Dropped a round in windshield vent...

Sigh....

So I dropped a live .22LR round in the windshield vent on the dashboard and I'm wondering if I need to worry about it going "POP!" while I'm driving this winter with the heat/defroster on my 1st Gen Tacoma. Anyone else ever do this? Anyone know how difficult it is to fish one of the buggers out?

 

I have only seen a few shoot their truck on here. But never a truck shooting back.

 

I am far from being a firearms expert, but I don't think the heat from a typical automotive heater is enough to initiate the chain reaction required to "fire" a bullet...

 

@ColoradoTJ
@El Duderino

 

I would say drop a magnet on a string down there but that won’t be much help on brass and lead. Maybe try fitting a small diameter piece of rubber hose onto the end of a shop vac and shoving it down there.

 

Truck is loaded now

 

2000 Toyota Tacoma; FULLY LOADED with one in the chamber!

 

In his book "Gunshot Wounds" Vincent Di Maio describes various experiments where ammunition was heated in ovens. He says that .22 long rifle cartridges detonate at an average of 275F, .38 Special at 290F and 12 gauge shotgun shells at 387F. The interesting thing about these furnace experiments was that in all instances the cartridge cases ruptured, but the primers did not detonate. In fact the primers were removed from some of the ruptured cases, reloaded into other brass and fired.

When cartridges are placed in a fire he confirms that the most dangerous component of a cartridge is the brass, or fragments thereof that may cause eye injury or penetrate skin, but certainly there is no evidence that a cartridge that is not in a firearm can cause a mortal wound, either by action of the bullet or the brass/primer fragments. It is important to remember however that a chambered cartridge that detonates in a fire is just as dangerous as a cartridge that is fired under normal circumstances in a firearm.

To get a better understanding of the behaviour of free-standing ammunition in a fire, he conducted experiments with a propane torch. A total of 202 cartridges (handgun, centerfire rifle and shotgun cartridges) were used. If the heat was applied directly to the base of a shotgun shell the primer would detonate, the powder would ignite and the shell would rupture. Any pellets that emerged were traveling too slowly to be recorded on a chronograph.

In rifle and handgun cartridges where the flame was applied to the base of the cartridge the primers always detonated but the powder only ignited in half the cases and in those instances the cases did not rupture but the gas was instead vented through the primer hole.

When he heated these same handgun and rifle cartridges at the front, the powder would burn and the cases would usually rupture but with few exceptions the primers did not detonate. The velocity of expelled projectiles ranged from 58 ft/s to 123 ft/s. The only exception was the .270 cartridge where the bullet velocity was 230 ft/s. Primer velocities ranged from 180 ft/s to 830 ft/s.

As a side note he says that a revolver in a fire is especially dangerous because all the cartridges can cook off and be discharged such that there is a danger from projectiles. Only the bullet that came out of the barrel will have rifling marks and the ones that came from non-aligned chambers will have shear marks on them. Obviously if there is a question about the firing of a weapon and whether it was cooked off or fired intentionally they will look for a firing-pin impression on the primer of the suspect cartridge case.

References:

Sciuchetti G.D. Ammunition and fire. American Rifleman 144(3): 36-38, 59-60, March 1996.

Cooking-Off Cartridges. NRA Illustrated Reloading Handbook. Washington, D.C.: The National Rifle Association of America.

And of course Vincent Di Maio's excellent book "Gunshot Wounds - practical aspects of firearms, ballistics and forensic technics". My copy is the second edition, published by CRC Press, ISBN 0-8493-8163-0
This information can be found on pages 268-270.

https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...-at-what-temperature-will-it-cook-off.278523/

 

Very unlikely anything will happen.
With out a barrel there isn’t much potential for bullet to be propelled forward.
I’ve ran over 22lr with a lawn mower, they make a pop. Nothing bad happened.
(Volunteered at the local range)

 

Nope. It would just fizzle the powder from the metal jacket expanding. The powder needs to spark from a primer.

 

Anybody hear the urban legend about the guy who substituted a blown fuse in his pickup truck with a shotgun shell? He ended up shooting himself in the leg when he started the truck, or so the story goes...

Gives a whole new meaning to the expression "Riding Shotgun"!

 

Yes, only because the Mythbuster did it.
It is possible for the cartridge to fire.


https://go.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/gun-cartridge-fuse-minimyth

 

I actually heard about it years before MythBusters; When we were living in Virginia Beach in the late 1990s I heard story on the local country station...

 

I wouldn't worry about it

 

I have heard that one before, but it was a 22 shell.

 

A bullet is better than melted chocolate in the dashboard...

 

We used to throw all sorts of rounds into fires. From 556 to 50 cal

 

Pew pew? Big explosion?

 

Nope, the collar pops and the powder will flash. Since there’s no pressure the projectile just stays