The Russian Mosin Nagant Forum

So last Boxing day CanadaAmmo had a good sale going on and I snagged a 1000rd crate of Norinco 7.62x54r for $199 and that's a darn good price.
Today was the first time that I tried this ammo and I am not impressed one bit.I fired 50 rounds out of my SVT 40 and had five failure to fire rounds.Yes they fired on the second try but 5 out of 50?Damn that's 10% for crying out loud.
When I was picking up my empty cases I found one that was split right at the neck line.
I never had a split case with Russian surplus that I know of and holy smokes I've gone through 3 spam cans of 440 rounds each.
So my first question is...
What caused this case to split and is this ammo safe to shoot?
I don't want to blow up my rifle or my face..

Thoughts?

Your rifles passed headspace? If so then chalk this up to shit happens or cheap ammo with thin brass cases.

If you weren't in Canuckland, I'd say send that case to me for testing and evaluation.....

The paperwork would be horrendous, I'm sure.

Not horribly surprised, I've had Albanian split like that, and the odd first-strike dud, bot not 10% of them. Maybe you got all the duds in the lot right off.

What caused this case to split and is this ammo safe to shoot?

Either a fold where the split occurred, or age, or both.

Did you notice any gas leakage? If not, don't worry. Actually, an SVT should vent away from the face, anyway, so it shouldn't be dangerous, just annoying.

I haven't had problems with duds, but the Romanian surplus splits a lot of necks. It doesn't seem to be an issue. I had a couple hundred rounds of Chinese 7.62x54r a few years ago that I shot up. No duds, but I bet I was averaging 35% click bang fires. Not awful delays, but noticeable. The Chinese stuff was accurate though.

I should say I'm shooting all of this out of bolt guns, not semi auto's. I can see where the duds would be frustrating in a SVT.

I had a bunch of Bulgarian from the 50s that split like that. It all shot fine,but the splits worried me until I realized it didnt seem to be an issue

I have had case splitting issues with my SVT 40 also.

For those who have not seen any of these PRC 1000rd crates, this is new-production machine gun ammunition apparently made for export. It is more-or-less standard Type 53 steel-core (LPS) with bimetallic jackets and cases, but packed in 125rd paper-wrapped bundles, four bundles to the spam can, two cans to the crate, and all markings and the machine-gun-oriented data sheet inside the crate are in English only. All the headstamps (61/11) and can/crate markings that I have seen indicate factory 61 and 2011 production. It was originally advertised here as noncorrosive-primed but it appears they weren't too careful about component segregation in the factory as some lots (or maybe batches within lots?) have turned out to be corrosive but not others, and it has a reputation for good reliability but not necessarily great accuracy. Some folks have reported that it's no worse than most milsurp while others have reported that it throws frequent flyers outside a main group. I haven't benched it enough yet to comment on accuracy (old eyes with open sights require multiple sessions to separate bad shooting from bad ammo) but it has been perfectly reliable in my Mosins and SVT40, although I can't recall whether I've had any neck, shoulder, or body splits, partly because I sort of expect them in steel cases and don't pay much attention unless something looks potentially dangerous.

Regards,
Joel