This is the tale of my AR's vs a clean AK...

Got my RRA chromed 16" m4 upper in last week, and just had to take an extended shooting trip this past Saturday to "initiate" it. A sherrif's deputy friend of mine came along, as well as one of the guys I work with who doesn't own any guns.

We took off to friends parent's home out in the boonies, and proceeded to let rip approx 500 XM193, 200 Wolf (for his AK), a few dozen mini-slugs from our shotties, and a few hundred .45/9mm rounds.

I brought my 20" varminter, the M4, FN Tactical shotgun (pretty cool, and also a recent addition for me), and 92 elite.

Friend brought a few glocks, his SW service pistol, a preban (are they all?) AK clone (romanian?), and his duty mossberg 590.

Anyhow, my non-gun-owning friends sometimes have problems with my AR not feeding properly, especially on the first round... they don't use much/any force inserting the mags, and that tends to give them a fit at least once per trip. But this day was different, both AR's went without a glitch (like they usually do when it's just me). In fact, I was kinda surprised... 9 thermolds and 3 (working) orlites, and not one problem.

Until... I went to load up an orlite mag (actually two.. but I wasn't dumb enough to try the second one) that I had received "for free" from a member of this board when purchasing a lower. Anyhow, I like the thermolds much better, and rarely use the orlites... but I loaded all my mags up ahead of time so I wouldn't have to reload them there.

When I inserted the orlite (which I can tell these two were his, because they're VERY worn out... even showing what looks to be wire mesh around the top, all mine are fairly new looking) after fininshing up my last thermold (bolt held open), and go to release the bolt. Something didn't sound right. The bolt didn't go forward.

I made sure the safety was on, and began to inspect the gun... The mag was inserted WAY to far up into the gun, almost touching the top of the upper. The bolt had slammed tight on the little plastic piece of crap mag.

After messing with it for a moment (really needed 3 hands for that) I got the mag out and looked... and the lip that stops the mag from being over-inserted was completely gone. Not shaved down a little... but filed away completely. Same with the other mag.

Well, those two went into the trash pile soon after being unloaded.

On the plus side... even tho it was a REALLY hot day out in the sun the guns shot well, we had a lot of fun shooting up 2 cash register drawers, and 2 receipt printers that I had ready for disposal from an old install job.

Then my friend started in on his AK... and I asked him if he ever bump fired it (I read about you ak guys, and studied how to do it, but never was successful trying it on the AR). He said he had tried a little gadget (hellfire?) but that it would only work for 2 ore 3 shots then need adjusting.

So, I step him thru how it's supposed to work without the gadget, and he caught on really quick. He sprayed the first 2 mags in short (5-10) bursts, then reloaded up and proceeced to dump another two mags.

On the fourth bump fired mag, ::gasp:: he had a FTE... ON AN AK!! Haha, I had to keep from bursting into uncontrollable laughter as he tried to get the bolt open... he wasn't sure if the round in the chamber was spent or not.

We started disassembling the thing, but the bolt wouldn't budge for anything... it was stuck in there good.

His excuse, "I knew I shouldn't have cleaned that thing!"

Haha, every time before this trip I always made fun of him for having NEVER cleaned this gun (I know he's had it at least 2 or 3 years). This time on the way down, he confided that he had actually broke down and cleaned the sucker...

Well, I told him to stick it in the back of the explorer (facing backwards, of course) and I'd help him mess with it when we got back. He left it to sit in the shade and cool off for a little while we finished up with the AR's and shot some slugs.

When we were packing up and leaving, he tried again and managed to pull the bolt out... It had a spent casing in it. He then bump fired the rest of the mag w/o a problem.

Soooo, other than the crap mag problem (thanks BTW c_brooks) with the AR, I got to mock my buddy for his "unreliable AK" for the rest of the trip home.

This truly was a fun trip.

Oh, and the M4 was a load of fun, the varminter was pretty accurate (for milsurplus ammo), and the minislugs were also surprisingly accurate out of both our shotguns (he said his isn't even rifled) shooting them out to about 60 yards.

cheers to the new "ultra reliable ARs" that outlast even clean AKs!!!

I used to laugh when I saw an AR jam. After laughing 2,000,000 times I got tired of it.
GG

You people with all these FTF's must be doing something really wrong.

It is very rare in fact, I cant remember the last time I had a FTF in any of my guns.
I have a good amount of AR's all mil-spec and USGI mags. Good ammo and never problems. Maybe thats it?

Seen plenty of NA Afghanis on film during Op. Enduring Freedom constantly cycling their AK's,  fire a couple rounds, look down, cycle again........fire and repeat.  Granted they probably werent that clean but it's an AK right?

don't get me wrong, I wasn't knocking AK's... just laughing at the particular situation.

To my knowledge, he's never had a problem with that gun before that incident... it just was funny. On the trip down the two of us had been explaining to the other friend (who doesn't know much about AR/AK guns) some of the generalizations about the guns... one was that the AK was so reliable, heh.

And other than not having a mag inserted right, I haven't seen any issues with any of my 3 ARs, nor his AK (till now).

Both my USGI 20 mags will FTF if the mag isn't inserted fully, the round will start to strip, but it looks like it doesn't quite hit the feed ramp, and the bullet gets pressed back into the brass... A few of my friends have managed to do that about 3 or 4 times... dunno how.

This was all just a humorous light on a seemingly reversed situation... not trying to imply this is the norm.

Out of curiosity... what might have caused his gun to do that? Overheating?

That's my guess, since even the wood grips were getting too hot to hold, and once we left it to cool off a while, the bolt released.

steenkybastage,  Could be lot's of things, but the heat combined with low powered, laquer coated Wolf ammo is the probable culprit.  I have a SAR-1 and shoot nothing but Wolf in it and I have'nt had a single FTF/FTE in over 4000 rounds. I have gotten it plenty hot several times but I have never bump fired 4 mags through it on a really hot day. One thing is for sure though, you had better hope that your friend isn't there when the malf fairy visits your AR!  You will surely reap what you have sown...IN SPADES