Remington Thunderbolt 22lr

I have always had good luck with Thnunderbolts. I bought a couple of bricks of Winchester and I have never been so disappointed in any rimfire ammo. I bought a couple of thousand rounds Armscor 22 and found it to be very good ammo. Most of my 22 stash is CCI and I can't complain about it.
 
Ah the infamous ThunderDuds and GoldenGarbage. I have a brick of Thunderbolt left from the 90's that ran great. Stuff from the late 2000's were pure junk. I still have 4 550 bulks left of Golden from a 2 case lot that had WAY too many duds and weak rounds; no wonder I got a good deal on it. I used to pawn it off on my friends kids and told my friends to save their Blazer / Federal Bulk / whatever just to burn it up.

I also still have a brick of 90's Win Wildcat that ran real good and a brick of MiniMags that my 10/22 LOVED. There was a period of time when the RemChester bulk / bargain / good lines were total junk. Recently it seems CCI had some runs of garbage too which is sad since they used to be so consistent. Aguila used to be the junk but they seem to be one of the better ones these days for plinking ammo. Sad to say but under Obama I got some Armscorp that out performed my Remington Golden in my 22/45 by a long shot.
 
Years ago - I went to the range three to five times a week - my wife went along a lot of the time. Between us - we would shoot an entire brick (500 rounds) every time we went.
We bought every type of .22 lr ammunition we could find on sale.

K-Mart and Dicks were the two that ran sales the most often & both of them carried Thunderbolts. Once in a while, K-Mart put Winchester Wildcats on sale & every so often it was X-pert.

I guess on the conservative side and say we went through 75,000 rounds on Thunderbolts in that year.

My S&W 22/s just loved Thunderbolts. It shot those better then it shot expensive Ely match ammo.

Anyhow - extremely filthy stuff to shoot, but, it was reliable enough that I can't remember it being any trouble at all. Trust me - if it had any issues & caused my wife to keep telling me she was having troubles with FTF, FTE or enything else - - I'd remember it. ;) - or I should say, she would never let me forget it..
 
remember when Winchester wildcats were on the shelf the same time thunderbolts were in a store?
I use to grab the wildcats.
I used thunderbolts for plinking where a jam or ftf wasn't important.
but hunting?
WILDCATS.
 
I used to use Thunderbolts about 12 years ago. One that was consistent was that after every shot, whether revolvers, pistols, or rifles were used there would be a ultra thin silver sliver left in the chamber/s. I thought at first it was material being shaved off as the bullet left the chamber or the barrel.

This kind of thing did not happen with any other brand of ammo and gunsmiths and knowledgeable shooters had no explanation for this.

I donated the rest of the 500 ( I burned through 200 rounds) to a scoutmaster in the Boy Scouts who used it for his boys' shooting single shot rifles. No problems.

Recently have not had the same problem with Thunderbolts and as plinking ammo only.
 
Thunderterds, and Fed blue box .22LR are both garbage IMO. CCI standard velocity, and Aguila seem to be excellent reliable shooting plinker ammo. ( At least cycling semi-auto type guns )
 
Today I shot the last couple of hundred rds of my 3rd brick. Total of 3 duds in 1500 rds. At one dud per 500 rd brick with a cost of 15 dollars per 500 I'd say that's pretty respectable. The gun used today was a Ruger SR22.
 
I’ve heard a lot of complaints about thunderbolts , but they work fine in my 15-22 and 10-22. If they didn’t , I would use them in one of my revolvers. Now the winchester .22 ammo that comes in 222 or 333 packs. My semis HATE it. I set that aside for the wheelguns.
 
The main complaints I have read about Remington Thunderbolts is some experience extreme leading in the barrel of their firearm. Lots of reports of this happening with the Taurus TX22 but the pictures of the cleaned barrels explained why as they were horrid quality. Pistols with better quality bores probably do not have the same problem.
 
If anybody really wants some, I have a box of 500 that's unopened that came from the estate of a friend. I'd sell them them for a reasonable price or trade for something else. The high price marked on the box makes me think they were a fairly recent purchase.

Tony
 
I have 1000's of rds of thunderbolts through my Ruger SR22 & MKIV Lite with zero leading problems. I'm paying 15 dollars a brick for the Thunderbolts and I'm more than pleased with their performance. My ex Taurus TX22 with it's tonka toy barrel would see leading with ANY brand 22 ammo. It's a disgrace that Taurus released the TX22 with such a crappy barrel and recoil assembly which caused cracked or broken slides.
 
Overall my experiences were good with the Thunderbolts. The fail to fire were in a 10/22 and I noticed the rim strikes looked light. The same ammo in a S&W 17 always fired and when either Model 17 hits the cases make it apparent they were hit.

Ron
 
I'll just stick to the two cases of Remington white box .Gov contract "target" ammunition I have left. They always go bang and aren't horrible in most of my herd of rimfire arms.
 
When I tried Thunderbolts, I had at least on dud per box of 50. Other .22s ran flawlessly in the same gun.
Go figure.
Pete
 
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