SW22 Victory Issues

I bought my Victory last year October then shortly afterwards I sent it back to S&W for a missing extractor. Couple months later it came back (very well padded & boxed) even better than it was new. I fired at least 2k rounds mostly Federal automatch & CCI mini mags with no failures of any kind. I bought a set of very nice Altamont grips for it. Pretty happy with it.
 
I got my Victory 22 last year. I had failure issues but cannot remember if it was failure to eject or failure to feed. I did a lot of testing and determined all failures were with one magazine. The gun store owner I purchased if from tinkered with the magazine, did some test firing in the gunsmith room and fixed the mag. No problem since. I have shot CCI SV and the CCI Mini mag, Federal target, Remington Golden Bullet and some others. Can't remember any failures since fixing the mag. Now I shoot CCI Select. Accuracy is acceptable and gets better as I get better.
 
I have owned numerous Ruger MKI and MKII pistols and am a big fan of them. However, I like to try new stuff, and after reading all of the info about the Victory I bought one on sale at a really good price last year. I have fired hundreds of rounds through mine of several different brands of ammo and have not had a failure yet of any kind. Mine came with a decent trigger pull but I added the Tandemkross trigger which made a definite improvement. As much as I like my new Victory, if push came to shove and I had to get rid of one or the other, I would be keeping the Ruger but I hope that doesn't ever happen because I like both.
 
Had a small problem with light FP strikes when new, but took the bolt out and oiled the FP assembly and no FF problems since. However I've had one mag since new that fails to hold bolt open after last round fired. I guess 1 out of 4 not that bad.

I have look over the bolts very close and can see no difference in them. Guess I'll call S&W and see what they say about the problem. Otherwise after about 1000 plus rounds it's still 100% reliable except for a few ammo duds with HV ammo 1150/1200 plus FPS, however SV and some SS ammo gets a little iffy sometimes. Oh and the gun is always used with a suppressor when shooting and gun has never gotten dirty enough to malfunction in 250-300 round bouts. My 2206 was same way.
 
...forward to April 2017. Maybe SW has fixed the issues with FTEs. I took my new one to the range a couple of weeks ago for its first run. Using Browning bulk ammo, no issues, 50 rounds. I did no tweaks prior. Just the new gun cleaning regiment, oil where I think needed. This is my SOP for any gun I buy, lately, 2 new Buckmarks and a new Ruger Hunter also passed the 50 rounds first run with no issues.
 
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I just bought this pistol and like many other people, mine was hanging up with ejection issues as well. Of course I didn't know about this issue when I bought the gun so it upset me when I took it to the range and I couldn't even use the damn thing. I brought both cheap ammo and good stuff (CCI Mini Mag) already thinking ahead that the gun may not like the cheap stuff. So I tried the cheap stuff first and the fourth round already failed to eject. I tried it again and three rounds later it did it again. So I thought, okay, these guns don't like cheap ammo. So I loaded some CCI Mini Mag ammo and it did the same thing. This pissed me off....

So I came home and I researched the subject and I found this thread. I read through it and a few more. I then watched some YouTube videos with the same problem and suggested cures. I tried what was suggested and thankfully it worked. I ran roughly 200 rounds of cheap ammo today with zero failures. While I think having to tweak a brand new gun is BS, I guess I should be thankful it could've been a lot worse. It was making my stomach churn thinking about having to send my brand new gun to S&W to have my new gun already repaired. S&W should try these damn pistols out before they let them ship from their factory.

Anyway..... I also read the suggestion about the O-ring thing and what size/number to look for at the hardware store. I was able to find a rubber O-ring that fits very nicely on the allen screw holding the gun together. I also added some blue Loctite to the screw. I'm not really sure what the O-ring is supposed to do but I figured I couldn't go wrong with the .39 cents expense of the O-ring.

Here's a picture of the O-ring package in case this might help others.
 

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Well if S&W were to make these guns to the standards you want, that all are perfect, not counting operator error, the gun would not have a $450 MSRP but a $1200 or more price tag. All you need to do is look at the Model 41, it's 3 times the price for all that attention to detail.

Put another 40 rounds thru the Victory yesterday afternoon, Winchester Subsonic Max 42 grain lead HP rated at 1065fps according to the box. I've been shooting this and CCI SV that's 1070fps per the box, and both very reliable, but the Win is whole lot cleaner then the CCI has been.

I have some 4 or 5 350 round bricks of Fed AutoMatch that I will be trying out after shooting couple hundred more of the CCI and Winchester. So far no failures caused by gun and one each of the brands has had a dud primer.

With the old Millet Red Dot that I bought 15 or 20 years ago installed I can really work the steel over and I can get nickel sized groups at 25 yards w/o too much effort on my part or using fancy high dollar target ammo. Love this little gun and guess it's the best money I have spent on a gun in years.

Just to add some more info about this gun, it's has never been fired w/o a suppressor mounted, so all accuracy, cleanness and function reports are with a suppressed gun.
 
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Old Navy said:
Well if S&W were to make these guns to the standards you want, that all are perfect, not counting operator error, the gun would not have a $450 MSRP but a $1200 or more price tag.
Click to expand...

No. having a perfect firearm and a working firearm are two different things.

Perfect to me is having a firearm that works flawlessly with any brand type of ammo and is 100% cosmetic free condition out of the box. Thankfully my local gun shop allows me to hand pick my guns because they know how picky I am. I've seen plenty of new, out of the box guns that have some sort of either metal casting flaws and or machining cosmetic flaws. My shop lets me pick until I find that cosmetic defect free gun. I appreciate that which is why I keep coming back to that shop.

Having a working firearm to me would mean having a firearm that can shoot at least one type of ammo as described out of the box. My Victory along with plenty of others in the wild cannot or were not able to do that. Not until we did the needle nose pliers trick which thankfully worked for me.

So your assessment on my previous post is nonsense. At least the first few sentences were.
 
ozziegn said:
Perfect to me is having a firearm that works flawlessly with any brand type of ammo and is 100% cosmetic free condition out of the box. Thankfully my local gun shop allows me to hand pick my guns because they know how picky I am. I've seen plenty of new, out of the box guns that have some sort of either metal casting flaws and or machining cosmetic flaws. My shop lets me pick until I find that cosmetic defect free gun. I appreciate that which is why I keep coming back to that shop.

Having a working firearm to me would mean having a firearm that can shoot at least one type of ammo as described out of the box. My Victory along with plenty of others in the wild cannot or were not able to do that. Not until we did the needle nose pliers trick which thankfully worked for me.
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That's interesting because here's a direct quote from the SW22 Victory owners manual. But I guess it's easier to bend parts in your gun with a pair of pliers instead of finding which ammo functions the best... :rolleyes:

*Some brands of ammunition may cause difficulty in extracting
spent cartridge cases from the cylinder or chamber. If this situation
occurs, thoroughly clean the cylinder charge holes or chamber with
solvent. If this condition persists, we recommend changing to another
brand of ammunition.
* Smith & Wesson has found wide variations in primer sensitivity
between some brands and types of .22LR ammunition.
Smith & Wesson recommends that before you put your .22LR
handgun into regular use, that you fire several boxes of your brand
of ammunition through it to determine reliability of ignition.
* If "failure to fire" occurs, try different types or brands of .22LR
ammunition until a reliable loading is found"
 
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Maybe the reason I didn't have any trouble was I thoroughly cleaned my V before shooting. I did try some Remington Golden's and had some weak ones by sound and a couple that sounded like 22WMR and was glad I had glasses on, that one magazine was enough for me. I later weighed the powder in about a dozen of the Golden ammo and almost a third were 20% heavier loaded then the rest.
 
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RGVshooter said:
That's interesting because here's a direct quote from the SW22 Victory owners manual. But I guess it's easier to bend parts in your gun with a pair of pliers instead of finding which ammo functions the best... :rolleyes:

*Some brands of ammunition may cause difficulty in extracting
spent cartridge cases from the cylinder or chamber. If this situation
occurs, thoroughly clean the cylinder charge holes or chamber with
solvent. If this condition persists, we recommend changing to another
brand of ammunition.
* Smith & Wesson has found wide variations in primer sensitivity
between some brands and types of .22LR ammunition.
Smith & Wesson recommends that before you put your .22LR
handgun into regular use, that you fire several boxes of your brand
of ammunition through it to determine reliability of ignition.
* If "failure to fire" occurs, try different types or brands of .22LR
ammunition until a reliable loading is found"
Click to expand...

Yes my manual says that as well but it was well known months ago that quite a few went out with badly placed ejectors and that a little tweak with a good set of needle nose pliers fixed it at home instead of sending it back.

Mine shoots anything I put through it. Any issues I have had, have been badly built ammunition.
 
So far I have fired:
Federal Automatch: Most worked perfectly except one seemed like it had a double charge. Because it was very loud, and the slide didn't go all the way back in. I stopped firing. Took it home. Cleaned the pistol, no problems.
CCI Mini-Mags: No issues at all.

I love mine, even my friend was getting awesome groups at the range.
 
Newbie here, bought a Victory 22, unreliable ejection, the spent case was laying on top of the new round 2 to 3 times a magazine. Learned about the needle nose pliers fix for the ejector. Moved mine about the the thickness of the ejector. Fired 10 rounds no problem. thanks, I have hope!
 
Joe Coin Welcome to the forum from Canada. Overall for the price point the Victory is a very decent pistol. They have had some growing pains withis new product but much more success then failure overall. If you have problems with the barrel screw coming loose then I would suggest placing a No.61 O-ring on the screw before re-tightening it back up.
 
Joe_coin said:
Newbie here, bought a Victory 22, unreliable ejection, the spent case was laying on top of the new round 2 to 3 times a magazine. Learned about the needle nose pliers fix for the ejector. Moved mine about the the thickness of the ejector. Fired 10 rounds no problem. thanks, I have hope!
Click to expand...

That worked for me, hope you have the same outcome.

Welcome to the forum.
 
Barrie said:
Joe Coin Welcome to the forum from Canada. Overall for the price point the Victory is a very decent pistol. They have had some growing pains withis new product but much more success then failure overall. If you have problems with the barrel screw coming loose then I would suggest placing a No.61 O-ring on the screw before re-tightening it back up.
Click to expand...

The o-ring fixed my issue with the screw coming loose. No longer an issue.
 
Glad to hear that it worked well for you Targets Guy. We have had many success's with this suggested fix. Cheap to do and easy to apply. Anyone of us can do it quite easily.
 
Good to hear about simple fix, nothing made by men will be consistently perfect and often has no simple fix.
 
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