Bad Ammo Thread

Qwikdraw45

Qwikdraw45

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After seeing some of the posts in the DE 50AE thread, it got me thinking about this. What ammo have you personally had problems with? Not "My buddy use ABC and it blew up his gun" or "I read online that XYZ blows up, has light primer strikes, etc."

From that DE post, sounds like I want to avoid New Republic and Double Tap, at least.
 
Winchester Forged wouldn't run in any of the polymer Glock mags I had. Did better in steel mags, but I still found that shit to be garbage and I only bought it during the Walmart ammo purge.

Armscor .22 LR has a weirdly thick, slick coating all over it, bullet and case. IDK what the deal is with it, but it's not even the cheapest .22 LR ammo one can get, nor is it the fastest or most accurate or reliable, so it's stuff I don't touch anymore.
 
I had a bad and nearly catastrophic experience with A-MERC brass one time.

It is junk and severely bulged when it was fired - I'm lucky that it did not rupture, injuring me and/or wreck the pistol.

I ended up sorting through six 5-gallon buckets of brass to ensure that all the A-MERC was gone!
 
T-Unit said:
Winchester Forged wouldn't run in any of the polymer Glock mags I had. Did better in steel mags, but I still found that shit to be garbage and I only bought it during the Walmart ammo purge.

Armscor .22 LR has a weirdly thick, slick coating all over it, bullet and case. IDK what the deal is with it, but it's not even the cheapest .22 LR ammo one can get, nor is it the fastest or most accurate or reliable, so it's stuff I don't touch anymore.
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I second the trouble with the Winchester Forge. I tried it several years ago now in 9mm. I had many FtFeed, FtFire, stove pipes etc…. This across 3 different brands of semi-auto striker fire pistols. It’s a do not buy IMHO.
 
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Winchester white box 9mm and CCI clean 22LR ammo are the two I've learned to stay away from. WWB had too many light primer strikes in multiple pistols and the CCI just didn't like cycling in a number of guns I tried running it through along with sometimes taking multiple strikes to go off.
 
I was gonna say some 22s but it’s 22 so no shocker there

The browning 9mm shit in the yellowish black box, the Winchester 9mm in the brown and black box, maxxxtech 9mm.

These days I just buy blazer brass, it’s cheap enough theres no reason not to
 
I bought a case of Fiocchi 9mm 124 jhp from the estate of a deceased NES'er. When I and some friends used it, it shot very dirty and the ejected cases were split. I contacted Fiocchi and they said it might be due to improper storage but they denied any responsibility because I bought it from a third party.
 
Remington Thunderbolt .22 has never worked reliably with any pistol or rifle I've owned. And I know .22 is never going to be perfect but so far IMO, it's the worse.
PPU caused a barrel bulge in a Sig I used to own. It was a nice pistol too. It was the only ammo I could find during the Hussein O'Bummer ammo shortage years! The rest of you bought up all the better ammo brands and hoarded it, keeping it from me!🤣 This caused me to have to drive many, many miles to go see an esteemed member in Beverly to buy a case or two.
Those two brands are the only one's I avoid at this point.
 
CCI Blazer aluminum cased .357 in my old Model 13 40 years ago...

It bulged so much U had to bang the ejector rod on the bench at Cape Ann's Sportsman's Club one Sunday morning to get the empties out.

After that I used the $5 a box w/brass exchange reloaded wad cutters a guy sold on Sunday mornings there and never had a problem

To this day I will not buy CCI Blazer ammo of any type
 
lowbuckbob said:
I bought a case of Fiocchi 9mm 124 jhp from the estate of a deceased NES'er. When I and some friends used it, it shot very dirty and the ejected cases were split. I contacted Fiocchi and they said it might be due to improper storage but they denied any responsibility because I bought it from a third party.
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I can see two issues with that ammo. Back in the 90's, when 9mm was a novelty, I shot some Fiocchi in a S&W 469. I don't recall if I had jams or not, but think I did. I noticed a lot of brass shavings in/near the chamber area and someone told me that Fiocchi had brittle brass. So, wondering if it was old ammo (with the older brass) or stored improperly.

I haven't had any issues with Fiocchi in the last 5 years, and find it to be one of the better ones.
 
Federal Blue Box .22. Can’t gotta be the worst quality control of any rimfire ammo I have shot. I bought 1500 rounds of it at the beginning of covid, and I’ll bet I still have 1k left. It makes me so angry every time I shoot it, that I leave it in the safe. At least a 10% failure rate in all my pistols. Solid strikes on the primers, no ignition…
 
556USER said:
I have found that mini mags run in everything so I don't waste my time with much else when it comes to 22lr.
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Yeah but it's half the price of a 9mm ball round. I can still plink with the cheapest shittiest waxy lead rounds in my 22LR bolt action tho and save the mini mags for the cycling queens.
 
T-Unit said:
Winchester Forged wouldn't run in any of the polymer Glock mags I had. Did better in steel mags, but I still found that shit to be garbage and I only bought it during the Walmart ammo purge.

Armscor .22 LR has a weirdly thick, slick coating all over it, bullet and case. IDK what the deal is with it, but it's not even the cheapest .22 LR ammo one can get, nor is it the fastest or most accurate or reliable, so it's stuff I don't touch anymore.
Click to expand...
Same here with the Armscor. This stuff wouldn't run in a Victory cause of that wax coating. There is so much friction that even with a stronger spring the magazine can't push the next cartridge up fast enough. The more in the magazine, the worse the friction is. I could run it with 8 in a magazine at most.
 
Winchester white box had a couple of squibs had nato stamp on cases i did break down rest of the box and found 2 more with no powder. Contacted Winchester got blanket letter back never used agian
 
TG Pioneer said:
Federal syntech 9mm. I bought some at a range when I was out of ammo and it was all they had. So many light primer strikes and failures to extract out of three different guns, I swore never to use it again.
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Interesting - I just bought some 45ACP because I was running low. I’ll come back to this thread if need be.
 
I stay away from Armscor as a rule. I’ve had many FTF issues with a couple calibers from them. Good hits on the primer but nothing. I’ve had the most issues with their 357 Mag offering but had similar issues with other calibers.
 
British milsurp Radway Green .308. It was good shooting ammo, until one wasn't. It looked like the original brass the case was drawn from was just a bit too small, so the neck wasn't long enough to reach the trimmer, but was long enough to hold the bullet. Mostly. Instead of a nice square line for the case mouth it looked wavy. It split the neck and shoulder, vented gas into the receiver, popped the mag and remaining ammo out as parts, sent the unrecovered extractor into low earth orbit.

Ordered a new extractor, ejector pin and spring, squished the bottom of the mag back into square, and the rifle was back up and running. Took longer to shoot the rest of the Radway what with looking carefully at every single one of the remaining ~1400 cartridges on their way into the mag, but otherwise uneventful.

Good news is that you'll be hard pressed to find any Radway .308 unless you've been squirreling away milsurp since the mid/late 1990's.
 

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