Well if anyone noticed the impulse buy thread I started you're familiar with my latest range toy. A Smith and Wesson Victory PC. It's a looker and a nice handling ultra light pistol. I dig the flat trigger and controls. This was my first SW rimfire and being a "Performance Center" model, I expected perfection. Sadly it didn't deliver...
Before taking it out I mounted an ADE $70 micro green Dot. That performed admirably. I also gave it a good once over, noting the decent amount of oil and smoothness of function. Everything seemed GTG. I did not mess with the mags and I probably should have.
I decided to bring 4 varieties of ammo just to give it some proper break in and see how it ran SV vs HV ammo. Unfortunately I could not get through one complete magazine without multiple failures. I started with cci blazer which runs pretty much every other 22 I own reliably and with fairly good accuracy.
From the start the mags seemed to have issues. Almost like the bullets were sticking in the body akwardly. Loaded to capacity, there was very little tension on the follower and bullets didn't protrude at what I thought was a good angle. Changing ammo did seem to help a bit with these issues so I figure the Blazer must just be slightly wider as they are lead bullets.
After switching to Remington golden bullet, I still experienced failures on virtually every other round. Almost every time it was a failure to fully eject. With a ridiculously wide breech, the design allows a spent case to literally sit parralel to the next round and jam up against the barrel as I live round feeds into the chamber.
Being brand new I thought ok, maybe it runs some tight springs and needs a lil more ooomph to cycle right. So I loaded a couple magazines with Remington viper which is pretty hot 22 ammo. These rounds gave me a good 6 or 7 in a row that fed and ejected properly before experiencing the same issues. At this point it became clear that this wasn't just an ammo issue. I loaded some Norma tac 22 anyhow and of course it had similar failures.
Overall I'm thoroughly disappointed. The only gimmer of hope is that this seems to be a recurring theme with the victory pistols and the fix is potentially an easy one. Most everyone has been able to remedy the ejection issue by putting a slight bend in the ejector itself, lightly curving it toward center of the gun. The angle engages the spent case better and redirects it out of the breech.
Although I haven't attempted the fix yet I'm still urked that Smith and Wesson would be audacious enough to put their "Performance Center" label on a pistol that clearly has never been test fired or hand tuned in any manner. I can accept the semi sticky mags that may just need to sit fully loaded a while but the reliability is laughable at best. Needless to say I won't be selling my buckmarks or rugers anytime soon.
Before taking it out I mounted an ADE $70 micro green Dot. That performed admirably. I also gave it a good once over, noting the decent amount of oil and smoothness of function. Everything seemed GTG. I did not mess with the mags and I probably should have.
I decided to bring 4 varieties of ammo just to give it some proper break in and see how it ran SV vs HV ammo. Unfortunately I could not get through one complete magazine without multiple failures. I started with cci blazer which runs pretty much every other 22 I own reliably and with fairly good accuracy.
From the start the mags seemed to have issues. Almost like the bullets were sticking in the body akwardly. Loaded to capacity, there was very little tension on the follower and bullets didn't protrude at what I thought was a good angle. Changing ammo did seem to help a bit with these issues so I figure the Blazer must just be slightly wider as they are lead bullets.
After switching to Remington golden bullet, I still experienced failures on virtually every other round. Almost every time it was a failure to fully eject. With a ridiculously wide breech, the design allows a spent case to literally sit parralel to the next round and jam up against the barrel as I live round feeds into the chamber.
Being brand new I thought ok, maybe it runs some tight springs and needs a lil more ooomph to cycle right. So I loaded a couple magazines with Remington viper which is pretty hot 22 ammo. These rounds gave me a good 6 or 7 in a row that fed and ejected properly before experiencing the same issues. At this point it became clear that this wasn't just an ammo issue. I loaded some Norma tac 22 anyhow and of course it had similar failures.
Overall I'm thoroughly disappointed. The only gimmer of hope is that this seems to be a recurring theme with the victory pistols and the fix is potentially an easy one. Most everyone has been able to remedy the ejection issue by putting a slight bend in the ejector itself, lightly curving it toward center of the gun. The angle engages the spent case better and redirects it out of the breech.
Although I haven't attempted the fix yet I'm still urked that Smith and Wesson would be audacious enough to put their "Performance Center" label on a pistol that clearly has never been test fired or hand tuned in any manner. I can accept the semi sticky mags that may just need to sit fully loaded a while but the reliability is laughable at best. Needless to say I won't be selling my buckmarks or rugers anytime soon.