Winchester 9mm - did I get a bad box or does it suck?

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Hi everyone,

Just got back from a little practice at the range on a rainy night. On the plus side, my aim is getting better. On the down side, I got to practice a hell of a lot of malfunction clearing. I brought 2 50-count boxes of 9mm ammo with me - one was Winchester white box and the other was Blazer Brass. Both purchased locally and within the past three weeks. I was using my SR9 which, after tonight, has about 300 rounds through it in total. Here's what happened:

Loaded a magazine with ten rounds of Winchester. On the second shot, the case failed to eject and jammed things up. I cleared the gun, gave it a quick visual inspection for anything that might have caused a hangup and, finding nothing, went back to shooting. The 8th or 9th round in that same string of 10 did the same failure to eject.

Wanting to see if it was the gun or the ammo, I loaded a magazine with the Blazer and ran through 10 rounds with no problem. Switched back to Winchester and got another failure to eject about 3 rounds into the magazine. That's about how the rest of my night went - 50 perfect rounds of Blazer and 9 out of 50 rounds of Winchester failing to eject.

I can see no visible differences between Winchester brass that failed to eject and Winchester or Blazer brass that ejected properly. So, my questions to all of you:

Did I just get a bad box of ammo or is there a quality issue with the Winchester that I should know about?
Is there some specification difference between the two brands of ammo that I missed that's making the difference?
Is my guy just picky about this ammo for some reason or is this a break-in period issue that will pass?

All info, advice, thoughts, etc. greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
 
i have found over the years blazer ammo to be better than WWB. Heck I will buy tula over WWB. Happen to save any unfired rounds. Break out a caliper or Mic and measure away see if you find any differences. its cheap fodder and it is what it is.
 
i have found over the years blazer ammo to be better than WWB. Heck I will buy tula over WWB. Happen to save any unfired rounds. Break out a caliper or Mic and measure away see if you find any differences. its cheap fodder and it is what it is.

I've got some digital calipers and two 50-round boxes of each brand still sitting around. Might have to do some testing tomorrow. Unfortunately, none left from the box I took to the range (well, a bit of spent brass) as I wanted to run through all of it to see what the failure rate was overall.
 
Wwb is pretty underpowered and inconsistent could just be a combo of new tight gun with weak ammo...

This.

WWB is underpowered, if your gun has a stiff main spring it will have a hard time cycling the action. Part of the "fun" of owning a gun is figuring out what it likes to be fed... I have a Ruger 22/45 pistol that has fte's on almost every type of .22 except for CCI Mini-Mag. I now have 6 different boxes of .22 that I look at with suspicion.
 
WWB sucks in general. I have used Federal or anything for that matter just to get away from WWB. Prices on that stuff went crazy, while federal stayed low. I'll never buy it again, as long as I can buy Federal. Pretty soon I'll be making my own anyway. [wink]
 
I would give the SR a cleaning, all around and put a couple drops of lube on the recoil spring rod and a dab on the first round of the mag and give it a run. I only ever had one failure with the sr and wwb and it was from my lady limp wristing the gun.

Dom
 
Went plinking with the wife last week, two newly purchased 50rd boxes of WWB resulted in 4 duds total in her SR9c
 
I have never had any problems with wwb but I usually get the 100 round value packs from Wally world...

I recently got a case of Blazer Independence 9mm - blue and white box for the range. Have shot 100 rounds with no issues - seems cleaner than the WWB.
 
I've been buying WWB 100 round value packs from Wally World for years and run them thru full size and compact pistols and even a carbine with no issues at all. Maybe I've just been lucky? WWB is a bit dirty though.
 
Weekend before last I had 4 misfires from ~85 rounds of WWB 9mm through my G19. They all fired on the second strike however. I also shot a 50 round box of CCI blazer aluminum cased stuff and that ran perfectly. I have heard that WWB is questionable and have seen it for myself. I only use it for range though so I'm not betting my life on it.

I also buy WWB bulk .45acp packs for range use with the 1911's and I don't recall ever having any problems with that stuff.

This morning I bought a 250 round bulk pack of Remington 115gr 9mm, brass cased jacketed bullet. I did a little research on it and it gets decent reviews. If I don't get any misfires out of it I think I'll stop buying WWB 9mm. (unless it's the only thing I can find in bulk packs which is sometimes the case.)
 
I stopped buying the WWB. Had about 8 boxes and had about 4 FTE per box with my LC9. My Hi-Point had no issues with the WWB though. Ran Federal, Tula, Wolf, Independence and Fiocchi without issues through the LC9. At 1st I thought it was an issue with limp wrist or something but since trying other 115gr, I have had no problems.
 
I have never had jams with the WWB. But it always seems to be smokey dirty crap. Lately I have been using Blazer Independence for the range.

Sorry - don't mean to spam your thread - just realized I replied a couple days ago.

It's been a looong week.
 
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Bought 2 boxes 100pks of WWB 9mm went to the range with my son and I'm like wow whats wrong with my gun. 14% fail to fire. I thought the gun wasn't cycling but everyone had a mark where the pin hit it. Took some of the rounds 3 trys to fire. UMC bulk has always worked fine so has the blazer brass and PMC.
 
Also keep in mind Winchester is still running their old plant here and their new plant with unskilled labor down in Mississippi. Once the new guys figure out how to make ammo the quality should go up.
 
This morning I bought a 250 round bulk pack of Remington 115gr 9mm, brass cased jacketed bullet. I did a little research on it and it gets decent reviews. If I don't get any misfires out of it I think I'll stop buying WWB 9mm. (unless it's the only thing I can find in bulk packs which is sometimes the case.)


I shot a lot of Remington 115 and 124 gr 9mm FMJ ammo thru my G17 and G19 no problems (its kind of my stand by retail buy from Dicks or Walmart if I do not do a bulk buy some where).
 
Through about 1000 rounds in my sr9c, WWB is the only ammo that has given me problems.

Federal, blazer, remington, all fine.
 
Also keep in mind Winchester is still running their old plant here and their new plant with unskilled labor down in Mississippi. Once the new guys figure out how to make ammo the quality should go up.

I must have gotten ALL of my WWB from the old plant because I have had zero issues with the 9mm over the past 8 years of using it. The .380 is another story, though I think that may be related to the handgun I was using (P3AT)
 
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