Reliability -- CCI primers, Remington 22 shells

[earlmck]

A few months ago we had a thread on here about "failures to fire" in 22 shells. I'd had Remington brand bulk packs give me about a 2 or 3% failure rate over a period of years and wanted to know if they'd straightened out and I could buy Remington again. Some folks on the forum had been having decent luck with Remington, and I ran into a cousin of mine who had been putting several hundred per week through a handgun. He hadn't had a misfire with Remington. So I picked up a bulk pack, shot several hundred over the past few weeks, and can report that it has been "failure free". I think Remington has got their rimfire act together and we can buy them again.

Now to CCI primers. Remember about 3 years ago when Obomamania hit and all components got scarce? Right then one of my buddies who doesn't have a computer discovered he was plumb out of Large Rifle primers and there were none to be found locally. I told him "no problem, pard. I'll chase some down on the internet". Hah! All the usual suspects were showing L.R. primers as "back-ordered". I kept checking back daily and then one day I hit the Cabela site and they showed CCI as "in stock". So I ordered the pard 10,000 and figured I'd better pick me up a 10 pack as well.

A few days ago I was out plinking with some freshly loaded 30wcf casties, and had a "FTF". But it fired on the second try. And I remembered I'd had two others not fire within past year; one of them was still sitting all lonely amongst a batch of fired brass, waiting to have the bullet pulled. So I pulled it yesterday and it is one of these "new batch" of CCI primers. Here's a pic of front and back:

Failedprimer.jpg

So to the best of my recollection this makes 2 "FTF's" and one that took a second try out of about 2500 primers used so far from that batch of CCI L.R. primers. About a 0.1% fault rate.

I guess the only point I have here is to note how fantastically reliable primers are that this level of "fault rate" is a shock to my tender system. I've been loading for lots of years and may have had a failure from a CCI primer sometime previously, but I sure can't remember such. These particular primers were obviously made when the crunch was going full-bore and I'll bet CCI had put on some new employees to speed up production. I may have got the only bad primers CCI ever produced: friend Butch hasn't had a failure out of his batch yet, though I don't think he has used a thousand so far.

This doesn't qualify as a "rant". I'm just remarking that primers have been almost wonderfully reliable for me for something approaching 50 years. Which almost gets our manufacturers an "attaboy".

[3leggedturtle]

CCI primer hve been 100% relible fo me, but they seat harder in every caliber i use them in. Was wondering if they had a "thicker" plating or whatever you call the
chrome color on them.

[Borregos]

The only primers I have ever had fail to fire on me have been CCI, I had a thousand I loaded 200 and they failed at a rate of about 4%, I still have 800 remaining

[piller]

Primers are one of the items which we expect to be 100 percent. From the picture, it looks as if the primer was hit perfectly.

[mikld]

Thinking back now; since I re-started reloading in '87 I have been using CCI almost exclusively. In that time with a mix of small pistol, small pistol magnum, large pistol, and large pistol magnum, I can't remember one failure. The only time I had a problem was when I was playing "retro" and using one of my old Lee Loaders, a couple popped when I was seating them. No fault of CCI though.Primers are one part of reloading that don't get a lot of thought; pick the right size, insert, and shoot...

Now Remington rimfire ammo is a different story

[El Chivo]

During the crunch I bought 500 CCI #34 milspec primers, and with my leverguns they are "iffy" on first time ignition and about 4 have not gone off at all.

I'm saving them in case I load .243 in which case I'm sure they will go bang in a Handi-Rifle. I've used standard CCI primers with no failures and they are my preferred brand of pistol primer.

Maybe yours are milspec even if the boxes don't say so. Imagine at the factory if they get spilled what that must be like. Or perhaps a newbie grabbed a sheet of the wrong gauge metal for a run. Or they ran out of the regular.





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[rjohns94]

15 is when I started.

[retmech]

I have fired at least 15K of CCI SP over the past 5 years and 3K LP with no misfires. In that same time frame an additional 5K of Federals and Mag tech again no misfires. Remington bulk pack .22's purchased about a year ago are garbage. Many misfires and very noticeable differences in report volume. I chrono'd some and got a 300 fps extreme spread in a 20 shot string, I won't be buying any more. IMO CCI blazer is the best value in low priced .22's.

[earlmck]

Maybe yours are milspec even if the boxes don't say so. Imagine at the factory if they get spilled what that must be like. Or perhaps a newbie grabbed a sheet of the wrong gauge metal for a run. Or they ran out of the regular.

Yeah, something like that would maybe explain it...

Remington bulk pack .22's purchased about a year ago are garbage. Many misfires and very noticeable differences in report volume. I chrono'd some and got a 300 fps extreme spread in a 20 shot string, I won't be buying any more. IMO CCI blazer is the best value in low priced .22's.

That mirrors my experience with the Remingtons from some years ago, and I had also quit buying them for that reason. Some folks have been having good luck with them for at least a couple of years now and I am hoping they got their manufacturing process straightened out. I wonder if you picked up a pack that had been on the shelf a few years, or if Remington still has occasional quality problems?

I also have had good experience with the CCI Blazers, but my local discount store sometimes has real decent prices on the Remington bulk pak. This gets important when trying to supply the grandkids, and now starting on great-grandkids. Sheesh!

[Sixgun]

Remington had serious quality control issues for some time, not only in their .22 ammo, but centerfire ammo and guns as well. I have had many misfires/hangfires with their .22 ammo and refuse to shoot it. On some .308 match ammo that was of Remington make, I shot it and tried to reload it and the primers fell out---don't know if they were hot loads or big pockets but I have since told my bud, who is a bigtime Remington dealer that I am done with everything Remington makes..(except their primers)..............but.........I have since been reassured that these flaws are now remedied.

CCI primers do not grace my loading bench. They are good but like others have said, they have hard cups and as some of my guns have reduced mainsprings, well, I don't need the ag.

I say lets not run down what is made here in the US of A. Just let them know when there's a problem and they will make good for it. The last thing we all need is Chinese componets.------------Sixgun

[Shasta]

Like others here, I have experienced more misfires with Remington .22 ammo than other brands. The misfires usually would still not go off after recocking the hammer and giving a second try, but often would fire if the round was removed from the gun and rotated so the firing pin struck a different portion of the rim. It seems to me they are not getting the priming compound evenly distributed inside the rim during manufacturing.

As for CCI primers, I don't like to use them because they are too hard. They always require more effort to seat during the loading process, and require a harder hammer blow to fire reliably. I have lightened the springs on most of my leverguns for silhouette match shooting, and CCI primers will fail to fire on the first hammer blow just about every time. I have no such problems with Winchester or Federal primers.

SHASTA

[jhrosier]

I used CCI primers exclusively, and with complete satisfaction until I started loading ammo for a couple of competition guns with light mainsprings, on a Dillon press. The priming mechanism on the Dillon SDB was not strong enough to seat the (then) harder CCI primers and the light mainsprings in the comp guns would not fire them reliably. I switched to the softer Federal primers to solve my problems. There was nothing wrong whatsoever with the CCI primers, they just didn't work with my competition guns or the press.

I continued to use the CCIs in my other guns and loaded on other presses. When the primer shortages started a few election cycles ago, I had to buy whatever brand was available and then started to buy Winchester primers.

I also started having problems that I had not experienced in over forty years of handloading. First I started having a lot of failures to fire with my rifles when Winchester primers were used, but not with other brands in the same loads and guns. I also started getting pierced primers in my revolver loads. This does not happen with other brands of primers in the same guns and with the same loads.

I've had to pluck pieces of primer cup out of wounds on my face several times. I'm quite frankly, afraid to fire ammo loaded with Winchester primers in my revolvers any more, lest I accidentally blind myself. This happens with normal, mild loads in several different caliber Ruger and S&W revolvers.

The Winchester pistol primers seem to have thinner and harder cups recently. If I can't buy anything else due to shortages, I will have to give up firing my revolvers and change to autoloaders. I'm not at all happy about this.

Jack

[jshinal]

Speaking to sixgun's raising of 3rd rate ammo/components, my early bulk buying included a large pile of Norinco 9x19 ball. My SW5906 frequently dropped the hammer on it only to receive silence. A second strike would light it off, and never had a FTE but those hard primers sure vexed me.

I ran 200 rounds of that dodgy Norinco ammo through a Glock and it ate 'em all with no failures to fire. Harder strike, I suppose. I wonder if the CCI primers are prone to failing only in one particular rifle ? In my case, the strikes looked perfect, but just didn't get a light-off.

[Chuck 100 yd]

I still have a bunch of Remington .22`s to shoot up that have a FTF about 1 out of 50 or so.
I have found other brands that will have a run that have issues also.
I prefer federals but have had a couple duds with them also.
Sometimes I will rotate the round to give a new spot for the firing pin to hit and it will fire .

As far as CCI goes. I have used them for 50+ years and have NEVER had one fail to fire and I kinda like the fact that they are a snug fit in most brass.
They have been hard to get in these parts as of late so I have been shooting lots off Remington 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 and Winchester primers of all sizes. Never had one of those fail me either that I cant blame on other reasons.

At the last cowboy shoot one cowboy had one go pop and the RO stopped him thinking "squib". After inspection he had loaded that primer in the case backwards.
They don`t work too well that way.