Remington Golden Bullet Value Pack Junk Ammo

[Reloadron]

The first part of your statement does not match my experience. As I mentioned above, at some point in the last 10 years, I bought 5 100-round boxes of the Remington golden stuff. After a couple of magazines, I wondered if something was up with my gun... nope, other ammo ran fine. Then I wondered if maybe the box had gotten exposed to some solvent or something that ruined the cartridges... nope, other boxes were similarly prone to failure (failure rates around 10-15%). I eventually decided that it was best to just shoot the stuff up.

And then we get to the second part of your statement, which is exactly what I have done!

Yeah Dave, I guess my point was we have all had differing experiences with different manufacturers rimfire ammunition. I try to get the better stuff when good deals come along but I am not about to buy a few cases of Ely Tenex.

Ron

 

[ATLDave]

Sure! I tend towards the Federal bulk pack and the CCI stuff... those have turned out to be the ones that have an acceptable-to-me level of failures without being Ely-priced! And, in my youth, I had fine experiences with the old Remington Thunderbolt .22's. But those Golden things... blech.

 

[bassjam]

I've always liked Golden Bullets. FTF's seem to be no more common than with other bulk rounds (1-2 per 500 rounds-ish) and those are often only with guns like my 10/22 that has a lighter primer strike. Golden Bullets are also more accurate out of most of my .22's, more so than the Federal 525 and Winchesters 333/555's.

The .22 round that I loathe is Federal Automatch. They have pretty poor accuracy even for a plinking round, and I never know what I'm going to get box to box. Some boxes won't function at all in some of my semi-autos, and even when they do I often have duds in the 5-10% range. I actually made it through an entire pack of 325 with my daughter the other weekend without a single misfire, it kind of blew my mind!!

 

[jimmyraythomason]

I quit buying Remington 22 ammo a couple of decades ago (or more) FTFs were numerous and with the "Golden bullet" my firearms were a mess to clean.

 

[CraigC]

These threads are often comical. Before the hoarding started, I was going through 2000-3000rds of the stuff a month. It works better in more guns than any other bulk ammo. Can't remember the last time I had a misfire and have killed more small game and varmints with it than anything else. So I sincerely wish people would stop hoarding the stuff so I could stock up again. This seems to be about average for the brand. A 0.49" average for five consecutive five-shot groups. No cherry picking.

It also expands reliably, even out of pistols. Fourth from the left:

10 rounds into 1 to 2" at 200 yards is impressive.

Yep, it's so impressive that I have a really hard time believing it. The accuracy of the .22LR starts to unravel at 75yds. A 1/2 MOA gun at 50yds quickly becomes 3/4 MOA gun at 100yds. At 200yds, 2MOA is more realistic, out of a good rifle, with good ammo and no wind. Sorry but 1-2" at 200yds (reliably) would win many a benchrest match.

 

[Reloadron]

I quit buying Remington 22 ammo a couple of decades ago (or more) FTFs were numerous and with the "Golden bullet" my firearms were a mess to clean.

Which brings us around to cleanliness 101 with rimfire ammunition.

A .22 rimfire rifle I truely enjoy shooting is an Anschutz Savage target rifle which belonged to my brother-in-law. After Mike passed away my sister gave it to me to shoot, sort of an extended on loan program. The rifle shoots most target ammunition well, even the low priced Ely stuff. Interestingly some of the best shooting rimfire I have used in that rifle, my other 22 rimfires and a few handguns was the Russian Junior stuff and some other Russian manufactured stuff. The ammunition was filthy and greasy but the stuff shot well and was some of the most reliable rimfire stuff I ever shot. You just needed plenty of solvent.

As back to Remington? Their 22 rimfire ammunition has endless pages of complaints. While I won't go out of my way to get any I do end up with some and what I have has worked. Yeah, it is dirty but I won't rule any flavor out just for leaving powder residu and being dirty as long as it shoots well.

Ron

 

[DPris]

As I say whenever this GB subject comes up- I've been shooting the stuff for years, in at least a dozen different guns.
It's done so well for me that I normally try to include it in test loads for new gun trials.
It has come in ahead of the rest in accuracy more than once & is usually near the top when it doesn't.
I also don't get all these misfires that others seem to.
Denis

 

[slickracer]

I've had no trouble with Remington. 22 ammo in quality firearms.

 

[Elkins45]

One of the reasons I didn't buy any 22 ammo (on the rare occasions I saw any) during the deepest part of the banic was because of a fear of poor quality control. I assumed that running lines at maximum capacity might have a negative effect on quality. I think this is proof that my concern was reasonable.

 

[RecoilRob]

I think you get a bad batch now and then, but wouldn't condemn the entire production as being faulty. I had a couple boxes of Golden Bullets that did have a tendency to misfire...though they often would light on a second strike in another part of the rim, so I pulled apart 10 to inspect the priming as I was wondering if the first strike had broken it rather than lighting it up. Nope. A few showed uneven priming in spots which were likely responsible for the weak sounding reports, while one had a section about 20% totally missing any priming compound. So it is entirely possible to get a bad batch and that one box wasn't very good, but several others from different lots ran fine. Does show their QC is a bit spotty and these bullets came way before the last hoarding crisis so they didn't have that excuse. But I imagine it would be difficult to make tens of millions of something without the occasional problem and at the speed they process 22's....a tiny glitch in the primer compound feeding would result in a bunch of improperly primed cases going out.

 

[hdwhit]

total recoil wrote:
Remington Golden Bullet ... About 20% of this junk ammunition failed to go off.

Wow.

Sorry to hear that you were having such bad luck with the stuff. I bought several 1,400 round buckets during the drought. I'm only now getting into them. So far I've had enough failures to make me suspicious of their quality control, but nothing like a 20% failure rate. I'll stay alert as I move on to the next bucket.

Thanks for the warning.

 

[.455_Hunter]

Aguila supposedly is "Eley Primed". What that means, I don't know, but given that Eley is known for super high quality .22 target ammo, it's probably a good thing.

 

[Reloadron]

Aguila supposedly is "Eley Primed". What that means, I don't know, but given that Eley is known for super high quality .22 target ammo, it's probably a good thing.

How 22 LR ammunition is made, a tour of CCI Speer is a good little video if you have never seen it. They walk through building (manufacturing) .22 caliber rimfire ammunition from beginning to end. When 22 LR is manufactured the priming mix is dropped into the case and the case is spun working the wet priming compound into the rim. Eley uses a different technique which as far as I know is proprietary. Aguila uses the method used by Eley and thus boxes of Aguila rimfire ammunition include "Eley Prime" and "Armorcage Eley" on the box. The reference to Eley on a box of Aguila rimfire is merely saying their method of priming is the same as that used by Eley.

When the priming mix is added and the cases spun the compound does not always and with uniformity work into the rim (nook and cranny). There can be void spots and if a case is struck in a void spot it likely won't have ignition or simply put it won't go bang. It isn't unusual for an ammunition manufacturer of 22 rimfire to turn out upwards of four million rounds per day and I am pretty sure that 4,000,000 rounds are not all inspected one at a time. Eley Tenex makes the claim each round is visually inspected and I can believe that. Eley Tenex runs about $25 for a 50 round box so while they have excellent quality control along with quality goes cost. I never had a mis-fire with anything Eley.

Ron

 

[Delford]

My Marlin Model 60 eats whatever I feed it and many times several different brands might go into the tube. Golden Bullet has been fine for me. My Neos is a little more picky but it mostly doesn't like Winchester White Box. Thunderbolts seem a lot dirtier than any other .22 lr I've purchased and I do not buy them any longer. They have been pretty accurate for me but just too messy.

 

[kimberkid]

One of two things happened:

You got a bad batch or some that were stored incorrectly.

I shoot them all the time.

No more "fizzer's" than with Fed, or Win.

That's been my experiance as well\

 

[ray15]

Aguila supposedly is "Eley Primed". What that means, I don't know, but given that Eley is known for super high quality .22 target ammo, it's probably a good thing.

I bought 100 rounds of Aquila just to try out, and was not impressed. I was using a Buckmark that strikes pretty likely, and was getting FTFs with several types of ammo. But where the other makers' stuff would FTF 1 or 2 rounds out of 100, the Aguila did so many times I quit before shooting 50.

Even after replacing the mainspring in the gun, I still had problems with the Aquila where the issue disappeared with all other brands.

 

[ray15]

Thunderbolts seem a lot dirtier than any other .22 lr I've purchased and I do not buy them any longer. They have been pretty accurate for me but just too messy.

That is been the historical problem with Thunderbolts. Honestly, very few people found any reason to use them 25 years ago when any and all rimfire ammo was cheap and in stock. Winchester Wildcat was the bulk ammunition of choice, with Federal little more and exotic stuff like Stingers costing about what cheap bulk ammo does today.

 

[mjsdwash]

I took two .22's to the range yesterday. A S&W model 22A and a cheapie Chiappa 1911 looking .22.
About 20% of this junk ammunition failed to go off. The lot number is L22UC1234 printed on the inner flap of the box. A few of the rounds went off when hit on a different part of the rim Some were struck in 3 different places and failed to go off. I stopped picking up my ejected duds and re-trying them.
When you pay about $39 for the 525 round box (on sale) you would expect a company like Remington to produce a fine product. At least they should test out their ammo before foisting it off on the public. Remington ought to give a refund on this trash.
Rant finished! No more Remington for me. I hope they don't make defibrillators!

the unfortunate fact is that those boxes are low end, and supposed to be cheap. They sell for about 25 dollars around here, where EVERYTHING gun related is well above MSRP. Due to the shortage, people are raising the prices, but that dosent go to Remington, and they have no reason to make them better. Still, thats too high a percentage.

 

[Taurus 617 CCW]

I haven't used Remington rimfire ammunition since the early 90's. It was poor quality back then and by the sounds of it, they haven't made any improvements since.

 

[FROGO207]

Some years ago I also had several boxes and also some bulk packs of Remington .22 ammo that was so poor ( yeah around 20%) that I ended up pulling the lead off them to use to make more bullets with and recycling the brass. There was a story or two of them changing their tooling in recent years and now it is supposed to be better but I will wait for a whole bunch of you beta testers to verify this before I plunk down any cash for more. Just sayin.

 

[GunnyUSMC]

The one place you will find more avid 22 shooters is at Rimfire Central forum. The one ammo that they advise to avoid is Remington Golden bullet. They were doing this long before the ammo shortage. I remember that one member pulled the bullet from 20 or more duds and found that about half had no primer compound and the rest had very little.
For me Golden bullet has been a hit and miss. But I do have to say that I have had my worst luck with Golden bullet then any other . I just avoid them now days.

 

[Starter52]

I won't touch the bulk packed Remington .22 ammo, but the subsonic stuff works fine for me. Ditto with the low-velocity "C-Bee" ammo. Great stuff if you can find it. Very reliable.

 

[DPris]

Again, I'm just not seeing these failure rates.
And that's shooting both 15-year-old Goldens & 6-month-old Golden buckets.

I don't lump all Remington rimfire stuff into the same category, I've had misfires with Thunderbolts, and one or two others, but the Goldens are a known standard here.
Reliable & typically accurate across a wide variety of gun types, short & long.

Dunno what I'm doing wrong, but it works for me.
Denis

 

[KB0VSO]

i agree about the Remington Golden Bullet being junk. The best 22 long rifle is the Winchester M 22. I just hope Winchester gets them on the market before i use up my
stock pile.

Larry
Northern Minnesota USA

 

[CraigC]

Again, I'm just not seeing these failure rates.
And that's shooting both 15-year-old Goldens & 6-month-old Golden buckets.

I don't lump all Remington rimfire stuff into the same category, I've had misfires with Thunderbolts, and one or two others, but the Goldens are a known standard here.
Reliable & typically accurate across a wide variety of gun types, short & long.

Dunno what I'm doing wrong, but it works for me.
Denis

Same here!