Never shooting Thunderbolts again!

RedneckFur

RedneckFur

Smith & Wesson is a religion of peace.
Joined
Dec 16, 2016
Messages
2,577
Location
Orange County
Rating - 100%
4   0   0
When my father passed, he left me several 50cal ammo cans filled with bricks of Remington Thunderbolt 22 ammo. Over the years, I've been trying to shoot it up, and replace it with better quality ammo. It's no secret that thunderbolts are dirty and prone to jamming, but I've finally had enough.

Recently, during a range trip, I was shooting my Marlin model 60, and I'd brought along a few 50 round boxes of thunderbolts to shoot up. Loaded up my gun, and fired. First round fired ok. Second one failed to eject, but fired. Heard the round hit the cardboard target. Third round? I heard a loud pop and got burned powder blown back into my face. Looked into the action and found the back of the cartridge case blown out. Checked the bore, and sure enough, about 8 inches from the chamber, the round was lodged in the barrel. Got to spend last night with an old cleaning rod beating that stuck round out of the gun.

What makes it worse, this is the 2nd time this has happened to me with thunderbolts. The previous time was about a year ago. Quite possible both rounds were from the same brick. The ammo looks ok. No corrosion, no dents, etc. But I've had such bad luck with it, and now its proving to be downright dangerous to the shooter.

I've never had any issues with CCI or Federal Automatch, my go-to's for 22 ammo. I guess dad must have got quite a bargain to have bought so much of this stuff.

If anyone has a sense of adventure and wants some questionable 22 ammo, I'll probably be parting with the rest of the stash in the coming months. But I'm not shooting any more of it.
 
I picked up an old Lee Enfield 303 from a guy for $75 years ago, and it was covered in fuzz from the horrible rifle bag it has been sitting in for 30 years. No rust or pitting, but LOTS of fuzz. Went through that thing for days cleaning it inside and out. Finally took it out back for some target practice and BOOM! The firing pin punched right through the primer. The projectile still exited the barrel, but it was a pepper blast in my face, and I thought I was going to look like the Toxic Avenger after that.

It didn't actually cause any harm, but I had to get new underwear.

As for Thunderbolts, I have a couple bricks of it still, and I'm glad my Henry doesn't seem to mind it.
 
It's horrible ammo, particularly if your using a suppressor.
It will lead up a can worse than anything else I've seen.
The variance in velocity from shot to shot is insane.
 
Not worth using. It will work....until it doesn't.
Had horrible leading from it in a 10/22.
 
They're not called Thunderturds for no reason. Myself? I will NEVER buy Remington or Winchester rimfire ammo again.

I've had the same or worse performance from M22s, and of course, they only come in the 1000rd packs. So I am stuck with 2000rds of this shite.

Even in the single action revolver, I am scared of squibs and case blowouts. I am slowing weeding out all my garbage ammo in favor of CCI SV, Blazer and Federal HV.
 
That is odd to hear about Thunderbolts since I have a few older bricks that my Browning Buckmark and 10/22 absolutely LOVE. My Buckmark will actually CHOKE on CCI stuff but shoots the Thunderbolts like a laser! o_O I know they are cheap and dirty but the work, dud rounds aside, very well for my guns.
 
I've refused to touch the crap for a couple decades.
I noticed my match Volquartzen 10/22 and Ruger MKII Competition Slab Side had little dimples in the rifling. I called Ruger to complain, got the custom shop and the tech had one question, "Were you using Remington Thunderbolts". He informed me they were filthy and improperly lubricated, Ruger was seeing damaged barrels from them. Send it in, we'll replace the barrel and don't use Remington ammo again.
 
Never had issue with it, and I have shot THOUSANDS of rounds of Thunderbolt. Thousands and THOUSANDS of rounds of it, has always been accurate, and consistent, but that is just my experience.
 
I bought a box 0f 500 a while back when that was all I could find........ I got through about half of it and gave it away......it was pretty poor. I had a lot of duds and a wide variance in velocity. One would have a nice bang and the next round would sound like a 22 long.
 
I had a Remington nylon 66 that loved the Thundebolts. My CZ 455 loves Eley Match and seems to prefer the 1070 FPS. Eley Tenex is good but no better than Match in my CZ which is a good thing on the pocketbook. Strangely it’s only ok with CCI STD - not bad but only ok.
 
I bought a few bricks of Thunderbolts when 22 ammo was really hard to find a few years ago. The rounds were so inconsistent that I could only use them in my bolt action 22s. Lots of duds and squibs too. I had to bring a cleaning rod to the range to clear all of the squibs.
 
This is funny. When we were going through the great ammo shortages a few years ago I would buy 22 LR for my Dad and his buddies up in NY. They are all bullseye guys. They prefer CCI Std, but at that time I would call my Dad whenever I found stuff that was an OK deal. So I brought them Federal, CCI and whatever else I could find. When I called once about Remington he said nobody up there would shoot that crap. They all said they would buy air guns before shooting Remington. They had all had some many problems with Remington's 22LR they just banned it. I thought they were crazy but may those geezers knew something?
 
BlackGun said:
Total junk. Remington and Winchester ammo is garbage.
Click to expand...

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

In all the untold thousands of Winchester ammo I've shot (WWB .45 ACP, WWB 9mm, .22 WMR, and .22 LR), I can't recall ever having any problems what so ever.

Well...there was that time in the early 80s when I had a .22 WMR cartridge which was creased, right out of the box. Wrote a letter, sent them the end of the box with the lot number on it, just to let them know. Got a full box of .22 WMR in return, for my troubles.
 
It could be the Ammo or the Rifle. I'll speak of both. If your rifle is super dirty which is easy for a .22 to become that could be an issue. If the chamber is rough or dirty then that would explain the case not coming out and if the next one didn't chamber fully then the case would have unsupported area that could blow out. At least that seems right in my mind today but I've had an off day so who knows. Also a lot of .22s out there have a damaged spot where people have dry fired them. Sure some have firing pin stops to keep this from happening.
On to Ammo. I've fired every type of .22 Ammo that has ever existed.....well close. I've had trouble with all types at some point. Granted, I've shot probably over 100,000 rounds of .22LR in my existence easily. I grew up on Winchester Dynapoints and Remington Thunderbolts and never remember any issues back then....which was 20 some odd years ago. These days I expect bad rounds in every brick. Some are duds. I've also seen case failures like you mentioned. 2 such incidents occurred a few years ago with Winchester bricks from Walmart. My friend lost an extractor in his Ruger 10/22 to a bad round. In my experience .22LR from most companies have had bad quality control for years. It's just not the same as it used to be. They started having such high demand and running machines around the clock that quality control went by the wayside. Just my .02c. Your opinions may vary.
 
Last edited:
I held the same opinion on thuderbolts till last month, planning to shoot the 22 steel match last month, I went to the ammo cabinet and it was bare except for one lone brick of thunder bolts, being the day of the shoot I decided to run them that way any malfunctions could be blamed on the ammo,
My 22/45 loved them,no malfunctions all day something that it would not do with the federal match, so I'm heading to the match today with a new brick of thunder bolts in the range bag
 
I have a pretty nice stash of CCI .22LR that I will start on just as soon as I shoot up all of my Federal bulk .22. The problem is, I keep ending up with more Federal. Maybe I'll get to that CCI one of these days....or it will be in a yard sale after I'm gone.
 
I remember some years back on Rimfire Central, a Remington production manager admitted they were having a problem with their ammo, getting the priming compound evenly distributed in the case rims or something like that. He said they were in the process of retooling and that things would improve.
 
We've all seen the owners manuals; "If the gun doesn't work worth a crap try different ammo."
I got an M&P 15-22 when they first came out. In the manual it says "do not use Remington Thunderbolt ammo."
I'm sure it's not the first time a manufacturer has done this, but it's the first time I recall seeing one dog an ammo by name.

So now it's a challenge right? After running a couple hundred rounds of CCI std. and everything works great, I load up the T-bolts.
Kerbam Kerplink Kerchunk.
Wouldn't cycle worth a damn. Every cycling problem you can have, it had.
Hmm. Guess S&W might know what they're talking about here.

It has a couple favorites, but the gun has run every other type of ammo with no problems.

They do encourage me to take the rough-rider to the range. That's the only gun I'll feed the t-bolts to.
 
I don't know what you guys are complaining about. After you chisel it out of your barrel (after just 50 rounds) you can recast it into new bullets.

So its like getting two bullets for the price of one.

IMG_1043.JPG
 
Pink_Vapor said:
I've refused to touch the crap for a couple decades.
I noticed my match Volquartzen 10/22 and Ruger MKII Competition Slab Side had little dimples in the rifling. I called Ruger to complain, got the custom shop and the tech had one question, "Were you using Remington Thunderbolts". He informed me they were filthy and improperly lubricated, Ruger was seeing damaged barrels from them. Send it in, we'll replace the barrel and don't use Remington ammo again.
Click to expand...

Lead bullets damaged a steel barrel? I think there may be more to this.
 
I met 22plinkster at the NRA show a few months back, and he made a comment in passing along the lines of "I was madder then trying to shoot thunderturds through a Marlin model 60". made me laugh when i starting reading your post.
 
georgel said:
I remember some years back on Rimfire Central, a Remington production manager admitted they were having a problem with their ammo, getting the priming compound evenly distributed in the case rims or something like that. He said they were in the process of retooling and that things would improve.
Click to expand...
that was the Golden Bullshets aka Golden Bullets. thunderturds are a whole rung down the QA ladder from those
 
S4f said:
I held the same opinion on thuderbolts till last month, planning to shoot the 22 steel match last month, I went to the ammo cabinet and it was bare except for one lone brick of thunder bolts, being the day of the shoot I decided to run them that way any malfunctions could be blamed on the ammo,
My 22/45 loved them,no malfunctions all day something that it would not do with the federal match, so I'm heading to the match today with a new brick of thunder bolts in the range bag
Click to expand...
make sure you get some copper choreboy pads to clean the lead fouling out after you're done. The measure of ammo quality isn't just always if it will cycle or shoot relatively accurately. These are dirty nasty poorly made barrel leading garbage which aren't any cheaper to buy or more available than quality rimfire ammo.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom