[scooter123]

It happened with the last round in my "problem" magazine at 85 rounds into a box of 100. This time the SP was higher up with the tip of the bullet at the top of the chamber instead of being jammed on the feed ramp. It also dented the brass hard enough that it's a bit tight in the chamber. After getting home I looked closely at the round that jammed and it looked like it has a cut in the crown of the bullet from the left hand edge of the feed ramp on the barrel. Basically, the cut looks like it came from the edge formed at the feed ramp and the rear outer flat of the feed ramp. BTW, at this point the feed ramp is fully polished to the original factory profile. When comparing the point of the WWB ammo to the Sellier & Belloit I have been shooting in the past, it's apparent that the WWB is wider at the flat on the point. So, in my opinion that wider point just increases the likelyhood of a round catching the edge of the feed ramp. Which I think is what happened in this case.

Some good news is the point on the Winchester Ranger HP's that I have for defense matches the Sellier & Belloit profile perfectly. So I believe that I am good for my defensive ammo and the 50 rounds that I tested functioned perfectly.

More good news is that now that i have radiused the edge on the fixed ejector I am no longer seeing any cuts in the ejector rim of spent cartidges. I also didn't see any hint of hte fixed ejector peening after 150 rounds and the ejection is funtioning perfectly. So, one potential area for my SP issues has been fixed. However, I still had that one SP when shooting WWB for the first time. So, the pistol is still a bit fussy about feeding.

So, I am contemplating widening the feed ramp just slightly so that it will feed more reliably. Mainly by removing just a bit more material at that sharp edge at the rear of the feed ramp where it's squared up. However I hesitate doing this without some input from those with more experience. If it's a bad idea, I'll pass up fooling with the feed ramp and put up with the miss feeds when shooting the cheap stuff at the range.

Now, about the Truglow TFO sights that I just had installed. Even though they were designed originally for the XD series I am happy to report that the sighting on the XDm is spot on near perfect. Off a bench rest these sights present a 6 o'clock sight picture that is nearly dead on perfect at 40 feet, a very careful 3 shot group hit just 1/4 to 1/2 inch high. Off hand in rapid fire drills I was initially shooting about 2 inches high at 40 feet but I believe that will disappear as I get used to the new sights. As I shot more rounds I noticed my grouping shifting down and in careful slow fire I was hitting the mark nearly perfectly centered. They are taller than the original sight set so it will require some practice in order to get used to them.

As for the XDm, round count is now up to 700 and if I could get the mis-feed issues solved I would consider it perfect. I can now hit 8 out of 10 into a 2 inch circle shooting offhand Weaver slow fire at 40 feet and the flyers are starting to move in. Next up is to work on shooting with strong and weak hands. I did some today and was shooting 9 inch groups lefty and 6 inch righty at 40 feet. I may have to get the dumbells out of the basement and do a bit of weight training and see if that will steady me up. I also think that I'll need to work on my trigger control when shooting with an unsupported grip, my patterns were about 1.5 times as wide as they were high, which indicates that I'm pulling my aim off during the trigger pull.

 

[CHA-LEE]

scooter123> Well, I know that each bullet has a different bullet profile. For example, the Blazer Brass ammo has a more rounded head verses the Winchester White Box stuff. The best thing you can do is pick one ammo and tune your gun to work with it. If you try all kinds of different ammo there is no telling if it will feed right or not. Plus, if you know you have a bum mag that has given you problems in the past why keep it? Save yourself a never ending headache and throw that mag away. Mags are cheap and the last thing you need is to battle a bad one every time you shoot.

The best way I have been able to "Tune" my barrel feed ramp is to put a mag in with the slide locked back, then release the slide to chamber the round. Then rack the slide back again to eject the round and inspect the bullet and case. The bullet should only have a minor rub mark on it, no dents. The case should have an minor even scuff mark on it but nothing excessive. With the blazer brass in my gun it was denting the bullet as it hit the top part of the barrel entrance. I smoothed out and polished the transition at the top of the barrel entrance and also slightly lowered the bottom part of the barrel entrance to move the bullet "hit point" on the upper part of the barrel entrance deeper into the barrel. After doing this it would feed the Blazer Brass without denting the bullet or excessively scuffing the case. It also would feed the bullets very smoothly and has yet to have any more feed issues after many many thousands of rounds.

All you can do is make small adjustments at a time and retest over and over and over until it is perfect.

 

[scooter123]

CHA-LEE, thanks for the reply. I was leaning towards leaving the feed ramp alone and you've just confirmed my thought that I should leave it alone. I think at this point I'll do that and do some more shooting. It may be that this is actually a 1 in 1000 mis-feed and it just happened early on. That round had to have been coming out of the magazine pretty cocked over to hit that edge so it just may have been a rare mis-feed. It may also be a weak magazine spring so if that magazine continues to mis-feed I'll probably try a stronger spring before fooling with the feed ramp. As for tossing that magazine, I can certainly do that as I have spares that I haven't even used.

As for the WWB, upon looking at my pistol after yesterdays outing it's a lot cleaner that with the S & B I have been shooting with. I have a box or Remington UMC in the locker I'll try next so experiminting to find what works best is reasonable and I've already started doing that.

 

[rgeliske]

Just a thought but have you check the gap between the lips of your magazines? You may have a mag that is presenting the round too high or low. It can also place the round to the left or right of the feed ramp. There a many problems that can be caused by the magazine. If you have only one mag causing problems compare it to the one that is'nt. Adjusting the lips of the mag is pretty easy.

 

[CHA-LEE]

rgeliske brings up a good point. If the magazine lips are not aligned correctly then it will cause some intermittent feed issues. I know that one of my magazines was out of adjustment when I got it. One lip was bent in further than the other so it was causing the bullet to point to the left just a little bit. That magazine would give me intermittent feed issues until I adjusted the lips to point the round straight. You can tweak the lips on the magazines a little bit but you need to make sure that the bullet case is touching the lips evenly from top to bottom without any gaps. If there are gaps on one side or the other or on the top or bottom you will get strange feed issues. I learned about that the hard way when I fiddled with a magazine too much and eventually had to give up on it and throw it away.

 

[6shot4hole]

I am starting to think I made the wrong choice in protection with my XDm 40. This may be due to the fact that I had to return the firearm to springfield after my first trip to the range that produced over a dozen failure to feed rounds out of 250 rounds regaurdless of mag or ammo, which I beleive to be caused by a defective or unfinished ejector. As I await the return of my XDm I sit here reading these posts of all the tweaking and polishing, ect.. This does not put my mind at ease, a gun of this quality should be expected to perform 100% from the first squeeze of the trigger. Maybe I have been spoiled by my $96.00 bulgarian millitary surpluss makarov 9x18 that has performed 100% over the past 7 years and thousands of rounds regaurdless of mag, ammo, grip, ect. If you have a bad mag why dont you make springfield aware of the problem so they can replace or repair it at there expence. This not only gives you the customer, your well deserved, and paid for satisfaction, but also aids springfield in quality control. As a paying customer you deserve not only satisfaction but 100% confidence that the weapon will go BANG with EVERY squeeze of the trigger. I can only hope that a reputable Co. such as Springfield expects the same of the firearms that they produce. Just my .02.........Ok maybe .05.:wink:

 

[CHA-LEE]

6shot4hole> I agree with your stance, your pistol should work as advertized without issue. I am sure that SA will get it fixed and back to you ASAP and it will work like it should when you get it back. I think that you are jumping the gun on thinking that the XDm needs a bunch of "tweaking" to get it to function correctly. Can you tweak any gun and make it work better? Sure. Do you have to tweak it to make it work at all, you shouldn’t have to. Your pistol probably had a defective part which was causing your feed issue. After all, these XD's are manufactured on an assembly line in another country probably not to different than a sweat shop in china making toasters. Given the manufacturing environment and the price point of these pistols its no surprise that issues "leak" into the products. Hell, you can spend tens of thousands of dollars on a car and they still have issues that need repair right out of the gate. Why would a $500 firearm not apply to the same challenges of manufacturing? I am not saying that we should accept a poor quality product. I am just pointing out that a certain amount of issues can be expected given what it is and how it’s made. What really matters is how Springfield Armory deals with the issue. From all of the responses that I have seen on this site their service and support is top notch. That is really where the rubber meets the road and what makes you happy or pissed off at the end of the day right? Give SA a chance to make it right as I am sure they will get it back to you in perfect working order.

The other thing that I wanted to point out is that these pistols do not require modification for them to function correctly. Can you make them work better with modifications? Yes. This is like comparing a stock engine to a fully blue printed one. Do they both "work"? Yes. Does the blue printed one work better than the stock one? Yes.

The last thing that I wanted to mention is setting a real expectation for the given use of the pistol. If you are really serious about leveraging the XDm for Self Defense, then why would you put blind faith in it to just "Work"? If I was going to use a pistol for self defense I would send it off to a qualified gun smith to go through it from head to toe to ensure that it is 100% reliable. Is this going to cost more than the gun its self? Probably. But can you really put a price on your safety? If you want to be 100% sure that it will go BANG when you pull the trigger, then that is going to cost time and money to ensure its functionality. Your other choice would be to shoot it a ton your self and work with SA when you have issues. I also want to point out that dealing with malfunctions is also HUGE part of being an effective shooter in self defense situations. You actually want to experience and clear enough malfunctions to be completely comfortable with dealing with them. You don't want to experience your first feed or eject error in the heat of the moment or chances are that you will be the one getting holes shot in you while you are looking at your gun confused as to why it isn't working. Whether you stage the malfunctions with snap caps or experience real ones, this training is a MUST for anyone that is serious about self defense.

 

[scooter123]

Just reporting. I have compared my # 1 and #2 magazines and they are dimensionally nearly identical when checked with digital calipers. I may take them into work and check the height of the presented round with out digita height gage but haven't done that. However, visually comparing the height of the presented round with the magazine loaded into the frame and the distance between the fixed ejector and the top round in the magazine looks identical. In addition, looking closely at the feed lips present no clue at all.

What may provide a clue is the slide assembly. The spring loaded ejector has a small chamfer on the underside to assist in reducing drag as the cartridge moves up into the breech face. So that side is good. However, on the slide itself there is a ridge opposite the spring loaded ejector that is a remnant of the machining operations on the slide. It's a sharp corner and there was an accumulation of brass particles under this edge, not shavings per say, more like brass dust. My thought is that putting a very small chamfer at this point would probaby help make the pistol more tolerant of various bullet profiles. However, I do not plan on doing this work myself. What I will do is get out my Micro Nikkor and email S.A. a picture of that edge and inquire if it's normal. If they say that edge shouldn't be sharp, I'll probably send the pistol in to Springfield and let them deal with it. Quite simply, I am not going to risk mucking up the slide because that is one item that isn't replaceable.

For now, my plan is to give the Remimngton UMC a try and see how it functions. The point is just as wide as the WWB but it has a more rounded profile so I may find that it feeds just fine. If so, I may use that for my range shooting. If all else fails I can always go back to shooting Sellier & Belloit because that does feed perfectly, however it is definately a dirtier shooting ammo than the WWB. I still have 100 rounds of the WWB and plan on seeing if the issue repeats with my # 1 magazine, which I have not used yet with the WWB. If it is a magazine issue, I'll proably ask SA to do a swap. Currently I have 10 mags for the XDm (planning for Obama) so it's not really a problem sending in a defective magazine.

What is a bit puzzling is the the Winchester Ranger HP that I have for defense has the exact same nose profile as the S & B ammo. One would think that Winchester would duplicate the profile of the various types of ammo they sell but they don't. Frankly, with the level of variation in nose profiles that I have seen with just 4 different types I am not too surprized at the feed issues I am having. Frankly, it must drive the gun makers nuts. However, if a little bit of refinement will get my XDm to the point where it will shoot anything, I think it will be worth the effort. I also don't blame S.A. for these issues. To be honest, it's a brand new pistol and refining of some of the minor details will probably take another year or two before S.A. can adjust the manufacturing process so that a new "out of the box" XDm will be stone cold reliable with anything you feed it. It's a price we pay for being "early adopters".

For those who aren't aware of it, the great 1911 went thru major feed issues when people started shooting flat pointed bullets instead of the round nose ball ammo it was originally designed for. Because of that, there was at least a 10 year period when the 1911 was considered one of the most unreliable pistols ever designed, now look at how it's regarded.

For those who want there XDm to feed 100% of the time, the answer right now is to find an ammo that doesn't cause problems. Personally, I can recomend the Sellier & Belliot 180 grain and the Winchester Ranger 180 grain HP. I did not have one single failure to feed with the S & B until the fixed ejector developed a burr on the underside, and that took 450 rounds to show up. As for the Ranger, I have only run 50 rounds thru the gun and it was flawless but since the profile of the nose matches the S & B almost exactly, I expect it will be totally reliable.

CHA-LEE also has a very good point. I have now learned that the very fastest way to clear a jam in my pistol is to drop the magazine, lock the slide back and let that cartridge fall out the grip, pop in a new magazine, and release the slide. Takes a lot longer to describe that it actually takes to do it.

Finally, I am by trade a Mechanical Engineer, not a pro shooter. I am also very new to shooting pistols after a 35 year interval where I didn't do any handgun shooting, and that prior shooting was all with revolvers. At the time that this jam occured I had fired 50 rounds with a Sig P239 DAK and was 85 rounds into shooting my XDm. So, it's very possible that fatigue may have been a partial cause of this mis-feed. It was also the last round in a rapid fire string that got hung up. Quite simply, I just might have limp wristed the gun a bit.

So, don't take this post as an indication that the XDm is unreliable. Mainly take it as an exploration into the variables that can produce unreliability in the XDm. As a defensive pistol, I have 100% confidence in my XDm.

 

[CHA-LEE]

scooter123> PM sent on extractor question