Could marginally light loads cause failure to extract?

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mactroneng

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Gun: Beretta 92X Performance with about 1000 rounds through it. 115gr round nose bullets, 4.6gr Titegroup.

(Edit for clarity: the spent casing is staying fully seated in the chamber, not even partially extracting)

I recently completed my IPSC black badge course as well as an L1 match.

On the first day of the course, I was having issues with the case not being pulled out of the chamber (failure to extract). Seemed to get progressively worse throughout the day. For the last exercise I ended up borrowing 2 mags of 124gr ammo from a friend because I couldn't complete it without failure and had no issues.

That night I took the extractor off, cleaned tons of crud out of it and put it back together. The next day the gun ran flawlessly with my ammo.

Ended up putting maybe 100 rounds more through the gun than ran the L1 match, 3 stages:
First stage: 1 failure to extract / 12 rounds fired
Second stage: 0 failures / 20+ rounds fired
Third stage: Failure to extract every 3-4 rounds

Research online says Beretta went too light on the extractor spring... I have trouble believing that given it's supposed to be their flagship competition handgun, but I supposed it's possible.

I plan on pulling a bunc of my ammo and upping the charge a bit, also gonna try some 124gr bullets next time, but wanted the thoughts of the community.

Thanks!
 
I’m guessing excessive fouling caused extraction issues, how dirty did the case mouths look? Was there lots of soot/fouling on them? I know with lighter powder loads there’s more fouling as the case doesn’t expand and seal in the chamber like with a hotter load, it’s immediately noticeable as you increase powder charges. All of a sudden you see clean cases after firing and fouling in the gun itself is much less, as there’s no blow by.

While I was working up with 10mm, I’d shoot 50-100 rounds and the gun looked like I’d shoot 500-1000, as soon as I got over a certain powder charge things cleaned up. I was having to clean a range trip, the excessive carbon fouling is probably what caused your fte. Especially if it stopped after you cleaned your gun, I’ve been told by a couple people that Titegroup is a dirty powder but haven’t loaded with it yet. I prefer 231 for general plinking, seems to burn fairly clean for me.
 
one thing to check is rim diameter on you brass

is it all one brand of brass giving you problems ?

or is dirty under extractor/ bad extractor
or is it extractor spring pressure
or is it a combination of all of the above

and Titegroup is dirty
 
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Sounds like your load is Ok for operating the Berreta, but it is dirty and fouls up the gun quickly, causing your failures. If the pressure is quite low the powder will not burn as cleanly as it would at higher pressure. Titegroup is fairly dirty to begin with. Increasing the pressure by using heavier bullets and-or more powder will probably improve your situation, but you may also have to clean more often.
 
Titegroup being dirty is definitely something to look into, unfortunately I have a bunch of it to work through and don't use it in anything else.
 
I don't have much to offer other than knowing, from all my web-crawling, that many people have complained about that pistol. Cracked barrels, FTE, grip screw studs falling out etc. It seems that some people were able to fix the FTE issue with a spring from Wilson and some type of shim. IIRC, Ben Stoeger and Andreas Yankopolus stopped shooting them altogether because of QC issues.

Any powder can be dirty when loaded light, Titegroup included, but I've never owned a gun that couldn't go thousands of rounds without a cleaning and I've shot a ton of Titegroup.

Please update us when you figure it out.
 
Well I took the extractor out again and it was still pretty darn clean from when I cleaned it before, nowhere near the level of filth that was there the first time.

I have also read of the replacement spring, perhaps I will give it a go. I never heard of the other issues though, now I'm a little worried
 
I guess there's no point in worrying until something actually happens. I think the FTE might be a fairly easy fix. The cracked barrels, which would obviously be the biggest concern one could have, didn't occur until 17K and 20K.

hXXps://www.instagram.com/p/CrCd82oLPn4/?img_index=4 (replace xx with tt)
 
Now we're getting off the topic of reloading, but I was reading more about this idea of using a shim last night and it sounds interesting, I may give that a go first before ordering a new spring.
 
Dirty ammo and not enough pressure. - That would be my bet.

If the issue resolves when you clean the gun, then that pretty much tells you what's going on. The light load will make it worse because you don't have enough pressure to seal up the brass to the chamber - a bunch of carbon and crud gets blown back and makes a mess.

Oil/solvent in your chamber will make this worse still - prevents a good seal. Oil in the mechanicals of the bolt is a magnet for crud too. Not saying you have an over-oiling problem, just mentioning it here because many people do have this bad habit and don't realize it.
 
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