CCI Mini-Mag Squibs and Duds

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I think of all the MM's I've had over the years, I've had like one dud round, out of thousands. I hope this is just a blip and not a trend..
 
In my younger days when my knees were still good, I carried a backpack. I had a spare 100 rd plastic box of CCI Mini Mag in a side pocket of the pack along with a spare plastic bottle of liquid “backpackers” soap that was supposed to be environmentally safe. I liked it because it lathered well in cold water. These two items were “spares” and I never had occasion to use either one so that particular pocket was never opened.

A few years went by and I was cleaning out my pack and decided to rotate the ammo and use it up. To my surprise, fully half of the rounds in the box were duds. The rounds that fired seemed fine but the duds would not fire even after rotating the cases in the chamber and trying them a second time.

I’m thinking the liquid soap put off some form of vapor that attacked the priming compound in the ammo after years in such a confined space.

Since then, I’ve shot many thousands of rounds of CCI ammo and have not had a single dud round.
 
Bottom Gun said:
In my younger days when my knees were still good, I carried a backpack. I had a spare 100 rd plastic box of CCI Mini Mag in a side pocket of the pack along with a spare plastic bottle of liquid “backpackers” soap that was supposed to be environmentally safe. I liked it because it lathered well in cold water. These two items were “spares” and I never had occasion to use either one so that particular pocket was never opened.

A few years went by and I was cleaning out my pack and decided to rotate the ammo and use it up. To my surprise, fully half of the rounds in the box were duds. The rounds that fired seemed fine but the duds would not fire even after rotating the cases in the chamber and trying them a second time.

I’m thinking the liquid soap put off some form of vapor that attacked the priming compound in the ammo after years in such a confined space.

Since then, I’ve shot many thousands of rounds of CCI ammo and have not had a single dud round.
Click to expand...
Were they the old yellow plastic boxes, they for some reason go bad after years of storage.
 
Bottom Gun said:
Yes, it was a yellow box but I had other boxes from the same lot that I used much later and they worked 100%. I'm pretty sure it was vapor contamination from the soap.
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Interesting that a soap that is "environmentally friendly" would / could ruin ammunition. Sounds like the soap may not be as environmentally safe as advertised. Not too sure I would want it on my skin, either.
 
Bottom Gun said:
. These two items were “spares” and I never had occasion to use either one so that particular pocket was never opened.

A few years went by
Click to expand...

A few years worth of transport vibrations and impacts can loosen the priming compound and knock it from the rim.

I’ve worked a bullet out of a recent dud to find green pieces of primer cake ring mixed in the gunpowder.

When touched with a lighter, they showed it was not a lack of powder in the compound!
They just got abused.

If it was the soap vapor, there would be less soap in the container and there would be a strange stain in the pocket leaching down one side of the pack, eating the threads out of the seams and ripping open only when everything can fall into the creek everyone just crossed...:(
 
There are a lot of 22 ammo I get 100% results. CCI HV ammo is great, but sure not the end of the world to shoot other brands when I cannot get CCI mini mags. Persoanlly I would be more concerned about the gun and striker or firing pin than I would the ammo. I do shoot Remington Goldens when I by a tub of them. Every now and then will get a dud but no big deal. I get the feeling all 22.cal is improving all the time and much better quality than years ago.
 
I haven't had any squibs or duds in any minimags that I have shot but I have gotten 2 boxes that had so much wax on the bullets and casings that I couldn't get them out of the tray. I had to scrape the wax off manually and wipe them down in order to make them usable.
 
I can't remember ever having a dud or squib with CCI-MM until recently with newly purchased ammo and I had a couple of duds in around 200 rounds of shots fired. The gun is almost new and not dirty and I went on to fire a lot more rounds of a couple of different brands without a problem. I have been shooting some Aguila ammo and can tell little difference between it and CCI except it costs less, smokes more, and has a funky smell but it has all gone "bang".
 
doubleh said:
I can't remember ever having a dud or squib with CCI-MM until recently with newly purchased ammo and I had a couple of duds in around 200 rounds of shots fired. The gun is almost new and not dirty and I went on to fire a lot more rounds of a couple of different brands without a problem. I have been shooting some Aguila ammo and can tell little difference between it and CCI except it costs less, smokes more, and has a funky smell but it has all gone "bang".
Click to expand...

CCI products pretty much remain my faves for everyday .22lr gunning: Standard Velocity for paper targets, Blazers or MinMags when just plinking.
But I've been impressed by Aguila for years. Got a few thousand backing up my two .50 cal cans of CCI .22lr.
I do miss the "Eley primed" Aguila .22lr, but the newer stuff ain't bad, either. True about the funky smell, but I can live with it.
 
Luckily I've never had a .22 squib. I had a Magtech .22 round go off so soft, I thought it was a squib. Target had too many holes to work out whether the round had actually hit the target. In that case I stopped shooting and inspected the barrel directly (easy to do on a SIG522). No squib!

However...I have had some issues with CCI ammo. Bear in mind I've shot many thousands of .22 so these problems are still a very small percentage:

1) In one 100 round box of Mini-mag, there was a case without powder and with no bullet. The bullet and powder were not in the box.
2) I had one batch of CCI Standard Velocity (1500 rounds purchased) where I could not get them to feed reliably out of a selection of 10 BX25 Ruger magazines. The rounds would either hang up in the magazine or would fail to feed entirely. When I checked the rounds (even those still in the box) there was a lot of bullet play in the case, from side to side. I ended up having to fire those in my T/C R55 rifles where I had fewer failures to feed.
3) There was a batch of CCI Mini-mag at the club which did not have a reliable ignition rate. Some of those I had to try twice or three times before I could get them to discharge.

As I shoot mainly suppressed now, Mini-mag is not a regular purchase for me. CCI Standard Velocity would work but I am shy of them now because of the bad experience I had with my Ruger-family rifle. I know it wasn't the mags because I have 10 of them, purchased at different times, and other ammo worked fine in them.
 
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