Piston AR15 and dirty ammo (Wolf)...

[ramathorn]

I purchased an AR15 with a gas piston system and have read about how they are supposed to run cleaner than standard AR's because the gas doesn't enter the receiver, so will it cycle dirty ammo better than the standard style (DI) AR?

I am curious because "dirty ammo" is cheap ammo, like Wolf brand, and if the piston system alleviates the dirty aspect of such ammo i'd like to save the cash.

Anyone have opinions or answers to help out?

[wilit]

I only shoot Russian ammo through my DI AR in 7.62x39 and have never had an issue with cycling. It just gets extra dirty.

[247Nino]

buy the non corrosive stuff or you will end up with rusty stuff.

[rsrocket1]

If the dirty exhaust is making its way into the receiver by going around a cartridge in the chamber, the piston won't help much.

I run my own clean burning reloads with brass in my DI AR and have no problems, but the receiver area of my piston driven Saiga is filthy after shooting com-bloc ammo. I see big chunks of carbon, bits of red primer sealant and smoke residue. Fortunately, the Saiga thrives in that environment

[Outta Control]

There will be always some amount of gases escaping the chamber from the brass ejection. There is no doubt about that but the question is how much. I think that it would very minimal due to the bolt is in motion to release the remaining gases from the chamber out the ejection port. You can see it clearly on 0:41 and 1:16 on this video.

[Outta Control]

I have an update for those who care. I just got off the phone with Adams Arms and spoke about ammo. Bottom like is that Adams Arms piston kit is not ammo specific and can still operate using Wolf ammo BUT the only caution they offered was that since Wolf and some cheap ammo has no consistency in the amount of load they use it may not exert enough energy to fully cycle the piston. So basically it is not the piston that is the problem but the ammo itself.

[sonnyt650]

I haven't had a problem with cycling on my rifle-length upper with the Adams Arms conversion even with published start loads. My throw consistency probably is a whole lot better though...

BTW the cases and chamber might still be sooty due to failure of the brass to seal off the barrel. That rifle had a really rough chrome-lined chamber which I had to smooth out because of sticking cases, so mine are always fairly sooty since I don't think I got it perfectly smooth.

[Cowboy T]

While this is regarding a Mini-14, it's still a piston rifle, so it might provide some insight. A buddy has a Mini-14 made in the year 2000, and all he shoots in it these days is com-bloc ammo (Wolf, etc.). He reports no problems, no FTF's, a little dirty but not too bad. However, Ruger SR-556's, which are piston AR's, don't seem to like the com-bloc ammo very much. They jammed like crazy with Wolf/Tula. Switching to Federal and Fiocchi Boxer/brass made it much happier.

[Outta Control]

Since I have my Mega project completed I'll be doing some test.