While I personally like to make sure that I put good clean ammo through my rifle… I can’t help to think that the AR rifles are a little more sensitive to bad ammo.  The reason I state this is a personal experience with several old timer on the range a while back… and what people post about surplus ammo here on the forum.

These two old timers with the SKS and AK were shooting some of the nastiest stuff I have ever seen.  The ammo came out of spam cans that was kind of rusted and the ammo inside was pretty ugly, dented case, split necks, rust, corrosion… but man, they were shooting it like it was factory grade A stuff.  And they didn’t have any issues what so ever.  Me on the other hand was shooting some left over PD stuff that I got in bulk… tossing some questionable rounds out.  The old timers came over to chit chat and told me I was throwing good ammo out.

These two old timers stated that they have seen worst stuff being eaten by AK in the ‘Nam war.  They would routinely find crates of ammo that’s hell-a rusty and corroded, and these are the stuff that’s being used against the US troops.

So, my thing is this… while I have never own an AK, I know it’s a tough little rifle.  But is it that tough that it’ll have zero issue with any type of ammo?


~nb

i've had a few FTF's in a couple AK's i built.


but then i realized it was because tapco's lower rails suck donkey dong.  so i started using k-var's lower rails and nary an issue.


point:  never had any kind of ammo-related failure in any AK or SKS i've ever owned.  and i've shot some ugly lookin ammo.

Personal experience (limited at best) has taught me that AKs are tough as nails rifles but inherently aren't as accurate as an AR.  I mean there is a reason that High Power matches are shot with ARs and not AKs or SKSs.  Point being is that AKs will shoot almost ANYTHING but even with the best ammo you'll never really get the groupings you would from an AR.  Therefore because of its loose tolerances the AK will always have true zeroing issues.  Now this is limited to my experiences with Romanian AKs only.  I've never had the opportunity to shoot higher quality AKs.