Let's see your...worst factory ammo

1. Browning 22lr - A few months ago it was all I could find, so I bought 5k. It was innaccurate, had duds, massive jammimg in my Walther, Steyer and Taurus guns, and the bullets fell out of a few. Many of them had crooked seating in the cases. Only upside is it was good for FTF training.

2. TULA Nickle plated .223 - These were so low pressure, they would not cycle my S&W M&P. I had to charge the handle every shot, unless I mag dumped them. Shot just about every brand through that gun not one issue after 10k rounds, except the Tula. A guy at work asked me why his AR stopped cycling, and I asked if it had silver bullets. Guess what? I told him unless he wants to charge his gun 1k times, throw it in trash. Another guy said he wanted to buy it, I said no. I emailed Tula, they didn't respond.

Drail said:

This thread cracks me up after having people tell me for years to never ever use handloads in a carry gun. This is precisely why I would NEVER use factory loads in a carry gun (or a match gun either - I have seen guys lose big money matches from crappy Winchester ammo) It is very easy to handload ammo that is MUCH better quality than the junk being sold today. MUCH BETTER. Riomouse 911 - the headstamp on those "WIN" cases looks totally bogus to me. I have never seen a Winchester headstamp like that. I think somebody pulled a counterfeit ammo deal on your dept.

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I ran out and grabbed a box of WWB off the shelf that is a couple of years old. It looks like the headstamps are pretty much the same.



Stay safe.

Steer clear of this stuff.. bought it in a bulk pkg at Gander. Too weak to cycle my Beretta 92FS, My Ruger P95, and my 995TS.

Remember the 3D Blue reman ammo? That stuff was horrid

Very interesting thread and the other posters having issues with PPU. Today the wife and I went to the range; she was shooting the Cabela's Herters brand in her Glock 42 without any issues; 100 rounds cycled flawlessly. Got to the box of PPU, 94gr and the gun became a jam-o-matic. I definitely attribute this to the ammunition; it is not the magazines or the gun as it has never had a malfunctioning issue before with any other ammunition like Federal, Hornady, Sellier & Bellot, etc.

Winchester .22lr subsonic. The truncated cone style hp. They shot very well in a cz452. Groups were competitive with match ammo so I bought a couple bricks, and was stingy about using them over other 22lr.

Apparently I needed to shoot them faster. In ~8 years they went from maybe 1% fail-to-fire to around 20%. They were stored in a safe in a dry climate. I've never seen primer compound expire outside of these rounds.

Antihero said:

Remember the 3D Blue reman ammo? That stuff was horrid

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Our armorer said it was good for one thing, getting practice at failure drills.

this one fired out-of battery when being loaded....i blame the gun not the round....it was a bryco. complete junk. funny part was guy shooting it I warned before we got the range it would blow up in his hand and it did. lucky no major injuries and gun wasn't harmed at all, go figure. he no longer shoots that gun.

I haven't run into any really bad ammo over the years. I shoot a lot and lots of dirty, but not much inconsistent.

Due to the crappy ammo I have had to deal with in the past 10-15 years the Remington Golden bullets will remain on the store shelves, even if they were giving them away. I cant understand those that never had a dud when I was getting 1 in 10 or more duds from multiple bulk boxes purchased at different times from different stores. Tried them in several rifles, pistols, and revolvers. I even rotated and tried again. I can't even rember of a dud with any of the other brands of .22 ammo I use. Just say'in.

Greek Olympic 5.56x45 gave me 8-10" groups in a Savage bolt action. Other brands kept it between half an inch and two inches.

I sold almost 500 remaining rounds with a full "this is not accurate" disclaimer during the Obama panic. The guys who bought it were glad to have it for plinking ammo when that caliber wasn't available in stores.

I have a case of PPU M885. I've never shot any of it that I recall but always assumed it was good to go. I always heard PPU was top shelf stuff, I'm surprised to see so many posters with failures.... I like the bright red sealant, looks like quality stuff. I guess I should test some out for accuracy and reliability.

Trunk Monkey said:

View attachment 946115

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They look like they’re loaded light, maybe missing some powder.
FedEx is unusually rough on my packages.
I’d call the manufacturer and send them back.
You never know, they might replace them and send extra back...

Demi-human said:

They look like they’re loaded light, maybe missing some powder.
FedEx is unusually rough on my packages.
I’d call the manufacturer and send them back.
You never know, they might replace them and send extra back...

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Probably not they've been out of production for over 20 years

Yikes!
You know what @Slamfire says about old ammunition...

Demi-human said:

Yikes!
You know what @Slamfire says about old ammunition...

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On a serious note, prior to the First Gulf War we were shooting rounds that had been manufactured in the mid-fifties.

They shot all that up during Desert Storm. Then we were shooting rounds that had been manufactured in the early to mid seventies.

The M110A2 was retired in 99(ish) and we were still shooting rounds from the early 80s.

After they were retired they were sold to Morocco, presumably with all the ammunition that hadn't been shot up

'A timely topic considering many of us are probably buying ammo now that we would normally not consider.

That said, mine is a couple of unopened spam cans of Russian corrosive ammo. I'm just waiting for the day where I can hit a range to blast through some of it, and haven't had the opportunity.

The worst factory ammo I've ever seen was sent back to the manufacture and I officially got my refund check in the mail yesterday so I won't rag on them. I will say it was American made defensive hollow points. The crimp was terrible.(TERRIBLE!) But the manufacturer made it right so I'm happy with the outcome.

I don't have any to show, but I can tell. Around 2004, my unit deployed to Latin America for a little while to train some allies. Due to certain "logistical issues" (2 wars), standard US milspec ammo wasn't available for the training (although we did bring ample GI ammo for OUR use). As a result, a contract was drawn up through a private vendor, and we brought over 100,000 rounds of Greek olympic 5.56 to support training the indigenous forces. This ammunition was so bad, we had to stop training after the first day. It kept blowing primers, which would end up in weird places in their weapons and hopelessly lock them up. The weapons consisted of brand new M4 type carbines and rebuilt US surplus M16A2 rifles. Another indig unit that we weren't training had Galil rifles. We borrowed a couple of them and test fired a few rounds of this ammo. We experienced blown primers with the Galils, but didn't get any stuck in the actions. We also halted the test as soon as we found the blown primers during the Galil test (within the first magazine on each Galil). As a result, the unit was forced to coordinate an emergency resupply of US made ammo to execute the training. I believe it was American Eagle that we got on the resupply. The Greek ammunition was disposed of on the demolition range.

Aluminum blazer.

Mr. Zorg said:

My worst ammo experience was with some PPU "NATO" 9X19mm yellow box a few years ago. I'd shot most of the first box of the case I'd purchased from a well known reputable internet retailer through an Astra A-100 when suddenly there was a much louder *BANG*, some smoke coming out of all sorts of places including the bottom of the grip / magazine, and the palm of my hand stung. I ejected the magazine and went to open the action but the slide didn't want to cycle. I called one of the range employees over to help out and explained what I'd experienced. He got the action open and this came out.
View attachment 945123 View attachment 945124

I didn't experience any injury, and neither did my pistol. I sent the info & photos to PPU USA and was able to escalate from the initial employee responding. PPU requested the remainder of the ammo back (it was all the same code numbers printed inside the boxes) and sent a prepaid UPS Ground shipping label, and reimbursed my costs for a gunsmith evaluation of my pistol. PPU USA also allowed 2X retail cost of the returned ammo in ammo in stock in their warehouse at that time as I made it clear I didn't want any more PPU "NATO" 9X19mm ammunition. Although I requested information on any findings PPU USA never responded with any insight (no surprise) and no recall was ever initiated by PPU on their "NATO" 9X19mm ammunition. I haven't had any problems with any other PPU ammunition I've used, handgun or rifle, including their standard commercial 9X19mm ammunition in both PPU label boxes or Monarch brand boxes purchased at Academy Sports and Outdoors. But I don't plan to ever purchase any other PPU "NATO" ammunition 9X19mm or otherwise, and I've noticed that 9X19mm is now no longer shown on the PPU USA website in their MIL-SPEC line, but it's still shown in their 2020 catalog.

https://ppu-usa.com/ppu/mil-spec/

https://ppu-usa.com

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Sorry for bumping an old post, but can you please tell me if the ammo is same as this in my pic? Because this is an old combloc ppu corrosive, overcharged +P or even +P+ ammo made for SMGs. The thing destroyed my pistol. This ammo destroyed so many pistols either from kaboom or rust, that is not even funny.

Winchester white box .45ACP in the 100rd packs that Walmart used to sell. I had a brand new Rock Island 1911A2 and bought a truckload of the Winchester and some Remington "green box." Long story short, I was having so many failures to eject and failures to return to battery that I sent the gun back to Rock Island not once, but twice. Also paid a gunsmith (before my time) to tune up the extractor for me. Nothing helped. Just one out of every 5 or 6 shots would jam. I was so upset that I was about to dump that gun off in the river, when I ran into a wise old gunsmith at the public range the next weekend. Ernie was a good man and actually taught me a few things over the years, but this was my first meeting with him. He was chrono testing some handloads and saw me struggling, and he invited me over to his bench. At his behest I separated the ammo types I had been shooting and did a full mag test with each, through his chronograph. The Remington ammo was a very consistent 850-875 feet per second, and when I was really paying attention I noticed the pistol never jammed in 14 rounds. Then we tried the Winchester, and holy crap! The velocity was everywhere from about 950fps on the top end to as low as 500! And sure as pork rinds, every time one of those SOBs cranked out below about 650fps the pistol jammed. And it was about 20% of the shots that dipped that low! Mystery solved, and I kept that gun for another 10 years before trading it off. Made a good acquaintance too.

The other is a brand sold online called RAM Ammo. I had a nice little M1 Carbine back during the Obama panic years and bought a bunch of their .30 Carbine because the price wasn't too asinine. Well you get what you pay for. Imagine the following sequence, repeated 4 times in a row, first 4 rounds out of a brand new box of ammo:

1: Rack charging handle, chambering a round
2: Aim, safety off, pull trigger
3: *Click!* ...... no bang. Wait for hangfire
4: Pull bolt handle. Bolt stuck. Pull harder?
5: Bolt opens. Case flies out. Powder flies out. Action full of loose powder. Bullet stuck in chamber.
6: Knock out bullet with cleaning rod. Clean gun of spilled powder.
7: GOTO 1 and repeat

I threw the rest of that crap in a fire pit a couple weeks later. Must have been loaded with coffee grounds because I never did hear a pop.

A few years ago I bought 500 round box of Tula .223 & after about two mags full & it started ripping the rims off of the cases then sticking the case in the chamber.
The cases were too soft or not made right, I had to give them away.

Winchester white box .40S&W. This is the first round I was going to load into my then new police surplus Glock 22…

Some Independence brand 223 or 5.56, I don’t remember which. It would fail to fire about 20% of the time in a gun that would shoot everything else. The rounds that did fire were also not as accurate as they should have been. I contacted the manufacturer and they took the ammo back and gave me a refund.

I also bought some CCI 45ACP brass cased ammo the you could literally push the bullet into the case with your finger. Again, contacted the manufacturer and got a shipment of properly manufactured ammo to replace the case.