I'm a Sig armorer for a medium sized Police Department (about 130 Officers) so I service a decent number of Sig 229 .40 cal pistols.  Recently, quite a few of the new guns have been having problems with the slide not locking open when the last round is fired.  I put out a department wide email today to determine how many guns this is an issue with and to contact Sig with these numbers to see what can be done about it this coming week.

What I'm asking here is what could be the cause of this problem?  I first thought it to be magazines so I did some testing.  I took one of the guns with the problem and swapped that shooter magazines.  His magazines worked fine in my 8 year old 229 and locked the slide open without problem but my magazines, which I've been using in my sig for 7 years without problem, didn't lock open the slide on his new pistol.  This would lead me to believe the problem is in the pistol and not the magazines.  

Upon looking closer the slide stop lever looks to be made to a lower standard the the one in my older 229.  I can't quantify it, but the contours of the metal and the thickness just make it look like poorer quality.  A few other things I've noticed about the newer 229's are that they use a plastic spring guide rod, a roll pin to hold in the firing pin instead of the older solid pin, and the takedown levers are poorly constructed (we've had several break and Sig actually had to make a tool to remove the broken levers because it has become a recurring issue, which I've never heard of on the older 229's).  In addition to these things, in the last 10 guns we've purchased there have been 2 extractors break while firing and a hammer that wasn't properly hardened which caused the slide to cut a groove in the hammer.  In both cases, Sig replaced the parts for free but I have a growing concern that the 229's we are now getting from Sig are just a lower quality pistol.  Has anyone else had these issues?

I don't want to bad mouth Sig.  I love my 229 and in 7 years and thousands of round it has never failed me, not once.  I carry it every day with the utmost confidence that if I need it, I can depend on the gun with my life.  I'm just not so sure about the newer crop of guns we've been getting.

If i'm not mistaken, I think the feds had a problem with this. I have a call into a fed armorer. When he gets back to me, i'll post his answer.

Excellent, thank you.

I've had similar problems with two of our 229's (.40 DAKs).  I .attributed it to magazines and swapped out mags but it was still occurring.  I dismantled one gun and inspected the slide stop lever and didn't notice any irregularities, but I did notice the that around the locking insert was full of dirt and junk.  I cleaned it and test fired it and it functioned ok, but I was surprised that a brand new gun would be that caked with shit.

I also have broken two extractors in the last month.  The first in a training class broke the claw, which is not a huge deal because it had at least 4000 on it.  I changed it out and within 50 rounds it broke the back of the extractor and flew out.

I must say that very recently I have become a little concerned with Sig's quality.

Pete

Are you sure it's not the individuals grip? After shooting 1911's so long, my hands run a bit high on my grips. I noticed this when my 226 was only slide locking about half the time. What was happening to me was my grip was so high that my right thumb was applying just enough pressure to keep the slide lock lever down on the last round.

Thought I'd throw that out there, just in case.

Cheers!

tr

I guess after you check all the trouble shooting problems in the manual then it's up to Sig to fix this problem.  Fortunately, our P229's haven't experienced any of the malfunctions you have mentioned.

I spoke with a rep at Sig and got a couple possible answers.  As it turns out, the new recruit with the recurring problems did turn out to be a grip problem.  His thumb was riding the slide catch lever.

As for the other guns, the most likely culprit is the lever itself or the spring.  I'll have to go through the guns one at a time but Sig is willing to replace the parts provided they are recent guns.  Obviously if the guns are 8 years old like mine then we'll have to buy the parts, but that is to be expected.

I still don't have a break down on how many of the guns have issues because of shooter grip, the lever, the spring, the mags, or a combination of those.

It's always the thumb hitting the release or in this case holding on to it so that it cannot lock back on an empty mag.  Time and time again...I hear "My SIg sucks" and it was operator error.

So do left hand shooters have this problem? If not, it has to be the grip position. When shooting my Sig P220, I have to be aware to "roll the right thumb down".