Marlin 925M .22WMR FTF's ---> Why?

j8064 · Apr 29, 2018

This Marlin 925M has been a safe queen for about 10 years. I bought it new, shot it a couple of times and it didn't impress me. It had <100 rounds through it when I put it in mothballs.

Since 22LR ammo is SO much cheaper than 22WMR I re-purposed the scope I had on it and the poor rifle has been neglected for years.

A couple of weeks ago CombatAK and I got to talking about 22 Mag rifles so I pulled the Marlin out of the back of a safe and wiped it down. Last Saturday I picked up a cheap Wally World scope for it. I had a couple hundred rounds of 22WMR ammo on hand so today the rifle got some "very frustrating" range time.

FTF's! 40% of the time - CLICK and nothing! :sad20:

Sometimes a second try would ignite the round, but not always. Whatever brand of 22LR ammo goes bang in any 22 I own 99%+ of the time. 20 cents a round for 22WMR duds reminded me why this rifle has been left behind.

The good news is the few rounds that fired correctly gave me time to zero the scope at 50 yards. There's accuracy in this rifle somewhere.

Below are some pics of today's ammo and firing pin strikes of a few duds. I'm asking for your input here:
- Could it be the ammo?
- Could it be the firing pin or a weak bolt spring?
- It was 29*F this morning, but that shouldn't really matter...

What does the brain trust here think?

:shrug:

Magnumite · Apr 30, 2018

While not nearly your misfire rate, I don't experience much phenomenal performance from the Dynapoints, yawnful groups and occasional misfires. The silver box is suspect... but this all prehysteria ammo, correct?

I just had my recent vintage Marlin 22 Mag out weekend before last and it fired 100%, both CCI and black box premium Winchester.

Sundazes · Apr 30, 2018

They don't look like lite strikes, but give it a good cleaning, including the bolt. I have and old Chuckster. The first time I fired it many years, I had the same issue. A lot of gunk was in the bolt/firing pin. I cleaned it out really well and it was back up to nearly 100%.
Did you try any other ammo?

Uncle Duke · Apr 30, 2018

Those strikes sure look plenty solid enough.

Why didn't the rifle impress you 10 years ago? Same failure to fire issue then? Same ammo this time as when you put the gun away 10 years ago?

j8064 · Apr 30, 2018

Magnumite said:
While not nearly your misfire rate, I don't experience much phenomenal performance from the Dynapoints, yawnful groups and occasional misfires. The silver box is suspect... but this all prehysteria ammo, correct?

I just had my recent vintage Marlin 22 Mag out weekend before last and it fired 100%, both CCI and black box premium Winchester.

The ammo is fairly fresh - less than 3 years old.

I ordered some CCI MaxiMags today. CCI ammo has always performed well for me. Hopefully it will make a difference. :fingerscrossed:

sundazes said:
They don't look like lite strikes, but give it a good cleaning, including the bolt. I have and old Chuckster. The first time I fired it many years, I had the same issue. A lot of gunk was in the bolt/firing pin. I cleaned it out really well and it was back up to nearly 100%.
Did you try any other ammo?

I pulled the bolt and cleaned it. Since it's not like a Mauser bolt that's easy to field strip into parts I'm going to soak with cleaner and make sure there's no gunk binding inside. :thumbsup:

Uncle Duke said:
Those strikes sure look plenty solid enough.

Why didn't the rifle impress you 10 years ago? Same failure to fire issue then? Same ammo this time as when you put the gun away 10 years ago?

Frankly the cost of ammo vs. 22LR and the fact it wasn't so accurate then is why it became a safe queen. I don't recall FTF's then. I had many other center fire projects going on so the Marlin was set aside. The ammo I tried yesterday was different than what I had then.

When I got the scope almost dialed in yesterday I could tell there was accuracy to be had. Now it's a matter of getting it to go bang consistently.
It has 500 rounds of CCI food coming so it has a chance to win a place at Hooligan shoots moving forward...

We'll see...

Uncle Duke · Apr 30, 2018

Was a good stretch of time maybe 4 years ago where 22WMR (like 22LR) was also darned near unobtainable. Wouldn't surprise me if, in the rush to market, QC maybe took a back seat a time or two. From what I've read, it's not really as easy as one might think to make a consistently reliable and good quality rimfire cartridge. Getting the priming compound into that rim properly is apparently no small challenge in and of itself.

Anyway, better luck with your new ammo!

John from MD · Apr 30, 2018

Those strikes look good to me. The depth and location are where they are supposed to be. I suggest trying another brand of ammo.

Clovis · May 1, 2018

I have a similar rifle that I fired recently after a long period of inactivity with ammo older than what you have and have never had any trouble from that rifle(well I do miss). I think it is the ammo, try something, anything else.

j8064 · May 6, 2018

Update - Fresh Ammo Works Better

Thanks for your input folks. :thumbsup:

I cleaned the bejesus out of the bolt, chamber and bore. And I ordered some fresh CCI and Fiocchi 22 mag ammo.

Range conditions sucked this morning, but I wanted to try again and not give up on the Marlin. The good news is the Fiocchi rounds we shot all went bang except one. That round worked with a second try. I also tried more of the Winchester ammo from last week. Same thing as before -> click, click. bang - or maybe no bang at all. I'm convinced that ammo is bunk.

As hard as it was to see targets in the mist and fog, both 4570 and I shot 3" groups at 50 yards with Fiocchi ammo. We'll save the CCI for better shooting conditions.

I'll keep hoping this little Marlin proves it shouldn't be a safe queen any longer.

We'll see.

Magnumite · May 7, 2018

Good to hear of an improvement.
As a side note, I have had one 100 round box of Winchester SuperX 22 LR that only had about 2 misfires in a dedicated 22LR 1911...still too much really. Every other loading from Winchester, including that SuperX loading exhibits a much higher misfire rate. With the 10/22 misfires...with a Rem 510 bolt gun the rate is less but still abnormally high even for rimfire.

John from MD · May 7, 2018

I agree about the Winchester FTF rate as I have the same problem with .22LRs. I used to buy the 555 and 333 stuff but I quit as I got too many failures to fire. Sometimes, if you rotated the rim, they would fire which to me says poor quality control in priming. All of my firing pins are contoured by me to give the best impact in the right place. When they can't set them off, they are just bad rounds.

On the other side, I found that the Federals that come in the 365 round box haven't given me a failure yet. :thumbsup:

lazarus · May 18, 2018

j8064 said:
Thanks for your input folks.

I cleaned the bejesus out of the bolt, chamber and bore. And I ordered some fresh CCI and Fiocchi 22 mag ammo.

Range conditions sucked this morning, but I wanted to try again and not give up on the Marlin. The good news is the Fiocchi rounds we shot all went bang except one. That round worked with a second try. I also tried more of the Winchester ammo from last week. Same thing as before -> click, click. bang - or maybe no bang at all. I'm convinced that ammo is bunk.

As hard as it was to see targets in the mist and fog, both 4570 and I shot 3" groups at 50 yards with Fiocchi ammo. We'll save the CCI for better shooting conditions.

I'll keep hoping this little Marlin proves it shouldn't be a safe queen any longer.

We'll see.

Late to the party, but the two bricks of Winchester HV 22lr I bought around 3 years ago I had about 5-8% failure to fire on them in both the Mossberg Plinkster I owned for about a year and in my 10/22. Accuracy was pretty terrible also and had plenty of failure to feed and stove pipe issues. I haven’t bought Winchester 22lr since then. The only other two brands that have ever given me issues is Armscor where I tend to get about .5-1% failure to fire and Remington Golden bullets which are around the same .5-1%. I’ve had zero failures to fire with any CCI ammo, Aguila or federal/AE. I get the occasional stove pipe with Federal/AE, but rare. I can’t recall any stove pipes in 300-400 of Aguila I’ve run in 10/22 or that plinkster and none in the maybe 1000-1300 rounds of CCI I’ve run in them (I mostly run Federal these days as I picked up a lot of automatch and bulk HV for dirt cheap over the last 2 years, but I have 2-3k of Aguila and roughly the same of CCI).

Those rim imprints look good. I’d say an ammo issue.

Marlin 925M .22WMR FTF's ---> Why?

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