Lakefield Mark II and Winchester Xpert HP

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I've got a variety of rounds for my wife's .22LR, ranging from some old Dominion and CIL FMJ, American Eagle rounded soft-point to some recently purchased Winchester Xpert hollow-points.

My wife has always used the old stuff and it seems to work just fine. But when it comes to the Winchester HP, we've run across endless problems:

The rounds don't feed properly - they stick out of the magazine at about a 45 degree angle and won't chamber. This seems especially bad on the last round or two.

The rounds won't chamber - we had a problem with one or two of the rounds going in. I chambered a round by hand and I felt quite a bit of resistance. I think this is because the barrel was dirty, as after I pulled through twice, it was fine. We had fired less than forty rounds.

The rounds won't extract - I had to use a pocket knife to pop them out.

Is it just because these are cheap, bulk rounds that I'm having this problems? This gun has never had any issues until we started using the Winchester stuff.

Has anyone experienced any similar problems? How does this stuff fare in a semi-auto?
 
Is it just because these are cheap, bulk rounds that I'm having this problems? This gun has never had any issues until we started using the Winchester stuff.

Has anyone experienced any similar problems? How does this stuff fare in a semi-auto?

Well, HP's are not always a semi-auto's best friend. That, and Winchesters are "more iffy than most" when it comes to bulk-packs. The 525-Federal bulk packs, for example, are better feeders than most.

As always, try a bunch of ammo to see what feeds/cycles/hits accurately for you firearm.
 
My Savage MKII wont feed the experts worth a damn either. I think it is due to the shape of the bullet which is more of a truncated cone than a round nose. Likewise, yellow jackets wont feed right either. Now take a good round nose like a dynapoint or federal bulk, and it feeds flawlessly with both 5 and 10 shot magazines in my particular rifle.

Now, i dont want to give the impression that the x-perts are garbage, because my old Cooey model 60 will feed, fire and eject them all day long without a single problem, and they are the cheapest ammo available to me locally. Basically now i stock the x-perts for the cooey and either dynapoints or federals for the savage.

Just my observations
 
This is what I figured. I've never used HP in any of my bigger stuff, just in the .22LR because it was cheap. My wife prefers jacketed stuff, so maybe we'll spend a bit more and stick with that. It seems to be a bit more accurate too.
 
I also have a Lakefield MKII. Occaisionally it will fail to eject but We used experts on gophers this summer and they worked just fine. We maybe had 2 failure to ejects in 500 rounds and I don't know if they were experts or american eagle HPs. I cleaned the gun's chamber earlier this summer and this helped a lot. With some older greased ammo, we had a lot of failure to eject problems. We have had no problems with failure to feed. Check out rimfirecentral for solving problems with your MKII.
 
I love the old Lakefield MarkII i shoot. This boltie is the best varmint gun I have . I used several Cooey 64s and none liked the HPs. they ate the round points like no tomorrow and the Mark II ate the hollows with no hangups at all. I went thru 5 1/2 bricks in 2 weekends disposing of gophers.

it sounds like youe extractor is getting worn and may need replacing. Thousands of rounds have been thru these older guns and some need a little TLC.
 
Hmmm...it could be the extractor, that had occured to me before but I figured I'd test it with more/different ammo. I'm going to keep playing with it and see what happens. Oh damn, that would mean I have to take it out again! :)
 
Oh No ....have to take the old girl out again....whats the pity....lol...lol

I take every opportunity to take my Mark II out to shoot. Metal spinning targets, paper punching or varmint eradicating....It proves itself over and over what a fine weapon it is. old but still deadly.

Mores the pity...the old girl came to me FREE when the registration appeared and after stripping the stock and leaving it "blonde" just Minwax for a shine...I found and shoot its sister the Mark I single shot too. Stripped and finished the same..."the TWINS" make regular showings at our range. They do draw a fair amount of attention from onlookers usually a " what are they?"
 
I wasn't able to hit anything with it until I realized I was snatching the trigger (expecting the recoil...I'm used to .223 or bigger). After I corrected that, I was considerably more accurate. My wife can still beat me though...1/2 inch from bullseye at 30 or so yards with iron sights, and a decent grouping considering she's never actually been taught to shoot.
 
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