Henry AR-7 high round torture test?

Two more trips to the range. Used 19 different types of ammunition with manufacturers rated velocities from 1070 fps to 1850 fps and fired 495 rounds with 5 FTF. 1.01% failure rate.

I fired ten 8 round groups using two magazines reloading and changing magazines as fast as I could. Total time 282.69 sec (4 min 42.69 sec). Maybe not extreme rapid fire but as fast as I could manage.

Also did two 25 round rapid fire. One in 17.30 sec, the other in 17.95 sec.

No broken or melted parts yet.

Rifle Stats - Totals since purchased
Rounds fired - 3683
FTF - 95
FTE - 86
Misfire - 25
Failure rate - 5.62%
Rounds fired since last cleaning - 495
 
Broke 5,000 rounds today. I have fired 5,138 rounds through my Henry U.S. Survival Rifle (AR-7) and so far nothing has broken or worn out. The action is definitely broken in and it will run reliably with lead round nose ammo at 1050 fps. Copper plated ammo works better and CCI Mini Mags are still my go to ammo. Trigger pull is lighter than when I first got it. Failure rate is still hovering around 5.2%. By comparison my 10/22 failure rate today was 2%.
 
That is interesting.
I have roughly 4K rounds total through two Ar-7's and my results resemble yours, except for reliability.
My failure rate sits just below 2% for the Ar, and around 4% for the 10/22, so a reverse from your findings. Maybe I stumbled on better functioning mags earlier on. I think it is the mags that caused 99% of the problems, and sometimes just swapping them between different rifles cured it. It looks like it is the best rifle/mag combo that lead to good reliability (but my sample size is 2 rifles and 6 magazines only, ymmv).
 
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Mikey66 said:
That is interesting.
I have roughly 4K rounds total through two Ar-7's and my results resemble yours, except for reliability.
My failure rate sits just below 2% for the Ar, and around 4% for the 10/22, so a reverse from your findings. Maybe I stumbled on better functioning mags earlier on. I think it is the mags that caused 99% of the problems, and sometimes just swapping them between different rifles cured it. It looks like it is the best rifle/mag combo that lead to good reliability (but my sample size is 2 rifles and 6 magazines only, ymmv).
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Interesting results with your rifle. I think my Henry AR-7 failure rate is high for a couple of reasons. I had a bad magazine, some of the ammo set the rifle up for failure. I used ammo I found on the ground, in the misfire bin and ammo soaked in water. I also went over 1000 rounds without cleaning the rifle. By contrast my 10/22 has only had clean factory ammo through and no low velocity stuff and it gets cleaned as soon as I think carbon build up is beginning to affect reliability.

I want to get a new Henry and 10/22 and do a better side by side comparison using a wide variety of ammo under the same conditions to see how the failure rates compare.
 
armycat said:
I used ammo I found on the ground, in the misfire bin and ammo soaked in water. I also went over 1000 rounds without cleaning the rifle. By contrast my 10/22 has only had clean factory ammo through and no low velocity stuff and it gets cleaned as soon as I think carbon build up is beginning to affect reliability.
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That explains it (I read this whole thread a while ago and forgot about that part). I only used bulk ammo on sale, and most of the ftf's would fire when I reloaded them in the mag. You took the test to a whole new level (my respect to you sir).
For some reason I never got along with my 10/22, but my two Henry levers chewed through any cheap bulk ammo I loaded into them without a hiccup. I never bothered calculating reliability, because I just never had any issues. The biggest problem was when I accidentally loaded a round backwards into the feeding tube.
 
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