update some time later:

Lubed the hell out of the BCG and barrel extension with Ballistol, turned in my mag catch one more turn (it was just one turn away from flush with the mag release), filed/smoothed very lightly on the right feed ramp where I saw shiny aluminum sticking out just below the steel barrel extension.

Rifle fed 100% with Magpul PMAG M3s and Lancer L5 AWMs, and chewed through 30 rounds zero issues with a VERY lightly used Okay tan follower 30-rounder, as well as a surplus salty Okay tan follower. Massive improvement over first outing where it malfunctioned multiple times cycling through Okay mags.

However, afterwards, I found that intermittently it would fail to pick up a round when loading by hand (the first round): whether from racking the charging handle or hitting the bolt catch with the BCG locked back, but ONLY on the right side. Round would nosedive into the magazine/feed ramp. It wouldn't do this all the time, but only some of the time, but only with the Okay aluminums...which I'm rather suspicious of at this point.

Paid attention to the angle/height at which the right side bullet tip sits relative to the front wall of the magazine. For the Okay mags: this seemed to change subtly but noticeably as I loaded up the mag, where sometimes it'd be angled with generous clearance; other times it looked to barely clear the front wall. The left side by comparison was much more consistently higher. Wonder if this is an artifact of the "straight, then curved" geometry of the Okay mags vs. the constant curve of the Magpuls/Lancers.  

Might just assign this gun Pmags moving forward but it still doesn't sit well with me that it has trouble with Okay magazines that work well out of other guns.

Below is a picture of my feed ramps:

https://imgur.com/a/iY8FTab

Looks like an M4 barrel extension with a M16 upper. Don't think that itself would cause problems. Maybe tolerance stacking?

I recently got some tan follower Okay surplus 30 rounders dated 07/11 and the one I took out of it's wrapper works fine.

Hope you find your rifle's issues and post here what the problem was. :-)

Interesting thread.  So I was going to be using my new 12.5 build next week and I wasn't going to get to the range because I figured everything was in order.  Got the gun dialed in and gassed right with the suppressor.  
Figured what the heck lets put 3 mags through to be sure.  Take out 3 Okay mags and wouldn't you know.  It would fire the 1st couple rounds fine but then it would push the next rounds above and forward of the chamber causing a malfunction.
I mean what the heck.  I had just run these in a 11.5" gun just fine.  All 3 magazines experienced the same issue.  As I'm stripping out the rounds, I noticed that the rounds were nose diving into the magazine or would slightly stick down in the magazine before popping up.
Shit.   So I remembered that I did my tests with a magpul 10rd gen 3 mag.  

So i load up 6 PMAGs Gen 2 and go back to the range.  The gun ran flawlessly.  So I've put all those Okay mags in the shelf for now.  I just can't rely on them to be honest.  They were only used like twice.  Yeah they were all suppressed shooting but only using them twice and they are inoperable?  Thats scary.

I’m no fan of GI mags, don’t particularly care for Okays, but I think there is some tolerance stacking issue happening to make a gun run with Pmags and choke on Okays.

Bumping this again.

Had the opportunity to fire the Okay mags with my Aero AR build (w/ M4 feed ramps) as well as a Capco A2 upper (w/ rifle feed ramps).

The magazines worked flawlessly with the Aero but had intermittent failures to feed (requiring slapping the bottom of the magazine) with the Capco. The common variable of my Okay tan followers + the rifle feed ramps make me think that's the issue combo here.

I suspect what is going on here is that the magazines that I have are somewhat worn (perhaps around the catch hole especially, these were salty USGI issue) and not sitting high enough in the receiver to feed with rifle feed ramps, whereas M4 feed ramps add just that little bit of wiggle room for reliable feeding.

Old 1960s era 20 rounders (Colt, Adventure Line, etc.) for comparison worked flawlessly in the Capco upper: inspecting the rounds loaded, the rounds sat much more angled up on both sides of the magazines: an artifact I imagine of the follower intentionally designed to tilt, for the straight body magazine and slightly tapered casings.