Shot my new Winchester 94 today for the first time. It is a brand new model with tang safety, .30-30. I was shooting Winchester Super X soft point ammo. For some reason or another it would not fire twice out of ten rounds fired. On the rounds that had not fired, there was a small indentation on the primer from the firing pin, but they were light dents. I love the looks/feel of the rifle, I am pretty down right now though. At least it was really accurate (when it worked...).

Suggestions and help appreciated.

I agree with 50cal.  Is the lever all the way up?  This would allow the chamber to not fully close.

I'm pretty sure it was all the way up, I was sqeezing it pretty hard. Is it normal for lever guns to light strike a primer if the lever isn't quite fully up?

What type of Ammo?  I was shooting Ultramax 45-70 in my Sharps yesterday and had 3 duds out of 20.

Quoted: What type of Ammo?  I was shooting Ultramax 45-70 in my Sharps yesterday and had 3 duds out of 20.

I was shooting Winchester "Super X" ammo. It's the common Winchester you see at all the stores in the relatively plain silver box, with the ammo-game compatability chart on the back.


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Also, I did some examining of the rifle. As far as I can tell, not having the hammer all the way up makes no difference. If the hammer is more than a few milimeters down, there is a little safety that gets disengaged and you can't even pull the trigger. If the lever is anywhere above this "safety" position, the bolt will remain in the exact same spot.

I did, however, notice that there is a tiny gap between the top of the bolt and the breech. Since Winchester levers have the bolt on top, you can see the gap/light on the other side just by looking straight down on the rifle from above. I don't know if this would really do anything, though, since I suppose I'm really just looking on the flat protective surface on top of the exposed bolt and I can't see the bolt/headspace itself.

Wow that is strange.  Ya I would be thinking about the bolt/barrel gap and the surface of the bolt face.  Contact Winchester, it is a pain but they should fix it at no charge.

30-30 headspaces on the rim, what you are seeing is probably normal.

Have you cleaned the grease out of the gun?

It really sounds like it is not going completely into battery.

A call to Winnie might be a good idea.

And the factory is closing soon why....

Seriously, sounds like you've trouble shot it as much as you should a new rifle, send it back. Hope it turns out well for ya.

I just had a thought: after I bought the rifle, I tried practicing loading the mag tube a few times just to see how it worked, as this is my first lever gun besides my Marlin Guide Gun (and I basically just feed sinlge rounds into that beast). Turns out I was in fact doing it wrong (I thought I was supposed to push the cartridge all the way in, I was saying to myself "boy this is tough to load" until I realized you're supposed to leave the base of the previous cartridge outside of the loading gate. Feel free to laugh at me ), but found out how it was supposed to be done, so I used (for the most part) the same 6 or 7 rounds to practice it the right way a few times. It worked and I went from not knowing what I was doing to loading it rather quickly in a few tries (no, I never chambered a round or anything like that).


Anyways, my point to all this is the fact that those same rounds I was playing with were all in the twenty round box of ammo I took out to the range today. Is is possible - due to repeated loading/unloading - that some of the primers that were duds today somehow got "squished" so to speak by the pressure of the rounds behind them during my schenanigans from earlier on? I can't really feel much of a difference between the primer "depth" of the duds and the fired casings, but then again we are talking fractions of a millimeter between a light strike and a "BOOM".


Also, I went back and did some more investigating and found that, if I manually put a spent casing in the chamber, it actually did make a small difference  as to how far up the lever was. Even past the "safety" point, the bolt contiuned to move forward like maybe 1/3rd of a millimeter. The problem is that I really, really had to be gentle to not quite put the bolt fully forward. Any sort of normal manipulation of the handle will put the bolt all the way forward to stay. Granted, this is with a spent case, which is very snug inside the chamber, while an unfired round will glide right in/out. With a normal round I don't think it would make a difference.

Sorry for the long post...

Perhaps insufficient firing pin protrusion? Charles.  

Quoted: Perhaps insufficient firing pin protrusion? Charles.

I now think so. I went back again and compared the primers on the "duds" to those on the successfully fired casings. There is a (barely) noticible difference on (and only on) the two "dud" primers.

Looks like I sorta answered my own question. Sorry for wasing everybody's time.

And a big thank you to everyone for the help and suggestions. It is appreciated.