Firing my 226 40’s recently and about to wrap it up.
The last thing im going to fire is 5 rds of my carry ammo, HST LE 165 GR. On round 3 or 4 it goes, “pfft!” Instead of “Bang!”
I stop. Remove mag, eject fired case, check bore, then continue. The case was sooty. Low powder or contaminated powder i guess.
I’ve bought two 200 rd cases on this. The first case many rounds (25?) With creases in the case at the bullet base. I tried to find them all & used them for practice. I was concerned the case could split & didn’t want to reload those.
Im not sure if this round was the newer or older case. I can check the production code on the box, though.
Can’t even trust recent production LE JHP ammo these days.
That’s a little disconcerting. I’ve never had an issue with duty/defensive ammo. I’ve shot 30 year old Federal 9BPLE with no problems. One time I had a couple of squibs with Federal.22lr plinking ammo so I emailed them about it. They sent me a label to return it and a coupon for a fresh case.
I thought i saw in hit the berm 4 ft low, there was almost no recoil, and didn’t remember the slide moving or case ejecting.
It had not, case was in chamber. I poked a chamber flag longer than the barrel through to be sure it was clear. Case was whole, sooty, a few large grains of powder stuck inside to the wall.
I fired about 15 more of that box with no problems, but, dunno if that was one bad load out of a 100k or if there are more than that.
IIRC the 2 200 rd cases I’d bought were made of two, overlapping batches. Much more of one than the other. Obviously ive fired all of the other. The one remaining i know fired a few boxes of already without a problem except for some creased cases.
I’m just going to frame this from my point of view. I manage construction projects. Often several at a time, sometimes spanning multiple sites and multiple states. I and my staff try very hard to produce quality products.
If one of my customers does not receive the quality they expected and specified I want to know. I will look into it, get to the bottom of it, and correct the issue both for that client and going forward.
Of course if they don’t tell me, I may not discover it on my own. At least not right away. Which helps no one. Let Federal know about your experience. Sooner is always better.
If they (or me in my example) tell you to pound sand, well you know whom not to do business with in the future.
Complaint sent to Federal. I’ll let y’all know if they respond.
Meanwhile I’ll fire more of it and some 165 gr LE Gold Dots i have & switch my carry ammo to that, possibly.
I’ve got one box of Underwood 155 gr XTP left. I haven’t fired it from these 226’s but if i like it I’ll order more when it returns to stock.
That stuff chronographed around 1275 fps from 4" M&P’s IIRC.
So, different pistol this time? The only center fire pistol misfires that I can remember is three rounds of Norma 9mm fmj. That was my first and last experience with that ammo brand.
I generally do not assume a light primer strike is the primer cup. Although possibly they had a single cup thicker than every other one, the more likely explanation is debris in the gun, or a problem with the gun.
We used to get a bunch of light strikes with the Sig P220, subsequent DA trigger pulls wouldn’t help.
I think this was its first malfunction of any type in its @5k round life. Recoil spring still tests fine.
Looked like a good primer strike. I suppose it’s possible the slide was only 99% forward because when i almost remember seeing the slide move a hair when it went “click”.