Forgive me starting another ammo thread but I would value your experience running Aguila 40grn copper-plated round-nose (CP RN) .22lr through the M&P 15-22.

While evaluating ammo I tried a 50 round box of Aguila and found it very dirty. Have been running CCI AR-Tac and Min-Mags, now at ~2400 rounds. BUT TargetSportsUSA offers free shipping on 5000 rounds at $0.07/round, considerably less expensive than CCI. Is it worth it?

Thanks in advance.

How did it function in your rifle other than being dirty?

If it functioned good and delivered accuracy within your desired expectations, I'd buy it. Who cares if it's dirty, just clean your rifle. Cleanliness in rimfire is overrated... they're all filthy, some are just more filthy.

I ran 500 rounds of Aguila HV through my M&P 15-22 and my 1911 last month at a match; zero problems.

Aguila functions perfectly for me. In my experience it's right up there with CCI in terms of quality. I've shot their standard velocity, high velocity, match rifle, match pistol, and golden eagle rounds with no issues. I do not find it especially dirty compared to other 22LR rounds.

If I want extra dirty rounds, I've got Remington Golden Bullets for that. Those are the dirtiest rounds I've ever used. Inconsistent, too. The 15-22 eats them up and spits them out, though.

I have 1K rounds of Aguila Super Extra HV on its way to me.

I agree that ammo cleanliness is secondary to reliability and accuracy. Moreover, the Aguila is still well priced and available while the CCI AR Tactical is going up in price and getting harder to find.

It the Super Extra HV works in my 15-22 I'll be buying a bunch in case ammo availability gets tight.

Based on your responses I decided to purchase the Aguila .22lr. Even with CCI I have to field strip & clean the 15-22 after ~150 rounds, so might as well take advantage of the savings per round & stockpile some ammo at the same time.

Now I just need my rifle back from S&W maintenance...

I very recently purchased 5 boxes these federal 22's at Dick's sporting goods for $18.99 a box. That figures out to less than 6 cents a round.
I have put about 200 rounds of them through my 15–22 with zero problems.

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I benched Some Aguila Super at 50 yards with a 513 & a good scope a few weeks ago. It doesnt throw 1 or 2 out of the group like some. I didnt notice it dirty but I havent looked down the barrel yet. I only shot 20 & getting late. 8.2 cents a pop.

I have run over 20k of the Agaila HV thru one of my 15-22's and I have never had any issues with it. It has a very unique smell after its fired but never had any cycling issues. Also fairly accurate and consistent ammo with my observations.

I agree with everything above. I would rather shoot the Aguila than the Remington.

My boyfriend shot 1 or two magazines of Aguila through my 15-22 and shot even more through his bolt action Marlin and we both have a ton of chunks of carbon in our barrels. Personally, I've never had ammo do that to my gun. The chamber and BCG don't seem that dirty though. It shot and fed fine in my gun so I would use it again.

I bought 8 boxes of those myself a couple of days ago on sale for $19.95. Score!

Got my M&P 15-22 back from S&W. Looks like they replaced the bolt carrier, the extractor, possibly some other parts; & tweaked the ejector. Rushed out to the range only to find they close early today, the day before T-day.

Fired 150 rounds Aguila Super Extra HV Copper Plated. First 25 round mag OK. First round on mags #2 & #3 failed to fire OR closing the bolt after hold-open failed to feed the top round? Think problem is rifle, not ammo.

Understanding the strange conditions -- newly rebuilt rifle, re-zeroing the Nikon optics, Range Master breathing down my neck to exit early, new lot of ammo -- I'm pleased to report the Aguila worked as advertised. No ammo related problems in the 3 boxes 150 rounds I had time to send down range.

Also fired 8 rounds through my .22LR pistol. No problems to report.

Oh yeah, Aguila ammo definitely has a distinctive smell, kind of like 4th of July...

I found that on my 10/22 the Super Extra is very accurate. Not sure how it shoots in my 15/22 because I was using it at an Appleseed event and... Well, we just won't go there. But I have no doubt it'll work fine in it too.

To me it smells like super glue when shooting it, but it works 100% for me.

I haven't shot a lot of it, maybe a couple of hundred rounds or so,but it has functioned 100% in my M&P 22 and my Ruger .22 pistol. I agree with another post about the smell. As for being dirty, that nod goes to Remington.

Got around to cleaning my weapons from Wednesday's short range visit, a Beretta pistola w/ one 8 round mag fired & M&P 15-22 w/ 6x25 rounds fired.

The pistol was barely smudged as expected but did have a deep-black patch of burned powder residue in the firing chamber.

Despite 150 rounds the 15-22 looked barely used. The new bolt face had a few -- what I'm beginning to think characteristic of Aguila -- patches of residue. Regardless, I field stripped and cleaned the entire weapon with the result that I change my opinion of Aguila .22LR: it is no more "dirty" than other brands and better than many.

By comparison I fired 40 rounds of Gecco 9mm 124grn FMJ through a carbine & 30 rounds through a pistol. They required significantly more cleaning than the Smith firing Aguila.

I bought a brick of the Aguila Supra Extra standard velocity 40gr lead bullets and I will never buy another brick of this junk.
I tested my new Ruger MK IV with Winchester, Thunderbolt, and Aguila. The first two ran flawlessly but the Aguila jammed the first three rounds of every magazine. They wouldn't feed and jammed upward from the feed ramp.
I then tested the Aguila with my MK II and had the same problem. I have never seen this MK II jam on any ammo. I guess the Aguila will only be used in my revolvers.

Sorry you had problems. Why I was concerned about running Aguila ammo, much less a 5,000 round investment.

I bought High Velocity copper-plated solid nose. That may improve cycling. I keep good notes at the range. I'll report again after sending 1,000 rounds down range.

For the record Aguila ammo seems mighty accurate out of the M&P 15-22 considering I'm still calibrating the Nikon optics after return from S&W.

Six hour range session. Good weather: no wind, ~65F, ~4,000 ft. altitude.
Fired 13x25 round magazines = 325 rounds Aguila .22lr 40 grain high velocity (HV) copper plated (CP) through OEM Smith M&P 15-22 at 40 meters using bench rest & Nikon 4-12 40mm.

Aguila ammo was "super extra" accurate (what it says on each box). Achieved 2" groups on paper shooting triples & wore the paint off 3" steel bulls-eyes shooting single & double groups. Using a Caldwell brass catcher, emptied after 3 mags.

Needed to reload after 6 mags -- 150 rounds. Opened the rifle. Cleaned & lubed the bolt but not the firing chamber other than 2 passes w/ an Otis .22LR bore snake. Shot flawlessly until the middle of the eleventh mag -- ~265 rounds or around 112 round since cleaning.

Misfire! First attempted to cycle charging handle. Spent brass ejected. Set safety. Removed mag; chewed up round fell out. Decided to continue but with brass catcher removed. Fired fine until almost through 12th mag:

Misfire! Cycled charging handle to no effect. Set safety, removed magazine: chewed up rounds fell out, one bent almost in half. Popped rear retaining pin & dropped lower receiver & removed bolt assembly. Spent round caught in chamber. Extractor would/could not extract it. Removed by hand. Bolt face and extractor not visibly that dirty but entire firing area covered with a yellowish film. Cleaned firing chamber & bolt face w/ Hoppe spray solvent & soft cloth. Brushed bolt face & firing chamber to remove film being careful of extractor. Assembled rifle & filled 13th mag.

Fired rest of 12th and entire 13th mag flawlessly. Had to stop firing due to loss of light. Sundown in the high desert comes early.

Other notes: Identical Aguila ammo fired from a finicky Beretta P21a had similar misfires after 2 mags -- ~15 rounds.

Conclusions: With ~2,750 rounds of quality CCI & Aguila ammunition fired, this M&P 15-22 jams & misfires after ~200 rounds slow fire. Since S&W fixed the bolt & ejector problems the remaining problem appears to be the extractor failing to remove spent cartridges after normal fouling.

Solutions:
1) Report problem to S&W and open or reopen maintenance ticket.
2) Field strip & completely clean rifle after ~150 rounds (ouch!).
3) Replace stock extractor w/ improved after-market extractor advised on this forum.

I have tried to stay out of this thread since most of what I had to say about Aguila ammo I had already said in the previous Aguila ammo thread which you can look at here.

Aguila Interceptor

But since it appears this thread is focusing more on the super extra aguilla ammo I figured I should offer my input.

The first thing I noticed in this thread is that some of yall dont shoot much. I dont mean this to sound rude but folks are talking about shooting a few hundred rounds in between cleanings. With my slide fire I am putting about 350 rounds down range in about 5-10 minutes. That's if were joking around and sharing the gun. Then that's followed by about 20 minutes of loading where everyone gets to load their next mags. This generally continues for a few hours. I would say I am shooting about 1500 to 2000 rounds in between cleanings on some of the heavier days. Most of this is one of the worst ammo's to use as far as gunk build up is concerned, the Remington golden bullet as I get them cheap and store about 7K on hand at any point in time. (as an off hand note I wish my buddies knew how much money we shoot off everytime they fire y gun....)

Currently I am attempting to figure out my slide fire so it will continue to function flawlessly through the whole 2000 round process but so far I have not been able to make that happen. Mostly due to lack of recoil not due to the functionality of the ammo although strange ammo things do happen.

When I hear of fouling at 200 rounds to me this sounds like over lubing the gun. One of the posters mentioned that he lubed the bolt at around 150 rounds. In these guns more lube means more problems. I dont run my gun dry but I definitely dont run it wet. I clean everything and then I use a light coating of CLP on everything. Once coated I take a fairly dry gun wipe and I take any standing or excess moisture off the bolt and anything else. I want the bolt to be smooth but if I can physically see oil then its way too wet. Generaly the bolt looks dry bit if you slide your finger across it you will feel that the surface is oiled.



I clean my rifle after every trip but this is more for accuracy then for reliability. After shooting some near 30 different HV ammos out of the 15-22 at all distances from 25 to 100 yards I can safely say what groups best out of my particular rifle. The winner hands down at all distances is.


The Aquila Interceptor.
This is a 1400+fps round that groups well all the way out to 75 yards. at 100 it will still group well but only if you can you shoot that well..... I have fired literally hundreds of these rounds and hundreds of other Hyper velocity rounds without a single issue with my extractor. However I did change to the Volquarsten extractor and I only have great things to say about it.

Read about them here.
Volquartsen Ectractor

As for the OP topic at hand I DO NOT like the aguila HV Super Extra as to me its accuracy is only good out to about 50 yards. Open it up past that and like many other ammos the spread becomes very unpredictable also as standard velocity of the "high velocity" ammos it can cause ejection issues, if you use a little hotter round these issues will almost all but go away. I noticed someone mentioned the federal automatch bulk ammo this is another ammo that works well at close distances but just wont hold up at farther groupings.

Now when your talking about accuracy remember that to really test the gun and the ammo you need to try two things. One is to shoot the ammo with a clean gun and barrel the other is to foul the **** out of the gun with around 500 plus rounds as the added build up of lead and powder can actually help ammos stabilize in the barrel this resulting in two very different outcomes.
For me I choose to test everything with a clean gun and barrel. My reason for this is that when I take my gun hunting I normally dont need to sight in and the gun was always cleaned at home so when I show up to go hunt rabbits etc then the gun is ready simply insert my salem 6 mags loaded with interceptors and off I go.

As for the fouling of aguilla ammo yes I would agree they have an odd chunky gunk that builds up some even with yellow tones in the powder but they still fail in comparison to the gunk of a remington golden bullet or the wax build up from the nomra tac ammo.

As for the failures to eject etc I would again recommend the volquarsten extractor as well as try running with less lubrication on the bolt and chamber. If your using the factorymags a Volquarsten extractor and a properly lubed gun I dont see any reason why you shouldnt be able to shoot atleast 500 rounds without an issue possibly much much more but remember .22lr is low cost ammo and many issues can be caused by flawed ammo or flawed after market magazines.

I hope this helps.

Alex R.

Thanks for the info, Alex. Does installing the Volsquarten extractor void the S&W warranty?

A better extractor seems like the next step. I've read your other posts & can only reply with envy. Quality Control on my M&P 15-22 MOE was a joke, a bad joke. Before returning it for maintenance I never got over 150 rounds before misfires, jams, etc. I have some years experience cleaning & lubricating weapons, leave just a thin film on the bolt, etc., though S&W returned it dripping w/ lube. I always clean a weapon & mags after each use.

I have a bump-fire stock/handgrip and learned to use it but w/ the rifle choking at less than 150 rounds, I figured "Why bother?", and returned to stock. I only bought 6 25-round mags for the 15-22 since it always jammed before finishing the last mag. All are original S&W. Getting almost 300 rounds fired before it jammed this trip was a milestone. If it ever functions correctly, I'll buy more OEM mags & take it out over 100 yards. For now, I'm just trouble-shooting the Smith at my preferred 40m pistol range.

I have other weapons that DO function reliably and deserve my attention at the range as I rely on them for defense. I've wasted more range time cleaning & trouble-shooting the Smith&Lemon than I have on all my other firearms.

Wish me luck!

I only ever put a thin film of gun oil on the rails and clean the bolt face with a little oil to clear the gunk build up...once every 1000 rounds or so i oil the bolt spring. What ever oil i put on i all but wipe off...original extractor and never had a jam or failure to fire that wasn't ammo related.

But then I don't shoot as much as you do. I prefer 10 accurate shots than 500 all over the place.

My thought, also. Bump-fire's great fun but about as accurate as throwing the bullets at the target .

I shoot more rounds each range trip since I only get to the range every 1-2 weeks. Make it count.

Funny thing: when I purchased the M&P 15-22, I had a choice of the standard or MOE versions. Chose the MOE for the improved grip and stock, sights. I later talked to the guy who bought the standard version: works OK.

Another odd thing: I'm used to cleaning cosmolene from new/stored weapons but the Smith was ridiculous. Took several cleaning sessions & I still find brown deposit. Ordered the Tacticool tool and vise mounts to remove the fore-stock just to clean the thick coating from the barrel.

This LGS has display guns you can handle but not disassemble. But they hand you a box from storage at checkout. Russian roulette. Might as well buy online, which I did last purchase; a 9mm carbine that shoots fine .

I plan on getting a VQ extractor as a spare to keep just in case (long story on actually getting it) but you should not need to buy an aftermarket part to make your rifle run correctly.

As much hassle as it is, i would return it back to S&W with your documented issues and let them sort it out. 200 rounds and then it becomes jam-o-matic? Is just not good enough.

My basic checks and rules are....

-light lube on the rails on a regular basis.
-Make sure the recess around the firing pin and under the extractor is free from gunk.
-Make sure the feed ramp is clear of crud.
-Periodically check that the barrel nut has not come loose.
-Careful when running a boresake, covering the ejector with a straw to stop any snagging. (though i rarely run a boresnake during competition season.)

I like cleaning the rifle after each range visit, 2 times per week, 100 rounds per visit on average. I have on occasion shot a brick and experienced no issues, except the odd 22lr primer issue. Even with the 24C....i had one round which literally did not have a primer in at all....i dented every piece of the rim and it never went bang at all. If i was experiencing issues like you have i would expect S&W to fix them to my satisfaction.

Well I know what your saying but the slide fire is suppressive fire. With it locked in place all bunnies and small varmints inside 100 yards becomes dinner.

I've used the Aguila if I remember super maximum and found it to be reliable, didn't seem to be dirty , and very accurate. Velocity 1700 FPS used them in my Henry on the 100 yd range and managed to keep within A 3" radius with a 3-9 /40 scope

Thanks, ghost, I definitely want your experience acquiring the Vol. extractor. Brownels has them on backorder. Have you located another source?

My checklist resembles your maintenance regimen -- even added plastic straws to my range cleaning kit -- but just clean the extractor & bolt with a soft brush & swipe the exposed parts of the firing pin w/ a clean Q-tip. Are you suggesting removing the roll pins & actually cleaning?

I'm ready, Dude. An unreliable extractor's dangerous. Would prefer to have the replacement on hand before removing original extractor. Also ready to RMA the 15-22 back to Smith but wanted it here over the holiday season for visitors to shoot -- but only if it's safe (shades of Appleseed...).

I'm considering shooting fewer rounds & visiting the range more often as I only pay an annual fee. Unlike people with their own range, I must schlep everything back & forth in my pickup; paint, set up & tear down steel targets; clean the firearms; clean & load the mags. For me that's a good part of 3 days including range day, though great fun.

My kids are up in my face for a hotwheels race, so i can't read all the pertaining stuff relating to your failures but I dont remove the roll pin, i would only ever do that if i was replacing the firing pin, i suggest you dont either, your checklist if you are not going to send it back over xmas is:-

Clean it
Make sure your barrel nut is tight,
Check the ejector alignment,
Remove and check the extractor spring, they can and have broken.
Ensure the mags are loaded

Just make sure no guests are ejection port side of the rifle and you should be all right.

Regarding the VQ extractor...i do not have one (i am waiting as i said it is a long story), my original extractor has never given me any issues...i just want a spare in my range bag hence i am not rushing to the two places you can try.

Which would be ebay (slightly cheaper)
S&W Smith Wesson M&P 15-22 Rifle VOLQUARTSEN Exact Edge Extractor extracter

or Scott himself.
Exact Edge Extractor for S&W M&P 15-22 | Volquartsen Firearms

Regarding the Appleseed nonsense, pay no heed to that, if the issue was so pressing how come no charges have been filed and no news of any investigation released by either them or S&W in over 3 months.

I understand you want your guests safe but explain the situation and keep the back and to the left of the shooter.