S&W 22A Questions???

[Bill Amsden]

For starters, I got the S&W 22A a week or so ago for the wife to shoot and plinking for myself. She doesn't like my larger caliber weapons, there're to loud she says. The 22A is a very fun gun to shoot and fairly accurate however........

.22's are dirty, dirty rounds, I know, at least Federal and Winchester are which is what I was using. I went to the range today without wifey to see what it would do. I maintained a good grouping of around 3 inches until I got to around 300 rounds. Then, started getting some fliers and FTF rounds. I stopped shooting at around 500 rounds when mis fires were more of a pain in the A--. I was certain that the ammo was crap or at least 3 out of 10 were judging by the amount of smoke generated by multiple rounds.

When I got home I field stripped the gun and was amazed at the amount of residue, took me an hour to clean the gun. I was also somewhat surprised at the wear I saw inside the slide. So my questions are if any one out there knows,

Is there any cleaner .22 ammo than what I described and have you noticed any abnormal wear, I'm thinking I'll shoot another 500 to 1000 rounds so I can see what is going on before I start pestering S&W.

 

[Rich M]

My Beretta pistol and Ruger 10/22 also get very dirty using the Federal 1200 fps ammo we get in quantity.

I don't have any firing issues when the guns are clean, when the Beretta is dirty, it acts up a lot! The Ruger has been flawless.

 

[rbstumbo]

I use the CCI Tactical .22LR for my Ruger SR22. It is very clean and very consistent. I have had no feeding or ejecting issues with this ammo. Comes in a slightly smaller bulk size of 350/box but is worth it in my opinion.