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I didn't think too much about this until I visited another large gun forum this weekend. One person was using Winchester this weekend with his Remington 700. The ammo made his bolt sticky. Another person was shooting .410 shot and found a slug in the box.

On Friday, I found a problem with two boxes of .45 ACP. I went to the range after work to shoot my carry, a P220 Compact. I emptied out my RBCD rounds and loaded from a 100 round box that I just got from Academy. About 25% of the rounds stuck the magazines if they were fed into the mag as the 3rd round or higher. That is, if I had 2 rounds in the mag, then placed a bad round in, it wouldn't budge to accept a fourth. It would move down about half way, then move no further. I loaded the RBCD rounds with no problems. I went out to my car, remembering I had a nearly full box of 50 round Winchester. This was much better, but still about 5-10% of the rounds were bad. The whole night was like that. I was only able to load 3-4 rounds at a time. The bad rounds fired/fed fine, though. The whole box was also extremely dirty. My thumb and trigger fingers were covered black afterwards.

I got home where I had a box of PMC and Remington UMC. I fed those in and out all night with no problems. I tried the bad Winchesters in another magazine. It stuck there, also. It had been about 2 trips since I cleaned the magazines, so the next day, I cleaned/lubed them and still they stuck.

No idea what was going on, but I'm going to contact Winchester about this. About 80% of the rounds I've fired in my Glock 19 and Sig are Winchester white boxes. I've never had this problem before.

my bet is something is up with the Mag...

I've recently had some problems with Winchester ammo as well. I had a 4 or 5 duds in the last 100 RND box of .45 ACP (Sig P220), 2 failure to feed in a 50 RND box of 9mm (Ruger P89), and about 10% duds out of a 525 RND .22LR (Ruger 22/45). I've cleaned all 3 guns thoroughly and still have the same issue. So I tried some different ammo, Federal for the .45 & 9mm and Remington for .22LR. Not a single dud or failure to feed.

I just chalked it up to cheap ammo.

I've had problems with the powder not burning and gunking up my handguns real bad. No problem with Remington.

I saw some pics on another forum of some WWB 9mm that were horrid looking - crushed cases, crooked bullets. 4 rounds out of a box of 100. QC issues happen, but it seems like Winchester is having more than their fair share of late.

RottenApple wrote:I've recently had some problems with Winchester ammo as well. I had a 4 or 5 duds in the last 100 RND box of .45 ACP (Sig P220), 2 failure to feed in a 50 RND box of 9mm (Ruger P89), and about 10% duds out of a 525 RND .22LR (Ruger 22/45). I've cleaned all 3 guns thoroughly and still have the same issue. So I tried some different ammo, Federal for the .45 & 9mm and Remington for .22LR. Not a single dud or failure to feed.

I just chalked it up to cheap ammo.

Up until about November of last year, I used Winchester almost exclusively. About that time, I started having issues with their 9mm in my M&P. On about 2 rounds per box of 50, I had bullets with bad primers. The primer strike was centered and solid but the gun did not go bang. Switched to Federal when the Winchester ran out and haven't had any issues at all.

T.

WWB seems to consistently be on the lower end of the quality scale of the name-brand American ammo makers (with Remington, Speer, Federal being much more consistently reliable). For a while during the 2008 ammo shortage Winchester/Olin even removed the "Made in the USA" stamp from WWB because much of the ammo was made in eastern Europe (like Monarch) and packaged in WWB boxes because Winchester/Olin couldn't crank out ammo quickly enough. That European-made WWB was even worse than the American made stuff - very dirty.

That said, in the last year or so, WWB has been fine every time I've shot it. Just ran a 100-round box of 9mm WWB from Academy through a Kahr last week with not a single problem. And I've shot probably 400-plus rounds of 9mm WWB at various IDPA local matches, mainly through a S&W M&P, without a single problem. In my experience, WWB is not as inherently accurate as quality practice ammo like Speer Lawman, but we're talking about minor differences.

I don't use WWB in my semi autos because of problems like are described above. There is a long line of complaints against WWB ammo from as far back as the 1990s. I have better luck with PPU, Wolf, Monarch, Bear etc. than WWB. The best solution to affordable range ammo is to reload.

Shooting some USA-branded WW .45 ACP at the range a few weeks ago, and had 2 FTF's, with perfectly fine primer strikes. Re-strikes did nothing. It was unusual enough I mentioned it to the RO who was there. Made me finally wonder "what is the world coming to?" US ammo failing is likely a documented sign of the apocylpse.

austinrealtor wrote:WWB seems to consistently be on the lower end of the quality scale of the name-brand American ammo makers. . . .

Very true. Winchester USA (aka Winchester White Box or WWB) is about the cheapest stuff they can crank out.
I've fired lots of it in .40 S&W and .45 ACP and haven't had any problems in my guns other than it maybe being a little dirtier (left more crud in the gun) than other comparable ammo. But some guns simply refuse to cycle the stuff. YMMV.

Went to the range last week with 9mm White box Winchester. One round stuck in the chamber and wouldn't allow the slide to fall. The ejector had engaged so I pulled the slide to eject; it was tough. I finally got the round out; it was split along the top, buldged and the bullet was a bit cantered.

It looked like during production the bullet was tilted as it was being seated and deformed the brass before it was pushed down. I gave it to the RO as I could tell he was watching me trying to clear it. He wrinkled a brow and took it up front. I stopped and examined every remaining round.

I always un-box the loose ammo and put it in my plastic ammo box so I can do a cursory exam. This also lets me count the rounds and I'm more organized at the range. Obviously I didn't catch this one.

I've been breaking in a new gun and collecting 9mm brass to reload. I've bought 100 count White box exclusively. Out of 11 boxes I've found one bad round (described above). I did find a smashed bullet in one box and another box had two extra rounds

AndyC wrote:Also, the bullet itself doesn't look very smooth; it almost looks like it has tiny dents in the surface, almost like a one of those nightclub mirror-balls.

Saturday Night Fever

Glad it is not just me. My SR9C doesn't WWB. Didnt like the PDX1 I tried either. Appear to be good striker hits, but no fire. UMC has never had a problem and no problem with the green and white box Remington. I will try Hornady Critical Defense this week and see how it likes them. I am a litte surprised with the weapon not liking the WWB, my P95 eats anything I put in it. Maybe it is the hammer vs striker. More testing for sure.

I talked to one of the guys at McBride's on Monday about this. He thinks the brass might be too long on them. I haven't measured, though. He did tell me to specifically look for "Made in the USA" on the box, and sure enough, they were there.

One of the guys on the other forums pointed out that Winchester is in the middle of moving their production from a plant in Illinois to Mississippi. They might be having QC issues because of this.