Why steel case ammo, you ask? Well, I'm sitting on 4k, from my Sig 556R. It ate steel-cased ammo and ran flawlessly.
So my next option over the last year was the IWI galil ace gen 2. It takes AK mags, and I've got a number of them left over from the Sig 556R, it eats steel-cased ammo. The problem comes in a couple of ways. It's way over-gassed, to begin with. With a Can, you will overdrive the bolt, and a few have actually damaged the gun. I spoke with several owners who picked up a KNS adjustable gas piston and ran cans similar to what I have. They all said it still is way over-gassed, and most are sending their adjustable pistons out to have more adjustment put on them, plus putting in new stiffer recoil springs. So, i held off. I held off so long that the US supply was gone when i finally went to buy one.
Incomes the new Sig Spear LT in 7.62x39. It has an adjustable gas port, and it is in the right caliber, but does not use AK mags. I watched a couple of videos, and kicked the idea around for a few months. Finally, I gave in.
In this photo i am removing the stock sig flash hider and putting on my Dead Air Keymo muzzle brake. The upper fits on, locks in on any AR-15 Action bar. In this case it is my Geissiele action bar.
The rifle is together, the keymo brake is on, and oddly enough my original Sig sauer electro optic red dot that came with my sig 556r. These were cheap 50-dollar reddots. Most people tossed them, but this one holds zero and allowed me the chance to shoot the Spear LT.
That first night I put 200 rounds through the sig with out issue. I ran the gun until it was too hot to hold. It ate every mix of steel-cased ammo that i gave it.
The sig has a number of features, and according to sig, the foremost of those is that the SPEAR LT series was designed first as a 7.62x39 rifle, with a 5.56 and 300 blackout upper to follow. That, for me, is key, as most AR pattern 7.62x39 rifles do not feed well from the AR pattern Duramag magazines. Sig went out of its way to design the rifle, barrel, and chamber to accommodate the Duramag-style magazine.
The stock duramags are 28 rounds, I picked up several extras; a 10, 20, (2) 28's and one 30-round mag. Here is the size comparison.
Left to right: 30, 28, 20, 10
In my opinion, the sweet spot for the mags are the 20 rounders. They balance out the size, and weight, and that allows you to shoot off bags pretty easily. The 28's and 30's are quite a bit longer and can cause some user induced problems if the magazine rests against a bag or a shooting bench. Specifically, it keeps the extractor from removing cases from the chamber
Here you can see the extractors attempt to remove the steel case from the chamber when the mag was touching my shooting bench.
I checked the bolt for damage after removing the spent case. (it popped right out with a dowl) There was damage to the extractor.
At this point, I suspected the cause of the problem and confirmed it with a second shot. It's user induced an not a fault of the gun.
Once I cleared that spent case, the gun fired the remaining 27 rounds flawlessly.
How accurate is it? Here is a six-shot group. The two on the right are the two shots after removing the stuck cases. The distance was 50 yds using my aethon 6-24. I've not used a high-powered scope in years. This is also using mixed loose pack steel cased ammo that i had in an ammo can. It's a mix of wolf, tula, barnul.
This is a 28-round mag; I shot it as soon as the scope settled down.
The gun is more accurate than those give it credit for. I'm not the best rifle shot. Here is it set up during the above testing.
While I was shooting, my Eotech Xps2 arrived. I swapped out the scope for the eotech. This time I used one type of ammo and the 20 round mag that didn't hit the table to sight in.
My first three off hand shots at 25 yards to check eotech's zero
My second group is from my bench at 50 yards. The first 6 shots are on the left. I walked down to spot where I was hitting and then made final adjustments for the Eotech. The remaining 12 are in the middle
Total rounds through it in two days. 460. The total number of failures? 2, induced by me when the mag rested against the bench or bag.
