Winchester WB ammo failure

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  • 135sohc

    Ultimate Member
    Oct 27, 2013
    1,157
    From the beginning almost 5 years ago I started noticing a trend where WWB 9mm would not reliably work in my 9mm AR. Did not think much of it and just bought other brands which did work fine. I took a break from things for most of the last year and this fall got back into things. picked up more WWB and then started having the same problems all over again. Today I decided to look into things further and have made the discovery.

    Comparing Winchester, Federal and Remington they are all mostly identical except for the Remington being about .030 shorter OAL. All the ammo being compared is regular FMJ ball.


    Setting a cartridge into the chamber and measuring the protrusion both R and F are both about .115 protrusion. The Winchester is sticking out about .080

    The bcg is coming full forward to the face of the chamber but not fully engaging on the Winchester. Visually I can see the entire length of the Winchester is tapered and measuring with calipers there is a slight taper and right at the top of the case it appears crimped around the bullet. Setting it into the chamber it appears to wedge itself in there without any assistance. all the other brands set in fine and if you tip the gun over they fall right out.

    Other than borrowing a 9mm handgun from a family member I have no way of knowing if all this ammo (probably 2500 rounds) is total crap for all current 9mm platforms.
     

    Threeband

    The M1 Does My Talking
    MDS Supporter
    Dec 30, 2006
    25,234
    Carroll County
    I have a P38 that runs like a top with WWB: never a failure. The same pistol will fail to feed 3 out of every 8 round magazine with Remington UMC.

    The moral is: "It all depends."
     

    135sohc

    Ultimate Member
    Oct 27, 2013
    1,157
    So I got out some more 9mm winchester WB but this was new production stuff from last month and I bought a case of 'service grade' winchester from brownells two weeks ago when it was on sale. Both of those appear to stick out enough and engage the bolt face :rolleyes:
     

    jimbobborg

    Oddball caliber fan
    Aug 2, 2010
    17,112
    Northern Virginia
    Most 9mm ARs from that time have super tight chambers. I don't think they've changed it since I started shooting PCC in USPSA a few years ago. Which is another reason why I use a Ruger now.
     

    jimbobborg

    Oddball caliber fan
    Aug 2, 2010
    17,112
    Northern Virginia
    I cleaned my Ruger PCC as it wasn't working right. I had run a lot of WWB through it and cleaned it, but apparently not enough. I had to take the Glock magazine adapter out to get to the magazine catch, which was filthy and the funky grains were all over every part I missed earlier. At this point, I still have 800+ rounds of it, so that's going into an ammo can for long term storage. Bleh.
     

    135sohc

    Ultimate Member
    Oct 27, 2013
    1,157
    I've noticed I get lots of 'speckles' down inside the trigger area on both of my pcc's. More so when using wwb or remington. Federal runs the cleanest but still being a blow back action it will always get nasty quick.
     

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