Recently went to the range with a family member, and among other things, shot his .38 spl. He had supplied the ammo for his gun, which was Rem. UMC and AE. The AE had a 15% rate of failure-to-discharge. I thought that this was excessive even for ‘economy’ ammo. I considered the possibility that the firing pin was not striking the primer deeply enough, but visual inspection showed well-defined strike marks, and the UMC fired reliably. To date I have only shot Fed/Win/PMC through my sidearms, but have yet to encounter a single failure. Although I have not purchased any AE, I have considered buying it in the past. This recent performance makes me want to reconsider that.
Has anybody else had experiences with AE ammo?
I have had good luck with AE ammo in .38 Spl. You may want to contact them after trying the ammo in another revolver.
15% is horrible. I’d confirm it’s the ammo by trying more in a different pistol.
There are a lot of ways to screw up a wheelgun so it won’t fire reliably.
H
It may be a problem with the gun, or perhaps that particular ammo had storage problems, or the lot had QC issues.
In my experience AE ammo is excellent training ammunition, never had a problem with it in several calibers. In centerfire calibers (even low cost) if you get problems above 1% there is something very wrong with the ammo. With fresh ammo you usually run several thousands until you eventually get a problem.
This is a good idea, but I don’t have access to any other .38/.357s. Anyway, we went through all of that ammo, so there is none left to run any comparisons with.
There are a lot of ways to screw up a wheelgun so it won’t fire reliably.
I don’t want to change the subject, but can you list some of these ways in relation to non-ignition of primers? (for my personal knowledge)
Since others seem to have found adequate reliability from AE, maybe I’ll re-reconsider my future purchases of the brand.
Some companies have primers that are harder than others. In other words, it takes a harder whack from the firing pin to set them off.
You may have a hammer spring on the weak side. This was my first thought when I read you initial post.
On a S&W a common hack is to unscrew the strain screw the supplies tension to the hammer spring. Coil hammer springs get clipped. Any hammer spring can be replaced with a lighter spring for reduced trigger pull, at the cost of being able to ignite all ammo.
Also check the condition of the firing pin.
First step is to return the wheelgun to factory specs.
H