FYI: Problems with Recent CCI Ammunition

[Rover]

After problems with the Aguila, I shot 150 CCI SV this morning. I had one failure to feed out of the magazine after cleaning the chamber with a wire brush. It felt light.

[dk114]

Another experience with the CCI light vs. dark blue box here. I was shooting the dark blue CCI from 3 different guns with no problems - S&W Model 41 made in late 90s, a brand-new Walther PPQ M2, and a 1959 Colt Woodsman Match Target (mk3). However once the new light-blue boxes have come out, I started having problems with all three, all with failures to eject.

The solution I found was to put a tiny drop of gun oil on the case of the top round in the mag, once in 10-15 rounds was fine. As long as I did this, I never had any problems again.

Recently I got a new Pardini SP, and interestingly it just eats the new light blue CCI without any problems, no oiling needed. Except. Last week I was loading a mag, and felt that the rounds in it were "rattling around". Gun shot the first round and failed to load the next one. I took the mag out, pulled the top round, put it back, loaded the gun and fired the rest without any problems. Now that I read the note above about some rounds being too long, this makes sense - if the round was longer than the space in the mag, that would explain what happened.

Oh well.

BTW, tried GECO Auto as a possible alternative and found it to be quite inaccurate, with groups of about an inch+ or so from sandbag with red dot at 25m. Shot a whole box of 50, and every of the 10 groups of 5 was like that. CCI SV groups about 1/4" in the same situation.

[FritzFulton]

Seems to me you could drill 24.XXmm-deep holes in a block of plastic, drop the rounds in with the tips sticking out, and use a razor blade or plane to take off the excess. 10 at a time would be relatively easy, in a row.

The mandrels I remember seeing were split and they pressed together to hold the rounds tightly, all around the edge of the lead boss at the base of the bullet itself. Then a little cap went on top which you'd whack with a small hammer. Same idea, just swaged the bullet lengthwise instead of removing material.

The flat nose would make nice scorable holes, as a side benefit!

I'm thinking about a fixture that would take an entire frame of 50 rounds, and allow you to file the tips all at once. I've got 10,000 rounds to salvage, so anything that works one-at-a-time is a non-starter. I only need to knock off about 0.005".

A Neal Waltz Die would solve the problem.Google it.
Fritz Fulton

[Gwhite]

If you think hand sizing 10,000 rounds is a solution, you are welcome to it.

[BobGee]

We've had a problem with the heavy beeswax lube on CCI SV rounds. My mate takes his out of the box, suspends them above a kitchen towel and puts them out in the sun under a glass bowl. This provides enough heat to remove the excess. He shoots Free pistol so doesn’t have any of the other semi-auto problems.

I have noticed an increase in stove-piping on my s/a pistols (Pardini Sp New, TriAce, IZH35m and MP438) with the recent light blues but no issues loading a magazine or feeding/chambering. I’ve been assuming tight/dirty chambers.

Bob.

[Gwhite]

I wiped the wax off the tips of a couple bricks worth of the old stuff that we sent to the National Championships with the team, and they still had problems. They had to de-wax the entire bullets to get through the matches. The newer stuff is barely good enough for practice. I ordered two more cases of CCI, but I haven't had a chance to inspect them yet. It may just be lot-to-lot variation, but the batch in the light blue boxes we got a year ago is REALLY long. I checked, and the tolerance on the case length of .22 long rifle ammo is pretty tight, so the problem is in the bullets, and/or how deeply they are seated.

I believe the Fiocchi of America ammo is actually manufactured by CCI, and the one brick of that I have is fine. The average length is shorter than ALL of the 8 different lots of CCI I measured, including the older stuff.

One of my projects for the summer is to try to get as many of our .22's as possible working with Aguila Standard Velocity ammo. It's currently about the same price as CCI, and their priming is more reliable than CCI. The team & I have fired close to 100K rounds of Aguila over the years, and I don't recall a single misfire that couldn't be traced to dirt or other issues. It has slightly softer recoil than CCI (which is nice for sustained fire), but some pistol chambers need to be kept cleaner and the recoil springs may require tweaking to ensure reliable cycling.

[BobGee]

Gwhite, what is the “Aguila Standard Velocity” ammunition you use? Aguila is just starting to be imported into Oz but there is quite a variety of rounds and no apparent system of numbers (like CCI uses). Maybe we need to move away from CCI if they have lost the plot (unfortunately).

Bob

[Gwhite]

The Aguila I and the team I coach have been shooting happily for many years is part # 1B220332. It's unfortunate that they label ALL of their .22 ammo as "Super Extra", which makes it sound like it might be high velocity stuff. It's got a 40 grain lead bullet, 1130 FPS velocity, and in the fine print, it says "standard velocity". They used to sell it in cases of 5000, packed in ten 500 round "bricks". Since they started importing it again after the pandemic, it is now packed in cases of 2000 rounds, with 40 boxes of 50 in a case, with no additional "brick" internal packaging.

They also re-did the design of the boxes a bit. It looks like this:



They had a deal with Eley for many years, and licensed their priming technology from them. The boxes used to say "Eley Primed". Apparently that deal expired several years ago. Since then, the boxes say "Aguila Prime", but I've shot plenty and it's every bit as reliable as the older stuff.

[Gwhite]

A quick update on CCI: I just got two new cases for the college team. I fished out a box of 50, and I will examine it for excess wax & length statistics. I'll report back in a few days.

[BobGee]

Go Doug! Thanks for the reply.

Bob

[Gwhite]

I just finished measuring a box of the latest lot of CCI ammo we got for the team. It's just as bad as the last batch. The box I grabbed isn't as waxy, but I'm pretty sure the length is still going to cause problems feeding from the Benelli & Pardini magazines.

Here's a picture of what the wax looks like:

There's definitely still more wax than I'd like to see, but it's concentrated at the very tip, without adding to the length. There are thin flat disks of wax on the tips of quite a few rounds. It almost look like the tip were resting on the bottom of the box (or something similar) when the wax hardened. It's even possible the ammo was stored or transported when it was hot enough that the coating softened & flowed down a bit.

And here's an updated table, with the newest stuff ranking 2nd longest:

Now I have to figure out what to do with 20,000 rounds of ammo we may not be able to shoot reliably. This is certainly the last time we will buy CCI until I have proof they've fixed the length problem. I will try some in my personal Benelli & Pardini to see just how bad the problems are.

[KDZ]

At the range yesterday with my SW 41 noticed the wax (grease?) blobs on CCI ammo, and had a some FTF / FTE malfunctions. This Wolf ammo ran fine, and felt clean and dry loading the mags. Made in England with "E" on the back, probably rebranded Eley

[BobGee]

We've had a problem with the heavy beeswax lube on CCI SV rounds. My mate takes his out of the box, suspends them above a kitchen towel and puts them out in the sun under a glass bowl. This provides enough heat to remove the excess. He shoots Free pistol so doesn’t have any of the other semi-auto problems.

I have noticed an increase in stove-piping on my s/a pistols (Pardini Sp New, TriAce, IZH35m and MP438) with the recent light blues but no issues loading a magazine or feeding/chambering. I’ve been assuming tight/dirty chambers.

Bob.

Since the above, and the rest of this thread, a thread has appeared on the Bullseye-L forum on the subject of removing the wax from CCI SV ammo: https://www.bullseyeforum.net/t20698-is ... -22lr-lube

One of the posters said he/she swooshes the rounds in a bowl of white spirit with a finger for a minute or so then drains and dumps the rounds on a towel to dry. I tried it but was concerned that the spirit would get into the cases and cause misfires. I needn’t have worried. I’ve now shot over 300 rounds treated that way in my very picky TriAce with only one misfire and I think that was because of a loose projectile/inadequate crimp. I’ve had none of the usual FTF or FTE that I was getting before. I did get a bit concerned about leading so started putting a drop of gun oil on the top of the first round in the magazine. For my second batch of 150, after the rounds had dried (which takes no time here) I put the rounds back in the bowl, gave them a spritz of light oil (airgun pellet oil) and shook them around before reboxing them. Happy days are here again.

Bob

[Sc0-]

Not CCI but at a recent match I was having light recoil related jams with Norma TAC-22 in a clean Hammerli Xesse. Used the same box in a MG2 and then switched to second box of ammo and shot 4" higher, sad part is that it was the same lot. Had one keyhole at 50yds...

Switching to HV Blazer rounds for the Xesse, and keep the Norma for the MG2. (Norma has thicker brass around the rim)

I bought these dies to try and seat the bullets a little tighter in Federal Auto match ammo but they use a spring vs a fixed sleeve so need to modify it. (Federal auto match had a lot of loose projectile in the cases) https://cuttingedgebullets.com/curx-22lr-die-set

[Gwhite]

Just buy Aguila & don't worry about it.

I've been test firing a couple High Standards I've just re-built for one of my clubs. They have a lot of CCI for members, so I used that for testing. Besides varying amounts of wax, I had about one dud per box from one lot.

12-23-22 CCI Dud.jpg (40.19 KiB) Viewed 7359 times

(The blue marker was from earlier tests sorting for cartridge length)

[KDZ]

I've read claims that Aguila doesn't reliably cycle certain guns, presumably due to less energy and recoil. Has this been a problem with some pistols?

[Gwhite]

Aguila Standard velocity does have slightly lower recoil than CCI (which I view as good thing). It works fine in many Benelli MP90/95's, High Standards and MatchGun MG2's. It probably won't work well in S&W 41's without a recoil spring change.

It may also not have quite enough recoil to cycle well in Pardini SP's. The usual symptom is that the 1st round will fire, and not have enough recoil to eject, or sometimes it will eject but not pick up the 2nd round. The fix is pretty easy. You cut down the recoil spring to ~ 112 mm long. I've used "tired" recoil springs that I've taken out of service because they are already a bit compressed. I've done this on about half a dozen SP's, and they all worked fine afterward.

Between the team I help coach and my own shooting, I've observed about 100K rounds of Aguila SV being fired. I don't recall EVER seeing a dud. They don't bury their bullets in wax that will gunk up your pistol like CCI. The overall length of the rounds is consistently in the middle of the SAAMI spec, as opposed to varying a lot near the upper end the way CCI does.

At the moment, you can buy Aguila SV for about the same price as CCI.

Some people complain that Aguila smells funny. I haven't noticed it that much, in part because the ranges I shoot in have good ventilation systems.

[KDZ]

Thanks GW. I will give it a try - should work in at least one of my 22 target pistoles.

[KDZ]

A quick update on Aguila: I've been using it now for a few months. No problem cycling properly in my 208s or SW 41 (the 41 does have a lighter recoil spring). Though I've not been keeping score, it seems the CCI ammo does have more malfunctions - occasional fail to fire - which I've not noticed with Aguila. Just yesterday went through 250 rd Aguila without any malfunctions, and with 150 rd CCI there was one fail to fire with the round somewhat stuck in the chamber.

Aguila ammo does seem more "smoky" and feels greasier than CCI when loading mags. Recoil feels a tad less than CCI, and I've not noticed any difference in accuracy (though I will never be good enough to see such accuracy differences ;) )