The harder cup primers like the CCI 450 or 41 are better as is the Remington 7 1/2. The reason for this is that the free floating firing pin in the AR rifles will hit the primer when the bolt slams home. There is a fear that this will cause the round to fire which is the slam fire you will hear about. I don't know that anyone has ever documented this happening but there is always a possibility. The possibility also exists to a lesser degree with the harder primers.
I have been using BR4 and 400's in both 5.56 and 6.8 with no issues. As to the slam fire scenario i have had it happen twice using Win. primers in a heavy barreled varmint .223 AR. When it happened the first time I thought I may have double tapped the trigger since it was a very light bench rest trigger that I had adjust just for bench shooting. The second time it was after adjusting the trigger up to around 2.8 pounds and there was no doubt it was a slam fire. <o></o> No more Win. Primers in my AR's
I use them in my .308 AR with no issues. I have shot approximately 300 of them with no slam fires. I've since bought some CCI 34's to try out since they have a thicker cup.
Thank you for your response "mikear", that eases my concern on these primers. I snatched them up when I came across them due to the shortages we are all now encountering, not knowing how they rate.
mike: BR-4s are just as thick in the cup as magnum CCI 450s and plenty thick enough for AR rifles, see link below to a chart comparing cup thickness of various primer brands. Those with the thinnest cups are Fed 200, Rem 6-1/2 and Win WSR. That said, I find BR4s to relatively weak compared to CCI 450s and Rem 7-1/2s, and not ideal for the 6.8. Of course, these days you have to take what you can get, and in that regard BR-4s will serve you well in your 6.8 loads. Fire away. - CW
I will begin reloading here in the next few weeks. I found some BR-4s at the local gun show last month, hoping they would be ok - appears so. The next week I was ordering A2200 from Powder Valley and saw they had TulAmmo small rifle magnum primers in stock so I picked those up as well (at almost half the cost of the BR-4s). At the time I did a quick search here on the Tula and found just a couple posts that said they were gtg as well. Hopefully so...
My beginner question (probably first of many) - Is one primer better suited than another for a specific use of the round (plinking, hunting, target, etc)? Just starting out, would ya'll suggest I use up one brand before the other? Or is it irrelevant?
If that is what you got, then use them. I have loaded thousands of AR rounds with CCI 400 primers and they have a thinner cup if you look at the chart that was previously posted. I prefer 41's but now if not stocked up we got to make do. They should be fine.
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