Remington Thunderbolt .22LR Quality

For the OP, pull the bullet,dump the powder and gaze at the bottom of that Thunderbolt to find the problem with Thunderbolts and most Remington ammo in general these days: insufficient or poorly distributed priming.
Remington doesn't put enough priming compound into Thunderbolts, and they don't apply it consistently around the rim.
I suspect that they have a poor priming process for spreading the compound into cases, and for spinning the wet primed cases to distribute the compound evenly around the rim.
The lack of priming compound contributes to the velocity variations (priming contributes a great deal to the velocity). The improper distribution around the rim causes the failures to fire.

I don't just have this problem with Thunderbolts. I've seen it in the formerly good Subsonics, Cyclones, Game Loads, and I've especially seen it in Remington blue box target ammo where I've had as high as 15% failure rates. I haven't even tried golden bullets, as those never fed well in my 10/22 to begin with, and aren't worthy to touch my Buckmark or Anschutz.
 
Crankylove said:
Frankenmauser and I went through a box (500 rounds) of Remmingtons this last Saturday......and had about a 30% failure to fire rate (went through 500 rounds........150 or so duds)

Shot them out of a Browning Buckmark, Ruger MKIII 22/45, and Ruger 10/22 for the most part, with 20 rounds or so going into my dads P-22, and 50 or so into my uncle's Bersa .22.

I had two magazines that had 10 rounds fire, one in the 22/45, and one in the 10/22. All the other I shot had any where from one to six failures to fire out of 10 rounds per magazine.
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Some of you may find it interesting to note that we picked up all the duds for disposal. There were about 175 rounds.
I wrapped them all up in a paper bag, twisted it very tightly (keeps detonations from scattering everything), and placed it over the coals of a fire we had going.

After the machine gun stopped, there were 50+ cartridges that wouldn't detonate... even in the fire.

So, about 20% of the box had been primed poorly. About 10% hadn't been primed at all. :rolleyes:


As long as lazy, stupid Americans (myself included) keep buying crap products like these, dirt bag companies will continue to produce them. ...and they'll keep raking in the massive profits, while doing so.
 
Remington makes the low-end Russian stuff look like premium ammo.


I'm not a huge fan of Remington ammo at all, and I simply won't shoot Thunderbolt in any of my guns.

The stuff is absolute crap.
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I thought I was the only one that avoided Remington ammo.
 
With Thunderbolts of recent manufacture (last 5 years of so), you often have about a 7-10% FTF or squib rate. It is usually the primer. Remington needs to improve their overall QA/QC on their rimfire ammunition.

I shoot Thunderbolts with bolt action rifles and revolvers and put up with the failure rate. I seldom re-try to fire them after the infamous "click" anymore. Just not worth the effort for me. But I will continue to purchase them and the Peters ones off and on as I need them. I use them mostly for plinking and ammo testing.
 
I'm still working off of a brick of Thunderbolts that are at least 15 years old. Those were made when Thunderbolts were still decent quality. Everything I've bought since then though has been CCI and Federal bulk.
 
.22 is so cheap that using good ones still doesn't cost much. CCI Mini Mags will be about 6 or 7 cents a round. I switched to exclusively CCI this summer. It works in all my .22's even the picky ones. I can afford an extra dollar or two per hundred rounds.
 
I'll break the string. I've shot about three thousand Thunderbolts over the past two years through Racine Joe's Uzi .22 conversion kit.
Most was bought in the past two years as well.

Scouts honor, I do not recall a single misfire. Only an occasional failure to feed/eject properly that results in a bent bullet.

It is my favorite in that gun for all the smoke it creates. Actually had a guy ask me if I was shooting black powder after a 165 rd. drum dump.

The 'Golden Bullet' Remingtons? That is a completely different story. Wish I could find someone to trade me Thunderbolts for it.

JT
 
Thunderbolts in the early 90's were bad. Thunderbolts in the late 90's were bad. I gave away more than I could shoot. That does not mean 2011 Thunderbolt is bad, but there are too many choices and too much Internet lore to try again.

Here, "bad" means every cylinder or magazine had a failure to fire, 3 different guns.
 
I can remember when this Thunderbolt stuff first came out, back in the 70s. Back then, it was pretty good stuff and 100% reliable. We used to buy bricks at Kmart like for less than $5 and plink them all away in a few hours. I still have a few boxes of this old ammo and it is still reliable.

Having said that, I concur with most of you. I have had the same issues with the current stuff. I would not recommend it at all.
 
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