I hope this isn't thread necro....
"My guns short stroke with that ammo"
-Anyone else experience this symptom? Is it because the ammo is loaded a little softer than the conventional 5.56 loadings? First time I used this in my gun, I seemed to have short stroking issues too. Round would fire, eject, but not seem to drive the bolt back enough to strip the next round off the mag. It seemed to get a little better as I shot it, but it seemed to pull this sort of behavior for the first ten rounds out of 2 mags. The gun was new at the time. I know this might also be mag related, and I need to test some more. It could also have been buffer related, as I was running the Spike's heavy buffer with it. This is the first time I have experienced problems with steel cased ammo in any gun, but also my first AR, and using steel cased rifle ammo in a semi auto format (shot a ton of Wolf and *Bear in a CZ82 when I still owned it).
I have also read that while the steel alloy is soft, and should not cause any problems to really worry about as far as wear and tear...the case also doesn't expand as well as brass does...which I am guessing causes some gas blow-by, which could cause the short stroking symptom? Pretty sure that the problem does not lie in the quality of the upper, as Spike's seems to make good stuff over all (though anyone can slip up).
I have a couple hundred rounds of this stuff left (most picked up after my first shooting session... when you have no ammo, any ammo is good... and couldn't complain about the price), and it would be annoying if it was all this way. I guess I have to get out and shoot more to see if changing my buffer out (have a spare, lighter weight) helped out any. I just figured I would ask because there seems to be others experiencing similar issues with this particular type of ammo. Any information is good, when you aren't quite so sure what you are dealing with. If all the Tula I have is iffy, but my brass cased M193, M855, and Hot Shot 5.56 works well, I guess I'll just have to avoid Tula. That would be a shame, as the price is nice.