Just how reliable is a 22lr pistol?

[rug357]

Last night I finally got around to cleaning my Bersa Thunder 22lr pistol. I love this little pistol and my son and I shoot it a lot at the farm. I finally got around to cleaning it last night after about a year and installed a new recoil spring. Normally I just wipe down the outside with oily rag and squirt some lube onto extractor, internals and rails when I finishing for the day.
In last 6-8 months we had fired one 500 round box of Federal bulk ammo, 500 rounds of Remington bulk ammo and one 555 round box of Winchester bulk ammo...plus some CCI Minimag Solid, Minimag HP and CCI Velocitor. I kept a record of every failure I had with this pistol during that time on my phone and here is what I found:

Federal bulk - 2 FTE, 1 FTF out of 500 rounds
Remington - 3 FTE, 2 FTF out of 500 rounds
Winchester - 9 FTE, 6 FTE out of 555 rounds
CCI All type - Zero failure of any kind out of about 200 rounds

That Winchester 555 bulk ammo was obviously under powered compared to Federal and Remington based on muzzle blast and felt recoil.

I guess about 1% failure is to be expected from Federal and Remington bulk ammo but I'm not surprised by zero failure with CCI ammo. I have seen CCI Minimag go about thousand rounds in my Ruger 10/22 with no failure of any kind years ago.

Recently my son discovered my Ruger Mk3 auto so he's starting to shoot that pistol a lot so I started keeping records for it. So far it's only fired about 100 rounds of Remington bulk ammo and so far zero failure. We'll see how reliable it is as it gets dirty.

[pastorp]

The Bersa 22lr pistols are only reliable, In my experience, with CCI Stingers.

[gforester]

Reliability issues with 22 caliber is more the ammo than the weapon. Unless you have an el-cheapo Saturday Night Special 22 hand gun, most are dead reliable.

[Springfield]

I have a Llama baby 1911 in 22 LR that is not only reliable but surprisingly accurate. It holds 10 rds and I can get 7 or 8 hits on a jumping tin can at 25 yds. Being an older pistol I would not feed it Stingers, but anything I've fed it has cycled reliably.

The worst 22 ammo I have tried is Winchester Wildcats - dirty residue and waxy bullets that gum up a magazine.