Norinco .223

Yellow box ammo from like the 90's Id guess. Good brass? Weak or hott?

Supposed to be good ammo actually, basically M193 spec. I haven't seen any in ages.

When I bought my AR way back in 2000, I was buying that stuff for $2 a box and blasting away every weekend.

I should have stacked some deep.

Felt full power, no stoppages or failures once I put the D-Fender in.

As another poster said good stuff and on par with M193... It dried up in the last several years.

It dried up when Clinton banned the importation of Chinese ammo & guns. At the same time putting China on the most favored nation status "opening the flood gate of cheap Chinese goods to be imported into the US". The guns and ammo accounted for less than 1% of imported Chinese goods.

Very Good Ammo , Runs HOT and FAST.
Brass is GTG for Reloading
I still have several cases of it

The fireball that stuff put out was awesome when I'd let it off in the indoor range. Scare the hell out of the other
shooters .
The brass is good but I did find a few that looked like it had impurities in it. You could see weird discolored
spots here and there. Rust would form, etc..

I never seen any since the mid 90`s

good ammo

unreal for what you would expect!I have some left.It is full powerstuff and fire ball is awesome.Never thought about using the brass for reloading though.

I shot a LOT of it up in my first AR, a blue label Colt 20" Match Sporter that I used as a practice gun when I was on a USAR rifle team in '91-'92. Got it for $1.99/box, shot 88rd service rifle matches with the stuff for less than $10 worth of ammo. It shot as accurately and hot as the issue M193 we were given on the team, even out to 600yds. Never gave the brass a second thought at the time.

SS

It did have a smell to it!!!! So did their 7.62X39.

I had some that was corrosive.marked as not in the yellow box. Ymmv. Some primer pockets are a little deep on the brass. I shot a lot of this in the 90's . As stated by others it was cheap.

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I just shot some today that I've had for a while now. It shot like shit. I was sad because of all the good stuff I had heard over the years. Maybe the years hadn't been kind to it. I don't know. It was weak and short stroked my AR numerous times. Oh well. At least someone can use the brass....

I actually saw a case of this from our high power community being divided/handed our to juniors and new shooters. I gave it a confused look since I've never seen them sold before, and they look really 80s 90s looking with the printing on the box.

Never knew Norinco made 223 until then and I didn't think much of it until see this thread.

If this is the same Sousa that was at Oley, one of the live rounds I picked up after the match was, I believe yours... case marked CJ 92?

It had a light pin strike on it, I tested it out of my 20" rifle with heavy auto bolt... it did fire but it just barely ejected. 193 makes a nice neat pile 4 feet behind me at 4 o'clock and this one just barely made it out.

Yeah it's me. I threw away the rest of the Norinco ammo I had when I got home. I'm glad it was only around 50+ rounds.

I only shot 1 box of factory ammo (it shot fine, if inaccurately), but came into a supply of brass with the CJ headstamp. It was not on par with LC or other top quality brass. Case heads are a little soft, but case necks were the only failures.

I basically took 50 cases and kept loading them till a significant portion began to fail. Necks would begin to split @ 3X and around 4 reloadings became common At 5th reloading I quit.

I took the rest of the brass and loaded it up and put it away into long term storage

Corrosive primers made it into some of this yellow boxed Chinese .223 every now and then, so clean as if it all is corrosive if you ever shoot some. My brother ruined his Mini 14
using this ammo, and I now own the remainder of his stash, around 800 rounds or so. It is marked 'non-corrosive' and seems every bit as hot as M193 ball, and pretty accurate also.
I just clean as I always do after using it, and have had no problems. My brother fired a bunch of it and parked the rifle for a week or so without cleaning. Big mistake.

I sent hundreds (probably thousands of rounds actually) of the stuff down range through Mini-14s back in the 90s. I've still probably got a few hundred rounds of it somewhere. From what recall, I never had any problems with the ammo and it seemed plenty hot. But again, I pretty much just used the stuff in Minis, I don't remember using any in the AR platform, though I am sure it would work just as well through those.

My experience was the same. It was reliable and hot when I bought it in late '80s-early '90s. 10 years later the stuff was significantly slower, and some rounds short-cycled. At that point I decided to burn up the rest. I have never had this happen with any other .223/5.56 - no matter how old.

I had it happen with Russian 9mm (Ulyanovsk) from the '90s. Made the Uzi sound pretty sick. Burned that up, too. I think ammo should be sampled for testing every so often.

Sam

That same ammo came in a red box also . I still have a box of it kicking around, it shot ok but I remember thinking it was the ammo that smelled really bad when you shot it. Like cat pee.

Still have a case or two in AK rounds. not sure of the box color..... never shot 223.

It's OK - I never found it all that memorable - but it's brass, boxer primed, and goes bang. The bad news is the brass is butter soft. Softest brass I've ever handled or reloaded. Don't bother reloading it. I wouldn't rely on it for anything important. Shoot it up and have fun.

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