First my e-mail to Remington:

Gentlemen,

While at the range on April 16, 2005 I experienced a mis-fire with one of your cartridges. A single repeated attempt to fire the cartridge produced the same results. The cartridge is .30-06; the packaging says:

"High Velocity"
"20 Centerfire Cartridges"
"Remington"
As well as the warning message in the upper
right.

The outside of the end-flaps have the following printing:
"Remington"
"30-06 Springfield"
"165 GRAIN CORE LOKT POINTED SOFT PT.   R3006B"

On the inside of the left flap are the following letters and numbers:
"1-B"
"C438U"

On the inside of the right flap are the following numbers and letters;

" K 26c B7725"

The date stamp indicates that these cartridges were manufactured in June of 1988.

While these cartridges appear to be 15 years old, I don't recall any "shelf-life" warnings for Remington ammo. I just thought you might want to know. If you'd like to see a picture of the cartridge with the twice-indented primer, I'll be happy to provide that digital image.

Paul Skvorc

Now their response.

Question Reference #050421-000027
---------------------------------------------------------------
  Product Level 1: Ammunition
  Product Level 2: Centerfire
     Date Created: 04/21/2005 01:49 PM
     Last Updated: 04/22/2005 11:17 AM
           Status: Waiting


Response (Dell) - 04/22/2005 11:17 AM
Dear Paul,

Thank you for taking the time to write into us.  The shelf life of properly stored ammunition is approximately 10 years.

If ammunition is exposed to fire or if ammunition is older than shelf life, it should be taken to a law enforcement agency for proper disposal.

Customer (Paul ******) - 04/21/2005 01:49 PM

Question Reference #050421-000027
---------------------------------------------------------------
  Product Level 1: Ammunition
  Product Level 2: Centerfire
     Date Created: 04/21/2005 01:49 PM
     Last Updated: 04/22/2005 11:17 AM
           Status: Waiting


Isn't that interesting. I wonder how Remington would feel if the "general public" realized that they manufacture their ammo with an expected shelf-life of 10 years? After which, the purchaser should be sure to take all their ammo to the local law enforcement agency for "proper" disposal.

Yeah, I'll be doing that right away.

I have milsurp ammo that's over 60 years old with which I have yet to experience a mis-fire. Of course it's nazi ammo, and we can only expect their war-production ammo to be better than today's modern manufacturing.

This is a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, weasle response. Actually quite disappointing from a firm with teh reputation Remington has. I'm gonna hafta start reading Hunterbug's Remington-bashing with a less jaundiced eye.

Paul

Also makes me wonder if the shelf life is not adjustable. If manyfacture was 10 years maybe the "shelf" would have been 8.

It is a weasel answer amd that is from a fella that owns several Remingtons and has praised thier ammo in the past.

What are you doing with the rest of the box? If you do not shoot it are you going to tear it down and eyeball primers / powder? That will be interesting.

Quote from: gitanoI'm gonna hafta start reading Hunterbug's Remington-bashing with a less jaundiced eye.

Paul

I heard that! The first thing that I thought of when reading this was my old milsurp ammo too. So what Remington is really telling us is that the Turks, Checks, and the Nazi Germans all had better manufacturing capabilities than they do now. That's gonna make me want to run right out and buy one of their products. And I don't bash all Remingtons, just the 700s, 710s, 600s, 660s....... and I think that's it.

Alboy,
 
This box of ammo (19 empty cases, one mis-fire) was given to me at the range the other day. Seeing the chronograph, pressure gauges and laptop at my bench, he asked me, "Do you reload?" When I responded yes, he asked me if I wanted his 'empties'. I said "Yes", and when he was finished, he gave me the box with the one mis-fire.
 
I will take it apart, but I don't expect to see anything obvious. I just figured Remington would say, "Gee, we're sorry. It happens sometimes. More often with older ammo than with newer stuff. We make millions of rounds every year, especially in .30-06, and now and then one doesn't work. Thank's for letting us know."
 
How positively naive of me.
 
HB, (and BH by the way, another Remington-hater),
 
I'm very disappointed in this response BECAUSE, it is an ATTITUDE issue. It has NOTHING to do with how good their ammo is nor the efficacy of their quality control. I really have no time for excuse-makers and whiners. A company as large and long-lived as Remington ought to be able to stand up on their hind legs and admit that they're not perfect. To try to weasle out of responsibility demonstrates a fundamental lack of character. They had an opportunity to come out "smelling like a rose" in spite of a product failure, and a completely trivial one at that. Instead they chose to be weasles. Too bad really. I don't have many places left that I 'trust'. Remington has just been removed from that already short list.
 
Paul

I'm glad that you clarified that because I was going to ask what you were doing with 30-06 ammo anyway.

Gitano,
 
Somewhere around that same time frame (late '80s) my dad had a Remington factory load that misfired.  That one was in .243.  Dad and I both tried to get it to fire in our rifles (we were both shooting .243's), but nothing happened in either one.
 
The reason I remember it is because there were two coyotes coming to my call.  Dad aimed at a coyote 10 yards in front of him, and all I heard was "click".  That was ok though, because I shot both of them.  The first one I shot at about 15 yards, and then shot it again when it started spinning.  I shot the second one as it headed up the other side of a shallow canyon ~250 yards or so out.  A couple of minutes later dad killed a third coyote on that same stand; after checking his bore for a stuck bullet, of course.
 
I didn't write to them, but like you attributed it to poor quality control.

The timing of that is interesting AZ, to say nothing of the shootin'. :) (Wish I was near that kind of hunting.)
 
I don't recall, (because I don't pay much attention to the subject anyway), but I wonder if anyone else here recalls "something" going on with Remington in the late '80s. Maybe there's a cause-end-effect that can be infered.
 
HB, truth is, I'll be back at the range with my '54 Browning '06 (that was given to me ) next time I'm there. I'm sighting it in with a new 'red dot' scope, in hopes of solving the target acquisition problem my Dad had on the boar hunt last fall. If it works out for him, we'll use it in Scotland with BH this coming fall. (If all the other cards fall into place.)
 
Paul

I agree that that wasn't a very good response. It wouldn't have been to hard to simply say thanx for the info and we'll look in to it to see if we have record of any other issues from that time and it would have been done. I do know that the 700s that I've seen from the 80s left something to be desired. Especially with the lousy pressed checkering in the wood. That would be cool to do a hunt in Scotland. One of these days you'll have to bring your Dad out to Colorado for an elk hunt.

QuoteThat would be cool to do a hunt in Scotland. One of these days you'll have to bring your Dad out to Colorado for an elk hunt.

I think we can go to Scotland cheaper. :)
 
Paul

What are you going to hijack a ............ Never mind, the less I know the better.

gitano; I've been doing some reading and investigation and found out that in the 80's remington's bean counters helped profits out by changing the core-lokt bullets. They resemble the pointed soft points now. Probably why they don't work like they used to. The round nose bullets didn't die as soon because not being as popular they didn't retool until the equipment wore out. I've also had duds. But they were not manufacturer specific and disappeared after I realized that oil was migrating into the primer from the bolt face. It happened after the rifle was left loaded for days after being heavily oiled because of foul weather. Federal seals their primers in their premium ammo and prevents this. And I don't oil the rifle like I used to. I agree that the response you got was pretty bad. They should've apoligized and sent you some free stuff. What they did won't keep customers coming back. God bless and good hunting.

                                         Mark

i've got a remington .308 hunting round that failed to fire. it was in an h&r ultra. i took it as a light firing pin strike. but it would not fire on second, third ... attempts. all the other rounds went off just fine.

To be fair to Remington, I'll say this I didn't think their response was a "Weasel" response at all.  A good point was brought up in that Remington makes millions of 30-06 rounds and like any production line some parts are just going to fail.  And of course we're all just assuming that the rifle is in absolutely perfect because we're all experts on this misfiring rifle that only one of us has even seen.  I understand the argument of yeah my old surplus ammo still fires and it's great.  My experience with  surplus ammo hasn't had perfect results so maybe I just bought the wrong stuff.  I do however know a little bit about explosives having dealt with them in the military.  Explosives do change with time.  That mil surplus ammo isn't going to have the same velocity that it would have 60 years ago.  If it did the military wouldn't have gotten rid of it.  I don't think this is limited to Remington either.  I have only had one misfire in a 30-06 new factory round and it was a high dollar Winchester hunting round.  I was extremely surprised when it misfired but I just re-cocked it and then it fired.



What should we expect?????   We could have some little nazi democrat pass a law saying every part of a new round has to be inspected and verified and then we can pay $100 per bullet.  Or we can accept the fact that there is a one in a thousand chance that when we pull the trigger that the rifle may not fire.  I'm not trying to be a jerk here guys but let's be realistic!  It's only happened to me once (with a Winchester round) in all the years and thousands of rounds I've fired.  Maybe we should ask Remington to send a brand new corvette to anyone this has ever happened to.  



I'm just trying to stick up for the manufactures here, I don't care if it's a Remington, Winchester, Marlin, Savage, or whatever, they all make pretty good products no matter what our personal preferences are.  I don't think it would hurt us to cut them a little slack, it's not like they go to the range and call us names when we miss our target and scratch our heads.

Teddy, if it was the gun then why would only one round misfire and not the rest? I think that if they had simply said, "Thank you for the info and we will cross referance it with any other reports." Then we would not be having this conversation. But they acted like, hey, what do you expect. Kind of a strange responce if you ask me.

What could you expect them to say without putting themselves in a liability position to be sued?  It's not like they can legally tell someone to load the rest of the rounds when one has been proven defective.  The only reason I can think of why one round would misfire and the rest wouldn't is because of a defective part, maybe even some dirt or crud was on the shell over the primer, there's a number a rare occurances that could have happened to cause this none of which being the shooters or manufactures fault, "..it Happens".  They did say thanks in their response and they tried to give a reason why the product didn't perform as expected.  Do you realistically want them to make some huge report mail you a copy detailing every misfire that's ever happened?  Can you honestly tell me that you think a bullet that's 15 years old will or could perform as well as a new one produced today?  There isn't a product on earth that will work like that.  



The response Remington gave was beautify simple.  It explains the problem and covers them legally.  Maybe they did enter the report into a database and record it.  We'll never know.