What is wrong with indian 308

[silentpoet]

Ok, help a new guy out. Explain why indian ammo is so bad. I would do a search, but the forum is so new that there is no information. I know this is covering familiar old ground to most of you so I do apologize.

I bought from a vendor some other ammo this weekend, they had the dreaded indian. I wasn't really in the market for a big supply. But I did buy some 303 for the enfield, and a couple of boxes of silver bear .308.

[nalioth]

Some lots of indian ammo have been known to have passed QC (as in: Quality Control was off work that day).

This ammo will at best foul up your Cetme (it is full of tar and leaks) or at worst, blow it up. Several members have gotten some and weighed out the components, and found huge variances in the powder charges. Some of it does not have the bullet seated properly.

Perro can put the indian ammo thread back up when he gets time to do so.

:dsia:

[okie shooter]

Its a long story really, first the indians did not pay to adopt the fal or offically adopt the L1A1 rifle, they copied the rifle by reverse engineering. Thus I imagine their set up of ammo production maybe hit and miss too. That said I imagine there has been great numbers of rounds made by the indian armories and use in three or more wars.

The one problem with the ammo was the choice of sealant for the bullet. They seem to have chosed tar to seal their ammo rather than a laquer. There have been huge quality control problems with the later stuff. Mis seated bullets, crushed case necks and others. The newer stuff is less than ten years old thus they excessed it for some reason.

The older stuff has been stored with some questionable enviromental controls thus some of it looks good and others dosent.

On both sets of ammo there have been reports of undercharged rounds, over charged rounds and some with garbage in the charges. Thus they had quality control problems out the kazoo. There are reports that the indian army tankers wont shot their main battle rounds in the tanks due to the high failure rates and deaths. Thus on the past cetme board, the stuff has a negitive rep.

On other boards the guys swear its good ammo(atleast the bandolered stuff from the seventies), or have mixed opnions on the stuff. Its up to you to gather up what you can on the ammo and make judgement on what you will shoot. Thats my two cents on it. I personally don't shoot the stuff even though I have seen many variants of the stuff.

As stated above there are problems with the ammo to include detonations and explosions to destroy firearms.

[Seattlefungus]

A lot of the ammo boxed show signs of sitting out in outside storage with no cover. The paint is rusting through, the seals show signs of cracking due to extreme temp changes. None of these things are good for primers or powder. There is a reason we store ordinance in a climate controlled bunker....

[okie shooter]

Fungus, I can show you US ammo that is in bad shape, and I have to work with it everyday on my job demilling stuff. Even covered storage you can get problems if seals fail. I imagine the indians and other countries try to use covered storage(its covered but very little of it is climate controled, but earth covered keeps the temps fairly constant) but not everyone has the luxory of good storage. There are other reasons for ammo degration, issue and return from theater is one too.

The US Army(the branch of the service responsable for conventional ammo) will store outside if they have too(not all ammo is in earth covered magazines even though we would like it to be), we store many obselete items awaiting disposable for months and years on outdoor sites. It makes my job a PITA but I just do what I have to do to get the stuff off the books and demilled.

[97th Signalman]

I am one of the guys who had a health threatening experience with Indian ammo. Aside from non-firing duds and misfeeds due to poor bullet seating, I also had a squib load (primer fired but did not ignite all of the propellant or there wasn't enough propellant). That sent a round about one inch up the barrel. The rifle cycled and tried to chamber the next round but (fortunately as it turns out) the tip of the fresh round ran into the base of the bullet that was stuck in the bore so the rifle could not lock up and could not be fired. Consider two ifs...If the squib bullet has gone further up the bore and If I had been in rapid fire mode and pulled the trigger...well you figure it out. KABOOM!!! That was enough for me. I then logged onto the old CETME forum for the first time and found all of these blinking banners.

:dsia:

I took the rest of the Indian ammo and gave it back to the shop at the range where I bought it and gave it to them. I will say that they kept right on selling this stuff until it was all gone.

[M1 Tanker]

Let me make it simple. The Indian 7.62 that was imported in 10 round plastic bags or loose in ammo cans (and sometimes on stripper clips due to some evil dealers at gunshows) was literally swept up off the floor of a warehouse.

This ammo is completely unsafe to fire.

[SteelCore]

Tar as a sealant will gum up the flutes in HKs and CETME chambers. That is bad.

One of the forum rules on the old site was actually not to endorse the use, sale trade, or purchase of any OFV headstamped ammo.

When hi-quality milsurp 762NATO was selling for 20cents or less a round, this stiff was seling for 10cents or less...that was enough to make most folks go "Hmmm" but with the dearth of milsurp now, it makes ppl willing to buy this stuff ...

I like my hands, fingers, and rifles too much to use such junk-grade ammo.

[okie shooter]

Chris, I just didnt want to bag on the indian ammo without giving some explination. Just everyone seems to automatically bag on the ammo and many have never shot the stuff. The photos of failures say a 1000 words for the extreem problems seen with the stuff.

[Grasshopper]

Found a picture of this squib.:dsia:

[SteelCore]

Yeah, who really needs an M-14 ...yikes!

a 1600 dollar rifle....destroyed by OFV...wheres the one with the 1919 that was trashed? Or was it an MG 42?

[Rampager]

Here's a link on another site showing the dangers of shooting indian ammo in an MG42...what a shame, ruined a very expensive gun:http://www.blackrivermilitaria.com/MG42/MG42ammowarning.html

[Perro]

the ammo that is noted mostly as being bad came in the country 3 or 4 years ago. It was headstamped 97, 98, and 02 (and maybe others, but i think thats the big ones)
it was selling for $00.10 a round when it came in when all other good surplus was selling for $00.16 a round.
it has blown up alot of guns. I witnessed it blow the top cover on a very expensive mag58/m240g so i did some research and found out that this wasnt the only gun it had destroyed - more guns than ANY other surplus ammo ever released onto the US market, and im sure there are plenty we dont know about.

i found a guy who is on the inside, and this is what he told me

#1 the indian army found the ammo to be bad, so they turned all of it in, and it sat on the floor of a wearhouse (loose, not even in boxes)
all the years that were causing the indian army problems were turned in.
a US distrubutor bought the ammo, and when they found how many of them were UNSHOOTABLE, they complained, and the indian army sent them some more from other years to make up for the bad rounds (and this is where the 02 dated stuff came from)

Later on, after all the ammo sold out, said distrubutor sold the remaining junk ammo for components use only to a few vendors. who then resold it.


If the indian army wont shoot it, i wont shoot it either, at least in nothing i care about.

I had a complete list of firearms it had blown up with photos on the old website, but some hacker ate it for lunch. I cannot tell you exactly what years caused the KBs, but for the most part, it was the 97, and 98 dated ammo as far as i can remember.

The biggest danger from the stuff is from a squib round - read lost in texas thread for a description of what this stuff is noted for.

I pulled apart a bunch of it and weighed everything - it had as much as 6 grains of powder difference from highest to lowest charge - that is dangerous. Most reloading manuals tell you to start out small and work up - 6 grains of powder difference between charges is unsafe if you ask me. The brass also weighed grains difference between themselves, so dont think you can just throw the loaded bullet into a digital scale and determine total weight to be a good indicator as to whether or not you are holding the poison pill. all measurements on my end taken with a pact digital reloaders scale.

i have zero experiance with any of the indian ammo dated anything but 97,98, or 02 - after seeing that stuff, i have no desire to buy any ammo made in that country. i cannot tell you what years the indian ammo was from that blew up everyones guns, i can only remember that a majority of it was the 97 or 98 dated stuff

your results may vary - this is only meant to inform, but you are a grown man and the decision to shoot the stuff falls on your shoulders.

If you are asking opinions, ill tell you not to shoot the stuff - it DEFINATELY aint worth the price they are asking for it. You can reload QUALITY ammo for less, but of course, thats alot of work too.


another thing, this stuff doesnt work well in a cetme or a HK. The tar sealant clogs the flutes and will shut the action down in short order. I bought CAI G3 from a buddy at a gun show on the CHEAP. He told me it wouldnt work, was a turd gun, blah blah blah. I took it out and shot it, and it of course, it wouldnt fire reliably more than 2 to 3 rounds without jamming. I cleaned the chamber at that point, and the amount of tar i pulled out of it was HEINOUS. I asked him what kind of ammo he had shot with it, and he said surplus?? Then i asked him if the headstamp was OFV and he said yes. I found that one shot case lube cleaned the inside of the cases well, so i cleaned the chamber with that, and the patches that came out of the bore were HEINOUS (ask rickinvegas, he can verify). Then i followed that with wd40 until it came out clean patches. Dried it, and it has NEVER given me another hiccup again since - best $250.00 i ever spent (cast receiver g3 too, back when they were selling for 600.00 from CAI)

your mileage may vary - im only trying to warn you, but ultimately, the decision to shoot it is yours - probably be OK in a bolt action
cause you can watch each round to insure that it impacts the dirt berm - no puff of smoke, and you have better check that bore for obstructions before loading the next round into the chamber - that means it really is unsafe for semi auto rapid fire, AND DEFINATELY in a MG

my opinions only


Mike

[Seattlefungus]

Yeah Okie Shooter, I've seen bad stored US ammo, Like opening a conex box full of ammo during a monsoon and having a flood of water poor out cause the box had a bad seam and everyting rusted shut. (Back before big semi box trailers everything went in to conex boxes,) about 8X8X8... I worked as a range coach at the Hanson range in 1974 on Okinawa and I found old pallets of ammo for M1 Garand rifle .30 cal enbloc in the back of a small arms ammo bunker marked 1958... But the Indian ammo box I have in the garage has the paint oxidized from sun exposure.. I opened the box just to look at the ammo and the interior had expanded and contracted so much from variance in temps that I had to use a chisel and mallet to open it... It sounded like a vacuum packed can of Planter peanuts opening. The rubber gasket was crumbling. It was amazing it had maintained a seal at all..

[vista461]

I was at a gun show a month or 2 ago and saw some of the indian .308 in the plastic bags. I picked two bags off the top of the pile. One had a round with the bullet half out of the case and the other had a case with a crack from the neck to the shoulder. I had seen enough. I have heard 70's stuff is ok, but I don't know.

[okie shooter]

Seattlefungus, I imagine the Indian ammo has been to the field more than once, since they have armed the border with pakistan on and off for thirty or more years. fought some wars and such.

[SteelCore]

THat sums it up nicely, man.

--Steely.

[fal_762x51]

This is why you check the Indian before you shoot.

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i219/calegal/c4cd.jpg

I found this in a '97 lot. Out of 1k, 10-15% had to be pulled down, the rest were fine.

[nevada]

FAL, you only think they are fine. Like a good looking woman with herpes, you don't know what's inside. The 50-60 I shot before giving the rest to the Fire Dept ranged from powder puff to magnum in recoil. Maybe they are ok to use in a good bolt action, but it's not something I would do. And there a lot people who have had no problems - they say - with Indian. Your call.

[XO3319]

I like my weapons too much to shoot Indian or stay too close to anyone who does

[drhall762]

Great info. Once again the pictures convey the story best.

Dave :sniper:

[M1 Tanker]

FYI, there is now an Indian Ammo Sticky again.

[okie shooter]

Chris, why dont you merge the two threads

[M1 Tanker]

Okie, I linked this thread to the sticky.

[jfowl31]

Just to add to the discussion, I was talking with a friend of a friend at the shooting range and he pulled outsome Indian to shoot. I told him I didnt want to be within shrapnel distance whenever he shot it. I started telling him the stories about the crap, and it then aparently dawned on him that he had lost a rifle to this ammo.

He THOUGHT at the time that it was a bad rifle. It was an M14, maybe norinco made? And he thought it was just the crappy rifle that had blown up for no reason, but I think I convinced him it was the ammo. From what he tells me, it either fired out of battery or was just a grossly overloaded round. bubbled out the receiver, and all the pressure came back an went down the magwell, blowing out all the rounds and the bottom of the magazine. he said there wasnt a single salvageable part from it because everything was either deformed or cracked.

yet another fatality............

I think we can stop saying YMMV........... just dont shoot the shit!

[fal_762x51]

Ah, typo on my part. That double rimmed round was from a '97 lot.

I should have said that, thanks Nevada; "To me most were fine." I found it to greatly depend on the lot date; there is a 2k box of '02 waiting to be pulled down in the closet.

[DAT19K]

is it boxer primed? would it be worth buying up a bunch and dismantling it down to just brass, reprime and load correctly? reloadable .308 brass seems to be getting scarce and more expensive.

[fal_762x51]

The brass looks like poo.

[weasel_master]

As Perro noted before, it needs to be annealed before reloading. A simple glance at it and you can see. You need to heat the end to anneal it so when fired, it won't split but expand into the chamber.

[AK AJ]

As Perro noted before, it needs to be annealed before reloading. A simple glance at it and you can see. You need to heat the end to anneal it so when fired, it won't split but expand into the chamber.

Brass like all metals need to be "annealed" at a certain temperature. It's not worth the risk or the time, either don't buy it, or scrap it if you allready have it.
Making it hot then quencing it, doesn't nessisarily anneal it.

AJ