Remington .22 LR Junk!

Picked up a box of Remington 500 rds. bulk packed. 90% of them will not chamber in any of my handguns and rifles. Must be seconds. Worthless! Any other having same?

If talking about thunderbolts then yes ?

Bluefin178 said:

Picked up a box of Remington 500 rds. bulk packed.

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That's a little vague. Remington what?

bigbillyboy said:

If talking about thunderbolts then yes ?

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Kind of funny - I've got a .22 pistol that will only function reliably with Remington Thunderbolts. Nothing else I've tried (currently 10 or 12 different varieties) will feed more than 2 or 3 rounds without a jam. The Thunderbolts lead the barrel, but I can clean that out, and they're cheap, so I'm just thankful I found something that works!

I have not a 90%fail as the op , but for sure some duds !

Remington Golden Bullets have been on my "do-not-buy" list for many years. Never had issues with them chambering, but they had the highest rate of failure-to-fire and the ones that did go "bang" were inaccurate with wild variations in velocity. The weak ones (at least 10% of any given box) would fail to cycle the action on semi-autos. I consider it the lowest of the low grade rimfire ammo.

Remington Thunderbolts have always functioned much better for me than the Goldens...just dirty and not terribly accurate.

As others have said, I have, or rather my wife has, a pistol, a Walther P22, that absolutely loves Remington Thunderbolts.

I always saw thunderbolts as sorry ammo, but I shot a coon with one once and it preformed better than anything I had used before. Instant kill and the exit area was extraordinary. Must have been the soft lead. The shot was about 25 yards from a Ruger 10-22.
I never clean my 22 rifle barrels until their groups start to open up. If the thunderbolts lead your barrels, I believe I will keep some on had to shoot after I clean mine. It may sweeten the barrel faster after cleaning.

ON THE FLIP SIDE
Last fall during pre-hunt practice, I was shooting ammo from a case of Rem 22lr that was a minimum of 35 years old. Performance was at or close to the expectation of the rifle.

Dirty firing and excessive leading has been my experience with Thunderbolts; I won't use them anymore.

After my dad and I took turns putting a fifty-round box of T-bolts through his Bearcat some years ago, I got enough lead debris out of the barrel when cleaning it afterward, I could probably have cast an entire .22 bullet out of it. They're nasty .

Best shooting ammo in my K22 for hunting are the Golden HP. Shoot a lot of Federal Auto Match in my pistols and have failures to fire and weak rounds that fail to function the action, maybe one ot two per hundred. When I shot Bullseye competition best ammo was CCI SV or Winchester Pistol Match, don't recall a single failure in over 10K rounds.

Let's stop & try to remember that the Remington ammo made now is by a different company in a different facility than it was just a few years ago. Hoping the the same bunch that makes CCI & Federal will give their same effort to the Remington brand.
But all the brands have a bargain basement offering & it's always a flip of a coin if it works well or not.

I love Golden Bullets. My last Bucket O Bullets had 1420 rounds in it. Of those 1420, only 4 did not go bang on the first strike in one of my Mark IIs. Of those 4, 3 went bang on a second strike, and the last went bang on a third strike.

My favorite ammo is CCI, and the bane of my existence is Federal bulk packs. Lately, my local range has been having trouble getting CCI and I am forced to get the Federal stuff. A lot of duds. Wide range of power/velocities. Many won't cycle the action enough to pick up another round. One was so underpowered, the bullet struck 15 INCHES lower than any other on my target, at a range of only 10 yards.

Just opened a new Bucket O Bullets and putting them into 100 round CCI boxes for taking to the range. Glad to have a break from the Federal junk!

When I contacted Remington, they replaced the duds. I don't know if they will still do that.

gunzo said:

Let's stop & try to remember that the Remington ammo made now is by a different company in a different facility than it was just a few years ago...

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Excellent point - I think the brick of Thunderbolts that I mentioned in post #4 is about 20 years old.

" the bane of my existence is Federal bulk packs."
Here again is a similarly opposite finding. Federal Auto Match(in the 325 bulk pack) is the 'go to' ammo for several of our 22's (rifle or pistol). Always/never are difficult words to justify.

I have used federal as well as Winchester and all have a few duds from time to time. But %wise T/bolts are the worst .

Dave Schwaab said:

I love Golden Bullets. My last Bucket O Bullets had 1420 rounds in it. Of those 1420, only 4 did not go bang on the first strike in one of my Mark IIs. Of those 4, 3 went bang on a second strike, and the last went bang on a third strike.

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I haven't bought any in a while but a little over a decade ago I shot up somewhere between 20K and 25K of the Goldens (when they were about 2c a shot at Walmart). I experienced a VERY consistent "dud rate" of one to two percent (i.e., five to ten in a box of 550). I quickly learned not to waste time with a second strike on the duds--there was NO primer in them anywhere.

I also noticed at least four different levels of sound from the GBs, although, amazingly, this seemed to have no effect on either functioning or accuracy out to 50 yards. I don't recall any guns they wouldn't function in, but at least one gun would run 100% on them (the ones that fired, of course) and nothing else. They also turned out to be the MOST accurate load I tested in my Rem 581. Go figger.

I still have several thousand rounds of the things around here somewhere. At the rate I've been shooting lately, that's probably a lifetime supply.

I've had that with the Golden Bullets. After the last shortage I bought tons of 22 LR's. The GB's were common and I bought about 6 of their 500 packs and a bucket. The problem was with one lot # I had to push them really hard into all my revolver cylinders. I had to use the end of a clothespin to jam them into my Bearcat. 3-4 of those 500 packs had that lot #. I havn't looked at the bucket because they're way in the back. I have my fingers crossed.

I called Remington and he was willing to replace them and I think he was giving me a shipping label. I ended up keeping and shooting them all except the bucket. I really have my fingers crossed that it's not the bad lot #.

These were all bought before VISTA started making them.