*** Advisory Warning - June 8, 2017 ***
WOLF Performance Ammunition has received notifications relating to Smith & Wesson M&P-15 rifles that are discharging out of battery which is evidenced by a lack of damage to the chamber and barrel extension. This shows that the rifle’s bolt did not lock into the barrel, yet the hammer was still able to strike the firing pin to detonate the cartridge and cause a failure.

Advisory - Wolf Performance Ammunition, steel cased ammo, brass ammo,

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This sounds more like a weapon problem than an ammo problem.
I'm not sure I understand.

Wolf is taking a vary cautious stance.

But being unique to only M&P15 firearms is pretty weird.

I was thinking the same thing but Wolf is the one posting this to seem to say it's the ammo?!?! Or maybe they're just trying not to blame anyone for fear of loosing customers?!

Another thing is they didn't mention which ammo. They say M&P 15 which is 223/556 but they SELL (Wolf is an American company and doesn't make ammo) quite a few different types from different plants and countries around the world. Steel case comes from Russian plants (Tula) but brass comes from Taiwan (used to be PPU many years ago).

Wolf gold has been the go to for inexpensive yet well made range and practice ammo. Prior to the election they were selling around $300 - $320/1000rds. Now they're $270 or so.



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I have around 350 rounds of Tulammo which I was told was made with the Wolf, I wonder if I should take caution when shooting those.

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The other way around. Tula makes ammo for Wolf and sells under it's own name too.

Wolf ammo is a trademark of Sporting Supplies International out of California

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Thanks, guess I will shot a few and see how they act, but then it only takes one to mess up your day.

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The warning was June 8th. I think if there was some serious problems the internet would be blowing up with all kinds of posts about damaged rifles

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Keep your chamber clean for sure. I have shot a bit of Wolf and Tula in my early Sport with no trouble to report. However in a Savage .223, after just a few rounds, cases were very difficult to extract from its tighter chamber. Since then , I have been reluctant to shoot the balance of my Wolf 62gr ammo. If and when I do I will devote extra attention to the chamber cleaning.
Jim

I have been shooting WOLF steel case ammo since December '06 in my Sport I. And, in my AR-556 since early '16. I have not had ANY problems with it. I have close to 2K rounds of it and will keep shooting it as normal.

Talked to James at Wolf CS.

James says it's specific to the M&P 15. He said with all .223 Wolf sells they will usually get a couple reports total per year regarding out of battery discharge for all brands of rifles. But this year they have had seven out of battery reports with the M&P 15. James said it includes both steel and brass cased ammo. So... with the unusually high OOB reports they posted the advisory warning.

Which begs the question, have other ammo manufacturers reported an up swing in OOB discharges with MP-15 rifles?

Larry

They need someone who speaks English to write their advisories. The problem is "...evidenced by a LACK OF DAMAGE to the chamber and barrel extension" ??? They're saying that if everything looks OK, there's a problem!?

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Pisgah

There are two sentences.

"WOLF Performance Ammunition has received notifications relating to Smith & Wesson M&P-15 rifles that are discharging out of battery which is evidenced by a lack of damage to the chamber and barrel extension. <----------- This shows that the rifle’s bolt did not lock into the barrel, yet the hammer was still able to strike the firing pin to detonate the cartridge and cause a failure."

My guess is that not everything "looked ok" . Blown out magazines and probably receiver failures.

For inquiries or challenge their conclusions, Wolf can be reached at (888) 757-WOLF (9653)

Is there something unique about an M&P 15 vs a normal milspec AR-15? Cause the bolt carrier and components should have dimensions such that the firing pin is not long enough to touch the primer unless the bolt is cammed to the locked position.

The firing pin is housed in the bolt. As long as the case head is 'flat' against the bolt face, the primer is in reach of the firing pin--regardless of whether the bolt has rotated and locked into the barrel extension, or even if bolt is only partially into the barrel extension.

No, it doesn't. If you have a milspec AR 15 pull your carrier out and try. If it is the correct dimensions for all the parts it the firing pin by design CANNOT extend past the bolt face until the carrier is fully in battery.

Ned Christiansen did a cutaway to illustrate the fact. That bolt is locked into the lugs but the carrier is still slightly OOB.



You can read about it here.

How does AR15 bolt carrier prevent hammere-follow slam fire, when using hammer with notched top? - Page 1 - AR15.COM

?? For The Experts: Out Of Battery Discharge - What Prevents It? - AR15.COM

So my question still is, what makes the M&P different? Or is it just BS and bad ammo that Wolf is covering up.

I'll pull a BCA and take a look at it, eventually. I haven't seen many actions that aren't capable of ignition, less than 100% in battery.

Does the M&P carrier have the internal structure cited in your references?

There's mention on another firearm forum about a conversation with
"James" of Wolf:

A rep named James stated with all .223 Wolf sells they will usually get a couple reports total per year regarding out of battery discharge for all brands of rifles. But this year they have had seven out of battery reports with the M&P 15. James said it includes both steel and brass cased ammo.

Posting links to items on sale Amazon and Office Depot gets "infractions" here, so you'll have to use your Google-fu.

You are most likely quoting me on TFL which is referencing ChattanoogaPhil from this thread.

Look up post #11

I am with BlueOvalBandit on this one. An OOB firing cannot happen in a AR15 with a Milspec bolt that is within spec and not damaged in some way. That does not mean it never happens but when it does the rifle, specifically the BCG, or the ammo is out of spec.

If you look at Ned Christiansen cutaway photo provided by BlueOvalBandit you can see that in order for the ammo to be the cause of the OOB firing the primer would be so proud of the case that there is almost no way you would not notice it when loading the round into the magazine. IMHO.

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So we're back to the same question:

Does the M&P 15 carrier have the same internal structure,
as referenced?

Maybe the increase in reported OOBs is simply due to 1000s more being sold since the drastic price drop?

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We know very little about the M&P bolts or carriers. We know that they are not full auto bolt carriers. Some are not HPT/MPI marked. I believe some of the higher end ones are HP marked but the Sport IIs are not.

S&W will tell you almost nothing about the construction or manufacturing of the BCG. I personally have not heard any real issues with the S&W BCGs. I prefer full auto BCG but semi auto carriers work.

Even a semi auto bolt carrier should function in the same way. I wonder if there is just a run of defective BCG in some S&W guns which are just starting to show themselves. It could also be that the combination of the slightly out of spec S&W BCGs and Wolf ammo is a nexus of bad. The stacking of the 2 are causing an issue not see in other brands. Really it is all speculation.

If I owned a M&P15 I personally would look to other ammos because there are so many good rounds being sold in the sub $.30 range these days that it is not worth taking the chance. The other thing to do is call S&W and see what they say.

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A rise in the number of rifles sold would not increase the OOB firings unless the volume part has cause a slip in QC. An inspect AR15 should not be able to fire OOB. Does not matter if you have sold 1 to 1,000,000 in spec rifles the number of OOBs should be ZERO.

If they are selling guns which are out of spec.

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I believe the point he was making is that if you have 1 failure with 10,000 rifles, it's not unreasonable to see 7 with 70,000 sold. So, the increased number of failures reported could indeed simply be because of an increase in sales.

However, I do agree that there should never be even the possibility of an out-of-battery discharge. I also agree that the specification of the bolt carrier and bolt (together they make the bolt carrier group or BCG) is such that it would have to be a dramatically jacked up BCG to fire out of battery.

I think this is a knee jerk reaction from Wolf. It sounds like they are simply trying to do a little CYA rather than actually investigating the situation and digging down to the root cause.

I don't have an M&P15 at the moment. Even so, I pulled the BCG out of an AR and examined the protrusion of the pin relative to the position of the bolt. There is no way on God's green earth that firing pin in my BCG could contact the primer on any round if the lugs are not locked. If the bolt has not rotated at least a little, the firing pin doesn't protrude at all from the bolt face. If it doesn't protrude from the bolt face, it can't fire.

Further, the number WVSig picked is a very interesting number. In the world of statistics, 3.4 failures per 1 million opportunities forms a failure curve that is 6 standard deviations from nominal. In other words, in the real world, it's about as close to perfect, or failure free, as any mechanical device can hope to get.

In my opinion, any gun that can actually fire out-of-battery, has a serious problem. Assuming that it's the gun's fault and not a stray piece of debris causing the failure, which is more likely than an out-of-battery ignition from a gun like the M&P15.

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CARRIER...not bolt. Compare the carrier internal structure,
between tail of bolt and flange of firing pin.

Well, go ahead and eyeball the bolt, too...low hanging fruit, easy to compare. Might was well throw the firing pin in, too.

Semi-auto and select fire carriers are different at back end...if carrier acts to prevent firing pin protrusion on an unlocked bolt, that's a feature that would not logically be exclusive to a semi- carrier.

Don't know much about either the bolt or carrier IMHO. All we know is that they are not HPT/MPI marked and they are semi auto and for the most part have run well which would lead one to believe that the overwhelming number of them are within spec and working properly.

I don't need to inspect anything because I don't own a M&P 15. I am only bringing this to the attention of the forum because it might help others.

I agree that there is a difference between full auto and semi auto carriers but it does not really tell us anything does it. Oh well hope it amounts to nothing for those who own M&P 15s and shoot Wolf ammo.

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Think of the countless millions of rounds of .223 Wolf sells and all the autoloading rifles (not just AR platforms) from an endless list of manufactures that are already in circulation over past decades as well as new sales. With all that... Wolf told me they typically get a couple OOB reports a year. Now in the first half of this year they get seven OOB reports from a single manufacture, S&W. M&P sales volume can't explain that.

Has anyone contacted Smith&Wesson to get some feedback from them? I'll send them an e-mail and see what response, if any, I get back from them.

Let us know what they say.

A somewhat related side story.... Soon after S&W introduced the M&P 15-22 this forum was flooded with OOB reports. I don't recall S&W ever making a statement on the subject other than when they returned repaired rifles that had been sent in with blown off extractors and other damage, S&W would include a repair sheet "Updated to latest Spec". IIRC, it was close to two years before OOB reports slowed down. Course a .22lr OOB is not quite as exciting as a 5.56.

Yeah, non of the info on the 15-22 issue was ever very clear. Supposedly started at an Appleseed event with a participant having some issues and an official worked on the gun and then the OOB happened.

S&W never promulgated anything, as usual.

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Indeed, but without a proper statistical analysis we can't be sure there is a correlation between manufacturer and malfunction. It very well could be an anomaly, just simple chance that they've had 7 from the M&P line. It very well could have been 7 random AR15s. We just don't know.

Even so, the probability of 7 from any one manufacturer is surely low. Numbers are funny things. If not applied properly or analyzed properly, the wrong conclusions can be drawn. For example, it is possible that a significant correlation can be shown between the number of characters typed on the S&W Forum and the number of shooting fatalities in Chicago, but anyone with a brain can see that this cannot be real.

My only point in my last post was that there is a real connection between number of failures and sales volume. Does it account for this issue? Certainly not. Even so, I still believe that Wolf has done no real analysis and is just doing a knee jerk reaction. At the volume of .223/5.56 sales they do, losing the entire M&P15 market isn't going to significantly affect their bottom line. I may think their reaction is without analysis, but it's not the wrong way to go for them.

The only question left is, can there really be a flaw in the S&W design that doesn't show up in any other AR out there?

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Rastoff, IMHO, I think you may have hit upon something there.
Why now, why with an M&P15? Could S&W have "cut corners" somewhere due to increased sales of the M&P15?
Things that make you go, Hmmmmmm............

The Appleseed incident is fairly recent... The 15-22 OOB incidents that Phil is referring to is from 8 or 9 years ago, when the 15-22 first appeared. S&W changed out springs to alleviate the issue.

OK, let's get a little perspective here. First and foremost, there are only a very limited number of sources for bolt carriers. Given their reputation, S&W isn't going to source their carriers from folks who produce scrap. NO AR builder makes all the parts-even Colt.

That said, manufacturing tolerance stack does exist and can cause problems.

Now let's get down to brass tacks. Prior to retirement, there was, several years ago, a number of over pressure events with a certain brand of US made new factory ammo. In the usual manner, ammo company blamed firearm manufacturer, and vice-versa, leaving the firearm owners in the lurch. When we had the problem, I talked my employers into sending ammo & firearm to HP White Laboratories. They actually wanted several firearms, close as possible in serial number. It was determined that it was an ammunition problem. Faced with this, the ammo company exchanged all our ammo, threw in extra and covered both repair costs and the HP White fee. "Bad" ammo does exist and can happen from any source.

If anyone really wants a definitive answer for YOUR event, there's your method. BTW, you're talking $1200-$1500.

I'll also note that over 40 years, I've personally seen about 6 OOB events. I do know that about half were Colts, so those who claim it's impossible with any particular brand aren't entirely correct.

If it were the M&P with the problem, wouldn't other ammunition companies also be issuing the same warning. Why just Wolf?
Does the M&P 15 different models come with the same BCG? Wolf is not saying problems with the Sport or OR , etc.... model, but all M&P 15's.
We on the forum are thinking the problem is possibly the BCG, but for Wolf to make a blanket statement without documentation for all to see is speculation and innuendo.

Possibly but I don't think they're in business to scare away customers. Obviously they have some kind of documentation. Since they're not talking about another company but their own they don't need to show or provide anything. Many gun manufacturers list ammo they advise against with no problems. People just take their word for it.



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I think they are CYA for something specific that happened. I agree many manufacturers warn about certain ammunition (S&W M&P22 for example), but I also think as already been stated that the number of increased M&P sales correlates with any type of defect.
I would be more comfortable if Wolf had stated the other manufacturers firearms that experienced this problem even though according to them the number of problems are lower.
Anyone that deals with statistics knows they can be made to read in favor of what outcome you want.
There could very well be a problem, I myself doubt it is an M&P issue, but the statement from Wolf is too vague to point a finger.

In the OOB events you saw, what was the damage to the gun? Wolf is stating that there was no damage to the chamber or lugs. They're claiming that that means it was not locked. I can't say I disagree with that, but the only way any of my ARs could fire that way would be for the cam pin to shear off or not be installed. I could see a user forgetting to put the cam pin in, but I can't see a scenario where the cam pin shears off.

This is an excellent question. If it were a S&W M&P problem, it would be all over the web and with every type of ammo. With the thousands of M&P15s sold there must be millions of rounds fired. Yet, we've never heard of this issue here prior to this alert.

People say this, but it's mostly said from those that don't know statistics. Unless the statistician is being dishonest, the numbers don't lie. Like I said earlier, you have to start with things that make sense to begin with, but if you're honest with the numbers, statistics works. I've seen it too many times. It's unfortunate that people disregard statistics just because they don't understand it.

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Rastoff-I didn't do detailed examinations, but generally, the BCG had partially recoiled, the case was ruptured, venting gas into the mag well. The magazine internals and all remaining ammo blew out and the BCG wouldn't move. Most were cleared fairly quickly. It isn't uncommon for the extractor to get blown off the bolt, which was the case in the worst one I saw. One that one, we needed a brass rod and hammer to get the BCG moving so the case could be extracted and the upper opened. In that last case, the rifle was running the next weekend, so substantial damage seems real unlikely. I expect I discussed it with the owner, but that was .....decades ago.

Now, late last night it dawned upon me that what we might be discussing might in fact be caused by the bolt unlocking outside the design envelope (early).

The AR operates by differential gas expansion. It depends upon the bolt being fully locked and the gas pressure at the gas port being within a certain range. [The burn rate of the powder might also have some affect, similar to issues with the M1 Garand. The use of powders outside the Garand design envelope results in bent operating rods and other ills. Recall that the AR was designed & developed with IMR stick type powder.] If for some reason, the bolt isn't absolutely, completely rotated to full lock, the dwell time of the system will be affected (reduced). Now, add to this the possibility of higher than optimal/normal gas port pressure and duration of the pressure peak and you have the possibility of the bolt unlocking before chamber pressure has dropped to a safe level. Depending upon pressures within the BCG, it might happen with a fully locked bolt. Resulting in a ruptured case etc.

We've got no clue what powders Wolf is using in their ammo. Could be they've lately used a powder that's....less than optimal for the AR system.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rastoff:
Anyone that deals with statistics knows they can be made to read in favor of what outcome you want.
People say this, but it's mostly said from those that don't know statistics. Unless the statistician is being dishonest, the numbers don't lie. Like I said earlier, you have to start with things that make sense to begin with, but if you're honest with the numbers, statistics works. I've seen it too many times. It's unfortunate that people disregard statistics just because they don't understand it.
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I have worked with statistics for years, and yes you are right, if given all the facts and figures provided you should come to the same conclusion as the guy sitting next to you.
Having seen numbers thrown out of the equation as they didn't match the other numbers in that row, or just simply leaving out rows of numbers can change the outcome. It is like a presidential poll- which numbers do we go by, the ones that read what we want, or the numbers that show actual facts.
I had to every 5 years come up with how much water consumption our town would use to justify the amount permitted by the state that let us take water out of the ground. (example) Well, in the next years a big low income housing project will be here and add 1,000 customers to the list of water consumed. Never saw the project started since it was permitted to be built, yet the state said okay, you justified your water use and are permitted to take it.

This is the e-mail I sent to S&W. Hope it doesn't sound too snarky as that was not my intent. Any response from S&W will shared in this thread. Disclosure: I have 2+ cases of wolf gold .223 and so far have about 500 rounds through my Sport II with no problems (its accurate in my rifle too).


"Good Morning,
I have a question about the M&P 15 rifle and its reported incompatibility with Wolf Gold (brass cased .223) Ammunition. As I'm sure you know there is a advisory from the Wolf Ammo Mfg. specifically mentioning the use of their ammo with the M&P 15 platform. No other rifle manufacturer is specified. As the owner of an M&P 15 rifle I believe there is a legitimate concern with any out of battery conditions that may be present with this rifle, Bolt Carrier Group and or barrel extension? Curious that only the M&P 15 rifle is specified by this ammo manufacturer.
Thanks in advance for your response,
Sincerely,
**** ****** "

(I tried to include the advisory that WVSig shared in his OP but it wouldn't go thru in the e-mail I sent to S&W)

Hopefully we will get a no B.S. answer from S&W. I would think it would be in their interest to address this allegation.
I would certainly be more comfortable with information from Wolf stating Model, age/year purchased and not just a problem with S&W M&P.

They may not have that if all it is is people calling in to report

OR..... something much more simpler.....buy different ammo!

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I would be surprised if S&W even responds. If they do it will probably be a non-committal boilerplate response se.

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If all they have is people calling into report, we wouldn't know if it is true of fake. I don't think Wolf would respond with a "thanks for the call" and not take information. I don't shoot Wolf, have no beef with their ammunition and would shoot it in my Sport.

I simply don't think many people know those answers. I know I don't and never cared. I THINK I bought my rifle 5 years ago and it's probably from the 80s (not an M&P).

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Or a different brand/make/model of .223 / 5.56 projectile launcher.

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