A little 1911 feeding issue today

Using Wilson 47D magazines, load five rounds and every fourth round does this.



Using two magazines, both do exactly the same.

Load and shoot one round, case ejects and slide locks back.

Load and shoot two rounds, they all cycle and eject, slide locks back after last round.

Load and shoot three rounds, they all cycle and eject, slide locks back after last round.

Load and shoot four rounds, they all cycle and eject, slide locks back after last round.

Load and shoot five rounds, locks up on fourth round.

Load and shoot six rounds, locks up on fourth round.

Got home and tried a $9.99 CDNN OEM magazine, and five rounds shoot and cycle effortlessly...

Any suggestions as to a possible remedy? (other than to just use $9.99 magazines!) I've tweaked magazines before, but they have all ejected fine, and just wouldn't feed the next round, so I'm a bit puzzled by this ejecting and feeding combo.

The gun was cleaned and lubed yesterday the same as it has been in the past. Same ammo as well. 200 LSWC with 4.3 WST and 13 lb recoil spring. (shooting these until the gun loosens up a little more)

Thanks!

If magazine inserts slightly higher into the mag well in can interfere with ejection. I would add more extractor tension and see if that helps.
Jon

Thank you, Sir!

Greatly appreciated, as always!

Being that it is consistently the fourth round, and I've never had much luck with Wilson mags, I would try a CMC Power Plus magazine to see if there is just enough tension taken off the springs by the fourth round in the Wilson contributing to it.  I've also had good luck with Tripp Cobra Mags.

Thanks for the info.

I haven't had a chance to tinker with it yet, but hopefully I'll have time tomorrow.

I didn't want to buy an assortment of magazines just yet, but I am a bit suspicious of the Wilson's in this pistol.

All the above first.   This is only my observation from the picture and I could be wrong but it appears the hood /lug area are a little dry.  I would wipe off that area of the barrel and bushing area and add a couple of drops of your favor oil.

It's actually wet with oil, hence the streaking, but I appreciate the suggestion!

It seems that you've already isolated it to the magazine, now you just need to figure out what about the magazine is causing this behavior.


I would start with the following:

1. Check to make sure the mag release does not extend too far into the magazine retention slot and interfere with the passing spring.  I would have said to check for the follower but it is well below the release when 7 rounds are loaded.  I had a spring/release problem once.  Swapping the release with one from another pistol resolved it.

2. If the CDNN magazines are of equivalent size to the Wilson's, you might try swapping the springs and followers.  If the CDNN magazine body works fine with the Wilson spring and follower than the problem might be the Wilson mag body.  NOTE: This may not be possible because the Wilson followers often fit their magazines like a glove but you can still get out your calipers and compare critical dimensions with the CDNN magazine.

3. I would remove the slide and observe/measure where the top of each magazine is when locked in position.  Does the Wilson magazine extend higher...if so, the release slot may be lower in the magazine body compared to the CDNN.

BTW- I shoot the black version of that magazine and have no issues.  I highly recommend them.

I think that Jon, not surprisingly, is probably correct.

I began using this frame as a host for my Marvel conversion and had zero malfunctions with it using GSG metal magazines and a raised magazine catch. When I completed the .45 slide for it, I moved the Marvel to a different frame and it wanted plastic magazines and a standard magazine catch and has been running with zero malfunctions since.

When Jon posted, I remembered that I was using a raised magazine catch and have since ordered a standard one that should be here today. I'm pretty confident that that will make a significant difference.

I also have a couple of Sig .22 conversions on Classic P series Sigs that have been malfunction free for years by making adjustments to how the magazines fit in the magazine well.

It seems that it's just a matter of finding a happy combination.

Thank you for the suggestions, they give ne a number of things to look into.

I cleaned and oiled the pistol and did a little testing with the 4.3 WST/200 LSWC rounds and found that after shooting a bit more, the problem would occur with both the Wilson and CDNN magazines. The Wilson being more prevalent though. 

I then removed the raised magazine catch and installed the standard catch and still had the fourth round failure as in the image above. I then removed the extractor and cleaned it and the extractor channel and breech face and put is back together after adding more extractor tension. Still had the fourth round issue.

Just because I had some, I grabbed some older 4.0 Clays/200 LSWC rounds and they ejected across the room. I installed a slightly heavier recoil spring and shot some more and no longer had the issue. One difference I saw immediately was that the cases ejected straight to the side rather than up at a 45° angle.

I've been working at finding a recoil spring/load combination that this thing likes for a while now. This thing is still pretty tight, so I need a softer spring (12 lb) to get it to eject with the 4.3 WST, but then it won't go fully into battery without a nudge on the back of the slide with my thumb. If I go up on the spring to get it to lock up, the case doesn't want to eject. I guess for now, I just need to run a heavier spring to get it to close the slide fully, and adjust the load to get it to eject until this thing loosens up a bit more. The Matchdot II is fairly heavy as well. 

The weather finally changed here as well recently and it's now a lot cooler. If I'm not mistaken, WST is a bit temp sensitive, so perhaps that played a part in the jams as well. Seems like I tinkered a bit before and found that 4.5 grains of WST pretty much equals 4.0 grains of clays, so perhaps I'll up the WST a bit for now, or just shoot up the 4.0 Clays loads I have lying around.

That's the update for now, just to to keep the info here for future reference.

Any additional suggestions are always welcome!

Thanks!

I’m watching this as mine is famous for doing the same thing with certain loads. More with the 160s than anything.  Does exactly the same thing as yours

DA/SA wrote:I've been working at finding a recoil spring/load combination that this thing likes for a while now. 

What is your mainspring weight? Mainspring and recoil spring work together for proper function.

19 lb

I have no interest in a pistol that will only ignite one specific brand of primer.

The firing pin stop radius has as much to do with it as the main spring weight and I may work on that a bit as well.

18lb mainspring is not uncommon. In my gun I have had zero issues with and 18lb spring using cci, winchester or federal primers.

I loaded up 50 rounds of 200 LSWC/4.5 WST and installed a 13 lb recoil spring. I had a couple of fourth round failures within the first few 5 round groups and then it went away and ran fine for the remainder of the 50 rounds. I was using two Wilson magazines and both issues were with the same magazine. I alternated magazines every five rounds.

At this point, I'm thinking that I just needed a little heavier load and recoil spring to get this new pistol broken in and loosened up a little. 

I'll do the same next week and then try lightening up the load and spring a bit.