ALL THIS TALK ABOUT BAD AMMO

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PLASTIC SIG

New member
It may just be me, but i hear alot of talk about bad ammo causing guns to not operate properly. Ive shot thousands of rounds of diffrent caliber/brands of ammo through diffrent guns without any issues. When i practice, I buy whatever is the cheapest and the only problems ive ever had is hollow point lead ammo in a ruger MKII.

Why do so many people here have problems with ammo? has it ever occured to you guys that it may not be the ammo and maybe the gun?

Sure, after trying every brand of ammo made chances are you'll find one to brand to run through the gun with no problems, but who wants to limit themselves to one or two types of ammo?

Im not bashing anyones guns or ability to choose. It just seems crazy to me that people have all these problems with their guns and blame it all on the ammo. If i buy a gun and it dont shoot everything i put in it, I get rid of it!!! Who needs problems?

Tim :)

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Why dont you get rid of that nickel plated sissy pistol and get yourself a glock. :::Tommy Lee Jones. U.S. Marshals:::
 
Hmm... Not sure how to word this but I will start with(or on) Fiocchi. I have shot various brands of ammo and did not have a problem with my guns until this ammo(unless you count my early attempts at reloading which is till the ammo not the gun). I find it unlikely that all of a sudden my gun went bad when I switched to it. So I therefore rule it is the ammo, and low and behold when I go back to winchester or pmc or whatever, it functions fine. I guess that the ammo is not up to spec, or the quality is bad (or in my case when reloading, I did not finish the job). So that is how I can blame my gun problems those days on ammo, and not the gun. If it were more than that type of ammo, then I guess I would have to agree and say my gun is a piece that needs work to help it feed, but it does feed well with everything but fiocchi.
 
The only ammo problems I have ever had was with the Gold Dots in my Walther as described in another thread. A change to Remington Golden Sabers "cured" the problem. I have nothing aganst Gold Dots. If they worked in my Walther, I would still be using them.

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BOYCOTT SMITH AND WESSON!!!
Defend the Constitution from the foreign threat!!!!
 
I think it has to do with the high competition in the ammo market lately for low prices. Ammo prices keep dropping and dropping; it is cheaper for a box of ammo than it has been in the last decade. That causes cost-cutting measures that lead to cheap ammo.
I have had SERIOUS problems with WOlf ammo and UMC. None others.
With the UMC the bullets kept sinking into the brass. I know of two .357 Sig guns that have blown up (and only two) and they both were a direct cause of UMC ammo high pressure spikes from the bullets sinking. No other ammo has this problem, IME.
Wolf ammo just sucks all around. But, you save a buck a box! With that you get steel cases that chew up your extractor and chamber, you get the goo on the outside that mucks up your gun, you get really dirty powder making mud in your gun, and last but not least, this stuff just about blew up my 9mm with a dud load.

There is cheap ammo out there, so cheap that it can be hazardous to your health and to your gun. If you shoot enough, then you start to notice the difference. I didn't notice either until many years of shooting and also handloading, and now I see that there is such thing as cheap, misfunctional, downright hazardous ammo on the market.

Strangely enough, I have been expecting to have problems with S&B ammo now for a couple years, being that it is made in the Czech Republic on very old machines, but that ammo is some of the best practice stuff I have seen. No problems yet, in many dozens os cases of ammo fired.
 
I've never had a problem with UMC,Winchester,Speer,Federal,Mag Tech,Remington.Had problems with Aguila and Fiocchi.

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"Until that time,Eustus,until that time."-from Soldier In The Rain
 
I bought some really cheap .45 auto ammo called "American Ammo". The stuff was crap. In fact, I reloaded the brass on my Dillon and the brass is so out of spec I had to throw the whole mess away. Yes, there is such a thing as bad ammo.
 
TOTAL CRAP : Chinese 9mm, boxer primed, marked "LY" with a 2 digit year of mfg. Shot and functioned fine in a Taurus PT-99. When I policed brass, found 75% had bulged cases. Wide variations in case weight, thickness of walls and head, and even primer pocket dia.

Only had problems with 3 C.F. domestic pistol rounds in 20 years. All 3 were "failure to fire" - due to hard primers.
 
Wolf brand Russian ammo has blown up a number of handguns and rifles of varying calibers (9mm-45acp-223- etc.) at my range and has since been completely banned from use.

Ben
 
Bad Ammo is a generic term for any ammunition which is substandard in performance. It could be brand new factory loaded, surplus or reloaded ammo. For some reason or another, it didn't work. Even if the ammunition was orignally good, it can turn bad because of owner/shooter neglect (oil on primers).

I came across factory ammo where the primer was inserted backwards. More frequently, I've come across factory ammo that had misfires. None of this is surprising.
 
I've burned cases of just about everything that's available through my Sig P239/.40 without a hitch. The last 4-Day Combat Master Prep course i attended, all I could get my hands on was the new MagTech stuff. It worked great, until malfunction clearances came up. 3 out of 4 times, when releasing from slidelock, it failed to go completely into battery, even with just a few rounds in the mag. Switched to a handfull of Winchesters I had left over, no problem. Gotta get the micrometer out.
 
PLASTIC SIG,
YES indeed I had have had bad Factory ammo. PMC-Eldorado would not always blow back the slide of a Walther p-4 ( power variances!!) when the Winchester 115 gr woked great!! My brother has had problems with .45acp in PMC... things happen..play the odds!!! Oh yes i did find a squib load in a 115 gr "USA winchester" cartrage...retuned it before it had a chance to ruin my life!
 
Some American Eagle brand caused a kb in my .45. Can't say I can recommend that brand, course I was trying to go cheap, so in a sense I got what I deserved. :)
 
Ak9,

Are you sure the ammo you were shooting that caused you problems wasn't American Ammunition?

I say that because American Eagle is Federal's low cost ammo line........
 
If you've never had a problem, you don't shoot enough? :)

I've had/seen problems w everything. The least from Federal, the most from Chinese, Russian stuff, other military surplus.

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There very well *is* some ammo that isn't worth the time it takes to load one round.

The milsurp .303 that I got for my Enfield. I don't know if it's age (Sep '63), or if the primers are made from Illudium Pu-36, or what, but *every* round is either a slow-fire (click... BANG) or takes multiple hits. It's great for flinch practice, but useless for anything else.

I've had case ruptures and duds with factory ammo of all brands, in a huge variety of guns. Some problems were attributable to the gun, like when I installed a light striker spring in my G20. Others were very clearly *not* the gun.

In sum: The 3rd law of hydrodynamics still works. Deal.

[This message has been edited by Coinneach (edited May 24, 2000).]
 
i have heard several bad reports of UMC .357 Sig blow ups, definitely not something you want with .357 Sig. OTOH I've had absolutely Zero problem with the several thousand rounds of UMC 115gr FMJ 9mm I've used myself, I confess I get lazy and buy from WallyMart, and this seems to be their 9mm practice ammo.

Mike H
 
Well, some semi-autos can be a bit picky about ammo. My Kimbers don't like PMC and Speer -- got lots of failures to feed with them. I've found that UMC is really dirty and smokey.

Jared
 
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