My last trip to the range, the brand of ammo (YTR) I was using sucked. Every round stove piped or didn’t move the slide for even a stove pipe condition. Causing some real interesting issues with clearing the jam. I would feel differently if only a few rounds out of a 100 did it. But every stinking round, nah.
I am wanting to make a pace where we could we could report as a community a place we think the ammo sucks and giving the reason. That way we can help a brother out and maybe save him/her a few $100 or more.
Winchester White Box pistol ammo after the move to Mississippi manufacturing some years ago.
Also, Winchester in general, centerfire pistol and also .22lr rimfire.
It’s not even close
Edit: But I also have always refused to buy “fly by night” manufacturers that are new/I neve heard of, reloads, remanufactured, etc. I only buy from the big boys (of which there are many worldwide)
Not trying to overshadow your experiences, but I can’t say I have had the same experiences with this one. I used to get the 200 rd box of 9mm from Walmart (until the stopped selling pistol ammo) and I never had a continuous problem. I think I had only one failure to fire out of probably 2000 rounds. Had a solid strike on the primer, but just didn’t go off. The only realistic variance was the round count per box. Sometimes I would get 198 or 199 and sometimes I would get 202 or 203. I once got 205 and I was happy. The Winchester White Box was also, at that time, the least expensive 9mm I could find locally.
Maybe I am just fortunate to have hungry weapons that will eat anything I feed them.
Kinda like my three teenaged boys living at home…I have no money for my hobbies. I have teenagers.
FWIW, 1 failure in 2000 rounds, while not exactly bad…is a higher failure rate than literally every ammo manufacturer I have used other than Winchester.
I’ve had multiple lots of multiple calibers that were clearly out of spec as measured by a micrometer in addition to manufacturing defects that cause multiple rounds of Winchester Ranger in multiple calibers unable to function. I’ve sent pictures and measurements and lot numbers and all that to Winchester several times as those occurred to their recommended email contact and never heard back.
Iv’e also experienced a near squib there the .40 FMJ round hit a foot or more lower on the target at a range of 5 yards and the slide didn’t even move, and just significantly above baseline failures (FTEject, FTFfire) with winchester pistol ammo as well.
It’s not just cost either…IME Federal Champion, CCI Blazer Aluiminum case, and various Wolf/Tulammo/etc steel case pistol ammo have all been more reliable
This hurts. Doesn’t matter what reason, when you reach out to Customer Service, they need to call you back. I can imagine this added to your disappointment with Winchester. For me, even if the ammo was perfect in every aspect, poor customer service would make me change.
Now, for the good…I’ve had good usage experiences with basically everything else…although Remington/UMC in the green/white box for pistol ammo is a little questionable IMO/IME and I don’t buy it any more but I will use it.
The ATK family of ammo I really like…Federal, CCI, Speer. All very good. Speer Lawman is my all time favorite training ammo and HST/Gold Dot, well, you know.
All of the NATO country 9mm and 5.56 I"ve used has been good too
The last time I had a commercial round of ammo truly fail was in the 80s, but I can’t say I buy a lot of ammo from brands I don’t recognize.
HSM comes to mind as terrible ammo but not because of failures. It just patterns like a shotgun but then again for the things they load, mostly old Winchester “dash” rounds, they are cheap so there is that.
When things were bad finding brass and primers I would buy their ammo when I found it then pull the bullets, throw out their powder and reload the primed cases using my own loads and bullets. They were almost useless otherwise…
Which is a shame becasue other companies equal or larger will address clearly presented issues like that.
Amazon makes quite a bit of money but they will address issues, for example. So will Trijicon, or Vortex, or Glock one time I had a dud pistol basically and they handled it beautifully with a replacement pistol in a different model brand new even moved my aftermarket sights over to the new one. If that was Win they wouldnt’ have even spoken to me
Worst ammo ever encountered. Georgia Arms Reloads. At the time I was assured by the seller, these were not reloads. I took his word.
Was looking to get on the range on the cheap.
Just read all replies to your use of YTR ammo. i’ve never used it so cant comment n it.
But that said, I have Browning High Power in .40 it will eat anything i give it except Blazer brand ammo. I had such a bad experience with just a single box at the range, i almost through the gun in the garbage can along with the spent cases and rounds that i didnt even fire. So yeah having a way to talk about this issue with every gun owner, this forum is perfect for that!
LAX reman 9mm, box of 500 over 100 total duds 32 did not fire at two or three way over pressure all rest of them squib almost like the only thing they were loaded with was the primer! will never buy from them again
Not all action problems are caused by ammo - I have discovered I have issues with my pistol for one of two reasons:
(1) a particular brand of ammo I use works well for one of my firearms but not the other due to size specs. Never had a problem with this ammo in my alternate firearm, and other brands of ammo work fine. Just can’t use the one brand in the one pistol.
(2) If I don’t oil my firearm before use (within a month before attending to use it), it jams repeatedly. Now whenever I clean it, I always oil it - not much, but a tiny drop on every part that moves really fast during operation, and at least once a month even if in storage. Oil does evaporate over time.
Just my opinion, but… for (2) that firearm is unreliable, I would never use it for self defense. If that is a purely training or hunting or competition gun, it’s fine.
Just saying
(and given what you describe, have you tried more oil? When the oil is in the right places (more important, it’s not in the wrong places, like a striker channel for instance), and it’s the right kind of oil (which is pretty wide open) it’s pretty hard to legitimately over lube a firearm
Before I went out to shoot it for the first time, I took it apart, cleaned and oiled it. I used an all in one cleaner spray that I use on all my firearms. It was only with this brand of ammo that the stove piping of every round occurred.
