Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Hornady LeverEvolution misfires?

I love these bullets. My son shoots them in his 45-70 and they have performed well.

I talked a pard into getting and H&R 45-70 Handi Rifle because of the good luck we had with Ryan's.

We went to the range today and had about 5 misfires out of one box of the 325 Gr. LeverEvolution ammo.

Has anyone else experienced this? The hammer spring seems to be of sufficient strength to detonate any primer made.

However, the firing pin indentions did look weak on the ones that failed to fire. Looked good on the rest. I'm wondering if it's a primer problem or the gun.

If anybody has had this happen I'd like to hear.

JM

I found info on 2 other forums that people were having misfires with this ammo throughout the caliber range.

Called a shooting buddy this a.m. that works at a large sporting goods store and he said they have had boxes returned by customers.

Just an FYI.

I had a handy rifle that miss fired sometimes. I found that the trigger setup is for shotguns and if you squeeze the trigger it would missfire, so I began using the tip of my trigger finger as is used on shotguns and never had any more problems.
if you squeeze the trigger the transfer bar does not rise up quick enough to fire, by using the tip of your finger it snaps up very fast and is ok . Idiot proof revolvers have the same problem sometimes but you don't normally squeeze a revolver or pistol trigger.JMTCW

Hubert,

My first thought was something with the rifle, But I talked to a fella that had a Knight KP1 and had misfires, so it seems that it is happening in other rifles too.

JM

Gone through about 6 boxes with my Marlin 336, 30.30.

No problems so far.

In the 45/70 for whatever reason the Hornady brass is about 1/16th of an inch shorter that other brands of 45/70 brass. I collected about 50 pcs of fired brass at our range one day last year. I polished, sized it and got ready to trim it and thought my trimmer was out of adjustment. Then I measured it and found it to be quite a bit shorter than the rest of my 45/70 brass. I also noticed the rim was about 1/2 the thickness of the Remington, Winchester, and Starline brass. I had acquired a new hunting battery to take advantage of the change of the primitive weapon regulations in Louisiana. They were three 45/70's and one in 44 mag. I tried using the reloaded Hornady brass in all three of mine, a 78 Browning, a KP-1, and the H&R Handi Rifle. All three had miss fires, there was a light dimple where the firing pin struck the primer. The cause was the thinner rim, it allowed the case to have artificial headspace. Then I remembered that the man that fired the new LeverEvolution ammo which I collected the brass from after he left was shooting a Marlin and had no trouble. Correct me if I am wrong, the Marlin has an extractor that holds the case to the face of the bolt, so there is no space the firing pin has to transverse to hit the primer. That would be the reason that the Marlin has no trouble firing the LE Hornady ammo. I fixed my problem by seating the bullets out far enough to lightly rest against the rifling and take up the headspace. Before this, I had bought three boxes of the LE 44 mag shells for the other Handi Rifle had no problem firing them at all.
Good shooting,
Marcus.

I tried the Hornady shells out of my Handi rifle in .45/70 when I first got it. About half of them did not fire, but would have a firing pin mark on the primer and I could not get the ones that did fire to group at all. I was told that it must be my gun and Hornady said that it was because I had a hammer extension. I threw the shells away and bought a box of Winchester Super X 300 grain Hollow Points and I have not had not one misfire since plus I get fairly good groups with them.

I've shot the 308 Marlin Express, 338 Marlin Express, 45/70 and 35 Rem. Leverevolution ammo and have had only one misfire. That was in the 338 Marlin Express.

I have Savage 99s , I don't have to bother with that Hornady junk.


Mike

I had the same problem with a box of .308 Light Magnums a couple years ago. Two shells out of 20 did not fire. They showed what appeared to be a light firing pin hit. I tried them in a different 308, and they still didn't fire, and still appeared to have a light strike. I assumed they had hard primers, and tossed them. Since I don't want to have that happen in the field, I abandoned Hornady. I have used various other brands in the same gun since, with no problems.

I've had one misfire in about 4 boxes of the 308 ME ammo. I don't handload these because the factory ammo is very accurate. But the misfire issue is a little bothersome when it comes time to be pulling the trigger on a game animal.

Light firing pins cause misfires in any ammuntion...Based on this thread I suspect perhaps the primers are a tad hard and the rifles that are misfiring have weak firing pins..The combination of the two creates a problem..

I also noticed that perhaps the better quality rifles seemed to have no problems.

I have shot them in the Win. 94, the Marlin 336 without a failure.

I have shot many of them in a 45-70 Remington double rifle made by Baikal with no problems.

Some of these stories are beyond belief. I have shot tens of thousands of rounds from .222 to .458 and never once had a misfire except with old corroded military ammo. If this happened to me I would never again shoot Hornady ammo, but can you get the bullets separately for handloading?

Leon called and we took the rifle to the range today at lunch and shot an entire box of 300 gr. 45-70 Win. Supreme Partition Gold without incedent.

I think Marcus might be on to something in his post.

JM

Ray,

The guns I had misfire were a NULA and a Sako 75. I don't think they would be considered lesser quality. Neither have ever misfired with any other brand I have put through them. Since there are numerous other brands of quality ammo out there, I see no reason to take a chance on the Hornady in the field.
That being said, I am really tempted to try the LeverEvolution 44 mag. in my old manlicher stocked Ruger carbine. It should be great for pigs in Florida, and if it did misfire, there's always another pig around.

I like Hornady, but I doubt I'll continue to use their 45-70 LeverEvolution ammo.

I don't want to sit here and put the blame on them, but I would feel better with the gun using another brand of ammo.

On the slim chance that you may have a misfire on a Buck, it ain't no biggie, other than you being a little pissed.

However, I would hate to know I was a guide or hunter in grizzly country and had one go "click" when I was in the process of saving mine or someone else's bacon.

That would be bad.

JM.

I wouldn't use them either if I had misfires in those numbers..but I have not had any problems with that ammo in my 94s or 336s..I have had no experience with NULA and I don't care for the Sako 75...I'm still a fan of the Sako L series, they were great rifles, but too expensive to build.

Marcus' post seems to give a cogent reason for the misfires. I've a Marlin GG and though I haven't shot a lot of the Horn LeveRevolution ammo, that which I and a friend have used gave us no problems.

They worked fine in my Savage 219 single shot. Two years ago I shot 4 deer and all were DOA.