Winchester ammo quality control

bjjzak

bjjzak

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Now this was a bit different. I had picked som Win 300 win mag 150 ammo (grey box regular stuff, 150 power point) at Wally world last fall. When I went to the range to check sight in, I was rather dissapointed. 3" groups at 100 yds, WTF? For a refference check I had 10 rounds of Federal regular stuff in 150gr as well, ran those off, and got 5 shot groups of around 1". OK, the gun works, but this ammo is ???

Jump to yesterday, going through the office, found I had 2 full boxes of this stuff left. Took a look at the rounds, noticed that there were 2 somewhat different types of bullets being used. Decided to go one step further, and got my puller out and pulled the works. Now for the real suprise. Lowest weight was 69.3gr, heaviest was 74.5, same lot numbers on the boxes. Powder appeared to be an extruded type. (was kinda expecting ball). Bullets were all around 150 gr, but some had huge amount of lead exposed at tip, rather different than regular Win 150 PP's. Lyman digital scale did the counting.

No bloody wonder the stuff was all over the map. Any one else experience funny things with factory ammo lately?
 
bjjzak said:
Now this was a bit different. I had picked som Win 300 win mag 150 ammo (grey box regular stuff, 150 power point) at Wally world last fall. When I went to the range to check sight in, I was rather dissapointed. 3" groups at 100 yds, WTF? For a refference check I had 10 rounds of Federal regular stuff in 150gr as well, ran those off, and got 5 shot groups of around 1". OK, the gun works, but this ammo is ???

Jump to yesterday, going through the office, found I had 2 full boxes of this stuff left. Took a look at the rounds, noticed that there were 2 somewhat different types of bullets being used. Decided to go one step further, and got my puller out and pulled the works. Now for the real suprise. Lowest weight was 69.3gr, heaviest was 74.5, same lot numbers on the boxes. Powder appeared to be an extruded type. (was kinda expecting ball). Bullets were all around 150 gr, but some had huge amount of lead exposed at tip, rather different than regular Win 150 PP's. Lyman digital scale did the counting.

No bloody wonder the stuff was all over the map. Any one else experience funny things with factory ammo lately?
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Don't know about factory ammo, but I purchased two bags (2 x 100) of 22-250 brass and after opening the bag, my first impression of the brass was not good , as the brass looked really rough and many had burrs around the throat. On closer examination I found a number of the brass to have a crack from the throat, down the neck to the body of the cartridge, some of these cracks were almost half the length of the brass. The cracks in some of the brass looked like they had a rolled edge and then pressed together. As these faulty brass were a definite safety hazard I sent 1/2 doz. to Winchester in the States and for my trouble I rec'd a form letter with a $10.00 gift certificate (which barely covered the postage) for more Winchester products. I returned both to Winchester.
A cursory examination of the brass revealed about 18 cases with obvious defects, but on closer examination with a light and a magnifying glass there were a number with a small crack in the throat/shoulder area. I stopped looking after I discovered over 40 defective brass (20%) of the total and sent the entire lot to the recycle bin. That will be my last purchase of any Winchester product.:mad:
 
I've fired along with others literally Hundreds of Thousands or more rounds down range both as an instructor and on specialty teams. I've never once seen a FTF because of the ammo.

Mainly The Winchester Ranger series.
9mm, 40 S&W, .223 Rem, .308Win, 12GA Slugs and Buck Shot.
In fact I'd say it is excellent ammo and is used in the field every day.
 
50% of responders will swear by it, 50% will claim it is utter crap.
These Norinco vs * threads generally get nowhere.

I went through a few boxes of Winchester 12 g target loads and some Winchester Wildcats. No issues here.
 
I'm thinking this is probably more along the lines of the factory rifle stuff. No FTF's, but it's the variations in the powder charges that caught my attention. Anybody know if there's a +/- allowance on the assembly line or what it is? 3" group is still minute of deer out to 200 yds, but I expected a bit better. Mabey I'm wrong?
 
I've never found a Winchester factory round I liked. That said, I've had boxes of federal that threw me for a loop while trying to sight in an M14. After a while I started looking at the bottom of the brass to see different lot number markings and different painted primers on the cartridges. Box of random pickings ammo. :(
 
I didn't like the way the winchester power point 150 gr. was ejecting from my M14 today. It was only spitting brass 2 feet compared to the 5 feet of distance I normally get.
The only other time I saw that happen was when i used a box of 180 gr. rounds. That stuff was too hard on the action, you could tell the gun didn't like it.
 
Personally I've never had a problem with Winchester ammo. I've used it for years in my .308 and brought home lots of game with it; that was their "premium" stuff loaded with partitions however. I use their white box 22-250 high velocity stuff in my Stevens 200 and it shoots under an inch all day, so can't complain about that either.

By the sounds of what you're seeing, you should maybe be calling them and complaining however. Five grains of powder variation, plus the differences you stated in the bullets themselves is unforgivable.
 
Northman999 said:
Personally I've never had a problem with Winchester ammo. I've used it for years in my .308 and brought home lots of game with it; that was their "premium" stuff loaded with partitions however. I use their white box 22-250 high velocity stuff in my Stevens 200 and it shoots under an inch all day, so can't complain about that either.

By the sounds of what you're seeing, you should maybe be calling them and complaining however. Five grains of powder variation, plus the differences you stated in the bullets themselves is unforgivable.
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x2 on the high velocity 22-250 rounds, best group is at 0.5" so far. Not bad for $32/box of 40
 
The Super X 180 gr PP Winchester is the best shooting factory ammo i tried in my 300 win. All of it is +/- 5 yrs old because i bought a bunch of it with the same lot number back then. All the factory brass seems to have more defects now than it used to, even Norma.
 
i havent used much of there ammunition yet ive used ltos of their shotgun ammo with nothing but postive results.
 
If you are an experienced handloader then you will know that there are lots of way to make a mistake. All the same opportunities and more ocurr in a factory, so sometimes the ammo is defective.

Sounds like the pallet of defective ammo they collected accidently went off to get packaged instead of burnt.

Their response sounds lame. they should be falling all over themselves to thank you for the heads up and to repalce it with a few boxes of good ammo.
 
I've had consistent success with their 180gr powerpoint, 180gr supreme ballistic silvertip, and 180gr supreme XP3.
 
On the Older win ammo I have / have used, 308, 243, 270, 30-06, 223, 3030, it's been good. But for this new stuff, even the cases are different within the same batch. Some are spotless and very shiny, some have black stains all over and are noticeably duller in finish. I had bought some factory stuff to get the gun up & running quick, didn't have time to work up a load for it. Quality control must have been on vacation for a bit.
 
I bought some Winchester 10mm Silvertips. Had 2 squibs in one box. Absolutely unacceptable for self-defense ammunition. I will never buy Winchester brand ammo again unless I get it for a stupid good price. Even then It'll be reserved for plinking. I could have lost my life because of that ammunition. Good thing I decided to run a some through the chronograph.
 
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