Tested Tough: Remington's Rimfire Revamp

It takes several assets to make a business great; however, the savvy can boil it down to just one: humility. While some might argue time and money management trump this quality, if a company isn’t able to make an honest appraisal of its goods, it can never earn enough for proper management to come into play, no matter how much time they have. Most of us have shot Remington rimfire and regard it as acceptable for informal target work, but likely to fall short when it comes to sniping that long-distance squirrel. Remington was aware of this as well and settled for this reputation, as it clearly wasn’t hurting sales. Furthermore, it had maxed out its development resources, so it just made sense to call it good and focus its attention elsewhere. Fast-forward to 2020, when Vista Outdoor acquired the entity, bringing with it the engineering power of legendary rimfire maker CCI. In short order, the teams blended together to evaluate Big Green’s shortcomings and came up with a plan to improve performance across the entire division.

A short interview with Remington’s Rimfire Process Engineer Benjamin Bell shed a little light on what was done to increase accuracy, enhance reliability and make the Remington Rimfire experience more pleasurable overall. “The beginning of this project began with the general need for improvement in our shell-making process,” said Bell, explaining it was quite dated. Bell stated the original case body drawing process involved overshooting the mark and then sawing it down to the proper size. As saw blades wear over time, a slight variance was introduced, making cases longer or shorter from each other. This might not sound like much, but when it comes time to apply a crimp, this intolerance is detrimental to accuracy. Essentially, a change in case length equals a change in bullet tension, spreading velocities to a degree that degrades accuracy, particularly at extended ranges. Without pulling the curtain back too far, Bell briefly described how the process was improved: “Instead of relying on the position of a saw and positioning pins that could vary, we now use modern machining techniques to hold the working features of the tooling to much tighter tolerances,” said Bell. “This tooling improvement allows for the removal of a high variance-inducing process when it comes to our shells.” Best of all, this reduces scrap, not to mention maintenance on an entire machine. Therefore, the new process retains the affordable nature that drew us to Remington rimfire ammunition in the first place.

Aside from finicky accuracy, reliability is always a touchy subject when it comes to rimfire. Remington also addressed that in the changeover. “We’ve also incorporated a slight change in head geometry, which also allows for better feeding and extraction,” said Bell. When you put an old cartridge next to a new one, you can see the edge of the rim isn’t entirely rounded anymore. Its sharper nature mates more positively with smaller rimfire extractors. This increases the chance of it getting ripped clear of the chamber in time for a fresh round to take its place.

You can tell the new from the old by the updated headstamp, now featuring the long-tailed “R” that is their new logo. The rollout is happening gradually across the entire Remington rimfire lineup, with new products as well as old favorites like .22 Golden Bullet, Subsonic, and .22 Viper benefitting from the increased quality. After gathering up a sample of each, I headed down to my safe and selected a pair of guns to put them through the test. As reliability was on the chopping block, I wanted to employ semi-automatic firearms. However, I didn’t want to handicap the rounds in the accuracy department. With that in mind, I reached for my recently upgraded Ruger 10/22, which wears a heavy 18.5-inch Volquartsen barrel. Being that it doesn’t take much to cycle a 10/22, I decided to challenge each round with a Taurus TX 22 Compact. Nothing is harder to run than a rimfire pistol, and in my experience, the shorter the barrel, the tougher. As both firearms were threaded, I incorporated a limited edition SilencerCo Sparrow-Ti suppressor, but only for the Subsonic load. As the lion’s share of a .22 LR’s noise is the supersonic crack, it cannot be quieted without disturbing quantum physics, and I got in trouble the last time I did that.

I kept things realistic on the firing line, testing the handgun at 15 yards and the rifle at 50. However, before resting each on a sandbag and conducting a formal accuracy test, I dumped 100 rounds of each load onto a steel target to test their reliability. With a 100% success rate across the board, I’d say Remington is certainly headed in the right direction. After a brief cleaning of each firearm, I fired off the standard test protocol and can attest to each round’s improvement in consistency. The highest Standard Deviation recorded was only 39, and that was with the company's bulk offering of Golden Bullet. The Subsonic load only displayed an SD of 24, and out of the pistol, no less. Groups were excellent in most cases, with the tightest of the day going to the three-shot group of .22 Viper fired with the rifle that measured a scant .484”. This was followed shortly after by a pistol group of Subsonic which measured .498”.

Like all rimfire products, they are going to perform differently in different firearms, which was still the case with the new variety of Remington .22LR. However, with the prices as low as they are, there’s nothing precluding you from replicating the same test for whatever rimfire you currently carry afield. In addition to the old standbys, Remington will be applying this process to a few new offerings, including its harder-hitting Golden Hunter and outrageously consistent Ranch Hand, rounding out the category further and ensuring whatever it is you’re after, you’ll find trouble-free operation that always hits it mark. For more information, visit remington.com.

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