The Continuing Mag Problem, Part2 w/Pics

[Yoritomo]

Looks like speer lawman might be good to test with if I can find any.

[Charlie Xray]

You can have this problem of the extracting empty hitting the top round in the mag, driving it nose down and the pistol still run without failures. The question is, will it eventually fail? Someone, might have been on another thread, had his fail with a nose dive after a couple thousand rounds. The AGP springs seem to help the problem by their extra power repositioning the nose dived round before the slide returns to battery.

Simple test to see if you have this potential problem...

Ideally, solid lead RN or truncated cone reloads will tell you a lot. Load 12 rounds in a mag. Shoot #1 and hand eject #2, shoot #3 and hand eject #4, etc., until you have six rounds that went through a loading cycle under actual firing conditions. Examine the six ejected rounds for any damage to the bullet as shown in several pictures in this thread.

Test 2 - Alternatively you can do the same test with hardball factory rounds. Blacken the bullets of six rounds with something like a black Sharpie. Do the whole bullet as they sometimes rotate partially during the cycling, and make sure you also blacken the case mouth back about 1/16 of the case. Load these six after they dry as the even numbered rounds in a magazine. Do as above, firing the odds and hand ejecting the even numbers with the blackened bullets.

It is a little harder to see with hardball, but if the ejecting case is making contact with the top round in the chamber it will remove some of the Sharpie ink, leaving a mark that can look like a skipping chatter mark or a straight drag mark. Look also for damage to the case lip - a bright spot and maybe even dented. Chambering the round does other damage to the black ink, so you have to sort out the chambering damage from the strike damage. Go back to page 4 of this thread for pictures of what to look for.

CX

[Yoritomo]

Before I sent it in it was extremely difficult to hand eject the rounds. To the point that I would almost call it impossible if it was an almost full magazine, like the slide was stuck on something (next round).

[Nailz]

Is this a terribly common issue? I'm about to purchase an XD.45 after reading all of the '20,000 rounds with mud, sand, ice, bean chilli coating without a single misfire' stuff but it seems that there are several threads here about feeding/cycling issues. I intend this to be a home defense weapon so reliability is paramount.

[Bellevue_Dude]

Originally Posted by Nailz

Is this a terribly common issue? I'm about to purchase an XD.45 after reading all of the '20,000 rounds with mud, sand, ice, bean chilli coating without a single misfire' stuff but it seems that there are several threads here about feeding/cycling issues. I intend this to be a home defense weapon so reliability is paramount.

No mechanical device is perfect. Guns will fail to feed or eject, ammo can fail to fire and magazine springs will give out too. Lots of stuff can go wrong and sometimes it does (which is the reason for practicing failure drills). This applies to pretty much any gun you could buy.

While not being perfect, the XD is a solid platform and you can increase its reliability by doing good maintenance (cleaning, replacing springs etc.) and using good ammunition that works well with your gun. You can also increase reliability and shootability by having a competent gunsmith work on your gun, but that's purely optional and in my mind, not a must have.

I think you will find that the gun itself is more reliable than most of its users. In any case, I have a few XDs and I'm pleased with them and their reliability. I'm also content with mine

[DPGDirk]

Originally Posted by Bellevue_Dude

No mechanical device is perfect. Guns will fail to feed or eject, ammo can fail to fire and magazine springs will give out too. Lots of stuff can go wrong and sometimes it does (which is the reason for practicing failure drills). This applies to pretty much any gun you could buy.

While not being perfect, the XD is a solid platform and you can increase its reliability by doing good maintenance (cleaning, replacing springs etc.) and using good ammunition that works well with your gun. You can also increase reliability and shootability by having a competent gunsmith work on your gun, but that's purely optional and in my mind, not a must have.

Spoken like a man who owns 1911's...
(Any similarity to real life is completely accidental)

Honestly, I don't disagree though.
In reality, mechanical devices can malfunction. However, if you get a GOOD XD-45, you'll be a happy camper.
I bought my first one back from a friend recently. That gun has appx 8,000 rounds through it without a single failure. The original mag springs got real soft before I replaced my mags recently- didn't matter.

That gun just goes bang every time- period.
Never even a hint of a misfeed, FTE or anything.

[Bellevue_Dude]

Spoken like a man who owns 1911's...
(Any similarity to real life is completely accidental)

True --I own a few 1911s and I carry them more than any other type of gun. I love them, trust them and yet I do all the malfunction drills regularly with them, as I do with the other guns that I own (+ gear I carry or use). To me the statement about imperfection applies to any one of my handguns, rifles and supporting gear (e.g. lights). That's life and in my experience, when they opt to fail, it's usually when you need them most (yes, it happened to me with good equipment and it was a lesson that I'll never forget).

What I learned can be summed with this: when it comes to defending yourself and your values, buy the best of everything (as you can afford), regardless of buying the best it is important not be over confident in said gear (because it could/will fail sometime), don't expect to be lucky and practice different techniques and scenarios to assure you are ready for whatever happens.

[Bellevue_Dude]

And yes, some of my other guns are XDs and I still assume they could/will fail too.

[fearless1]

Originally Posted by Charlie Xray

You can have this problem of the extracting empty hitting the top round in the mag, driving it nose down and the pistol still run without failures. The question is, will it eventually fail? Someone, might have been on another thread, had his fail with a nose dive after a couple thousand rounds. The AGP springs seem to help the problem by their extra power repositioning the nose dived round before the slide returns to battery.

Simple test to see if you have this potential problem...

Ideally, solid lead RN or truncated cone reloads will tell you a lot. Load 12 rounds in a mag. Shoot #1 and hand eject #2, shoot #3 and hand eject #4, etc., until you have six rounds that went through a loading cycle under actual firing conditions. Examine the six ejected rounds for any damage to the bullet as shown in several pictures in this thread.

Test 2 - Alternatively you can do the same test with hardball factory rounds. Blacken the bullets of six rounds with something like a black Sharpie. Do the whole bullet as they sometimes rotate partially during the cycling, and make sure you also blacken the case mouth back about 1/16 of the case. Load these six after they dry as the even numbered rounds in a magazine. Do as above, firing the odds and hand ejecting the even numbers with the blackened bullets.

It is a little harder to see with hardball, but if the ejecting case is making contact with the top round in the chamber it will remove some of the Sharpie ink, leaving a mark that can look like a skipping chatter mark or a straight drag mark. Look also for damage to the case lip - a bright spot and maybe even dented. Chambering the round does other damage to the black ink, so you have to sort out the chambering damage from the strike damage. Go back to page 4 of this thread for pictures of what to look for.

CX

Hi CX:

Earlier in this thread, you posted a pic of an XD 45 slide (from your previous XD 45) with its barrel in the just unlocked position and an empty case showing a little bit exposed above the slide's middle rail (as pictured with slide upsidedown). The camera angle you used for the pic of the slide was low on the inside of the slide taken from the rear and looking forward. Does your new gun's slide/bbl still expose a little bit of the empty case "below" the slide's middle rail (bbl is unlocked from the slide and moved forward say about 1 mm from the slide's breech face)?

I got lazy and never got around to sending my XD45 back to SA for RMA warranty work. So, I figured I’d tune it myself as I’ve always done with most of my guns. I got it to where it will now feed lead SWC 100% of the time (for now). While I was tuning the gun, I was even able to get it to feed empty shell casings from the magazine too.

More later.

F1

[Charlie Xray]

Originally Posted by fearless1

Hi CX:

Earlier in this thread, you posted a pic of an XD 45 slide (from your previous XD 45) with its barrel in the just unlocked position and an empty case showing a little bit exposed above the slide's middle rail (as pictured with slide upsidedown). The camera angle you used for the pic of the slide was low on the inside of the slide taken from the rear and looking forward. Does your new gun's slide/bbl still expose a little bit of the empty case "below" the slide's middle rail (bbl is unlocked from the slide and moved forward say about 1 mm from the slide's breech face)?

I got lazy and never got around to sending my XD45 back to SA for RMA warranty work. So, I figured I’d tune it myself as I’ve always done with most of my guns. I got it to where it will now feed lead SWC 100% of the time (for now). While I was tuning the gun, I was even able to get it to feed empty shell casings from the magazine too.

More later.

F1

Yes, the new one also hangs below the breech face, but it does not seem to be quite as much.

How do you tune your way out of this problem? I usually prefer to solve problems myself, but this one seems outside of tinkering for a solution.

Right now I am wrestling with doing more tests and then requesting warranty service, just selling it and go back to my 1911s, or leave it in the safe. I even considered buying an after-market barrel to see if that would solve the problem, but I am not much inclined to throw any more money at this problem now.

CX