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Posted: 8/2/2008 3:49:35 PM EDT
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Shot my AR for the first time today and had some interesting problems. It would not reliably feed SP's (Hornady). The bullet would chamber but the bolt would not fully close and it would jam, requiring an absurd amount of force to get it un-stuck. So I stopped using the SP's. I loaded up 30 rounds of my SS109 reloads. 24 went off just great, on the 25th round the bolt jammed. Had to remove the upper from the lower and basically hammer a cleaning rod down the barrel to get this bullet out. My AR parts are pretty much new, no wear at all. Could this have been caused by bad reloads? If so what did I screw up? |
| How much are you setting back the shoulder with your sizer die? If you don't have an answer for that, it's your reloads. The shoulder on fire-formed cases should be set back 0.002" or theres abouts. It is likely your chamber has very tight headspace. What brand of a barrel are you running? |
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its a DPMS lightweight barrel in a DPMS A3 upper haven't a clue on the setting of the case shoulder, so that must be the issue. maybe the case was too long? I measuered all of them but trimmed only the ones that were a little too long, maybe a couple slipped past me. |
the red could kaboom your rifle BUY some ammo first, to see if its the reloads or the rifle-I'm betting reloads. If you don't understand shoulder setback, I would suggest stop reloading until you do |
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Sounds like whatever sizing die your using is not sizing the cases down sufficiently. Some cases will spring back more than others so it's a good idea to size semi-auto rounds back down to minimum SAAMI spec to make sure they'll feed every time. The only dies guaranteed to do that are ones specifically designed for that purpose. They are listed as "small base" dies. I would guess you are not using a small base die. Redding Small Base Die |
Unless you are using a Lee FCD crimper, you need to have all the cases unify in length for a consistent crimp. Without such, you can get a longer case in the mix, that when crimped, will buckle the shoulders of the case (maybe not enough to see, but enough for the case to stick in the chamber at loading and cause the problems you are having). |
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