30roundsisstandard wrote:Hi Guys, Recently got my new WFA1L rifle and I have put about 100 rounds through it and it seems to be getting a few tight extractions say 4 to 5 out of a mag of 10; It gets better when you heat it up. I have tried a few different ammo brands including, federal, hornady, osa, and ppu, all in 55 grain 223. so far the federal and hornady work best followed by osa and worst of all ppu. (ppu is cheap crap anyway so
) Im just wondering if I need to just keep breaking it in or if something else could be up? any thoughts, recommendations or experiences are welcome? (Yes I am aware the manual says to only use recommended brands of ammo to avoid tight case extraction albeit it does not specify which brands are recommended. I have also made sure to make sure all contacting surfaces are well lubed.)
Cheers.
I have 2 WFA1L rifles. One in 223 and the other 300BLK. With factory (OSA) ammo the 300BLK has the same issue purely because of the very tight tolerances they set these rifles up with. The OSA ammo is on the high side of the velocity scale. If I use my own reloads which are mid range velocity I have zero extraction problems.
The 223 rifle has only had OSA factory ammo and my reloads run through it. My reloads have zero issues, the OSA ammo in this rifle did have an extraction problem early on but with more and more use it settled down. I took the 300BLK rifle to Scott and they found no problems so I continued using my lower velocity reloads without issue and eventually the OSA stuff became much less of a problem.
The other advice you got here about tight chamber, scratched chamber etc. is worth looking into. I have a borescope and found no such problems with either of mine.
Initially I also found very thorough cleaning was essential given the tolerances are tight on many of these rifles. The accuracy on both of mine is excellent for a 14" barrel.
By the way, your reference to PPU ammo is wrong. The quality is as good as most of the better known name brands, they are unfortunately like many loaded for very high velocity and are therefore more likely to cause issues in a tight chamber.
It would be useful if you can find someone locally who can reload some of your rounds with a lighter load till the rifle wears in a little. I load my 223's with 22gr of 2206H powder, full length sized and trimmed cases to 1.750", Hornady bulk 55gr bullets (the cheap flat based ones) and OAL of 2.190" for a velocity of about 2650fps through the short 14" barrel
These rounds are extremely accurate on targets at 100 meters or more. I'm pretty blind so I don't shoot beyond 100 but they are pretty flat to over 200 meters.
If you are not in Melbourne it would be a good idea to borescope the rifle chamber to see if any problems exist and also check the headspace.