1911 FTF issue

soup13

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I have a Dlask .40 S&W and i've been running into a few odd and slightly disturbing issues with it. I've recently bought a quite a few mags and yesterday I was testing them out.

I have:
3x used Mec-Gars (one of them was complete junk so I tossed it)
2x used Wilson Combats
4x used... unknown brand, I'm thinking Kim-Pro
2x New Tripp Research 10 rnds (my only new mags).

Previously I was only loading 5 rounds per mag and everything was going well. It wasn't until yesterday when I loaded them all full was I getting a LOT of FTFs. The gun was having problems stripping the first few rounds of a fully loaded mag. At first the gun wasn't even loading the first round into the chamber when I racked the slide, the round would jam up against the feeding ramp. I would have to do a few racks (round wasn't caught on the ejector) to get the cartridge in the chamber.

Squeeze the trigger, fire, failure to feed the next round. Sent the slide home, squeezed the trigger, fire, another failure to feed. Things smoothed out considerably after the third round.

At first I thought it was my Tripp mags being brand spanking new and the springs needed to be worked, but I quickly started to see similar results with most of my other mags.

I never had this problem when I was running dry-fire drills with snap caps, but I can only assume it's something to do with the design of the snap caps themselves.

Another thing I noticed was after I ejected one round that failed to feed I saw that the bullet was seated noticeably deeper into the casing (Wolf Reloaded form SRFC)! Being paranoid, I stowed that round away... Don't know much about reloading, but something tells me that firing a cartridge with the bullet seated too deeply is a bad thing, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

So, this is my issue... I did a quick lube of all essential parts including the feed ramp and I still had the same first round FTFs. My current thinking (since it's the cheapest option) is the recoil spring might need replacing. Second thought might be the feed ramp might be too steep? But, then the 3-4th rounds wouldn't feed smoothly if that were the case right?

Anyway, I thought I'd throw this issue up here to see what other people thought.
 
Some thoughts:

1. Try stripping the rounds out of the mags using your thumb. You might find that the first 2 or 3 rounds are harder to strip than the remaining ones (due to spring compression in the mags). This may indicate that you could use a stronger slide recoil spring.

2. Is your ammo standard .40 cal ammo? I only have experience with .45 ACP and I have learned that any deviations from the standard 230 grain round nosed rounds can cause problems in certain guns. Hollow point bullets and/or smaller and lighter bullets can also be problematic in this way.

Good luck and keep us posted.
 
Some thoughts:

1. Try stripping the rounds out of the mags using your thumb. You might find that the first 2 or 3 rounds are harder to strip than the remaining ones (due to spring compression in the mags). This may indicate that you could use a stronger slide recoil spring.

2. Is your ammo standard .40 cal ammo? I only have experience with .45 ACP and I have learned that any deviations from the standard 230 grain round nosed rounds can cause problems in certain guns. Hollow point bullets and/or smaller and lighter bullets can also be problematic in this way.

Good luck and keep us posted.

1. Yeah, on most of the mags when they're fully loaded you can feel quite a bit of friction on the top few rounds, even when loading. Especially with the Tripps, but then again they're brand new so I'm hoping that will ease out a little.

2. 180 gr is pretty standard I think, the round is a little snubby in the nose. I'm going to try some JHP or some better quality ammo next week.
 
Deja vu...on 10-30-2011, 05:45 PM

1911 in .40 S&W
<http://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/showthread.php?t=664096>

R.K. Custom
<http://darkinternational.com/index.php?main_page=privacy&zenid=8d3338d954eee38c%203eca98db50e4aac0>
 
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