I have 3 Beretta’s, and a near forth in an 80’s vintage Taurus PT-99. The PT-99 and Beretta 85 have never jammed on me, the Tomcat every blue moon. The 21a, stainless, in .22LR is a different story.
Lots of issues with that pea shooter – both fired cases not being extracted from the chamber, and/or not loading up a fresh round.
For the extraction issue, I’ve found that the chamber need to be scrubbed out to a very high level of clean. The .22 bore brush isn’t enough to get all the crud out, that I guess sometimes causes the cases to stick in the chamber and defeat the wimpy blowback extraction of the round.
So, I use a .25 caliber brush to clean the chamber. It takes a bit of effort to get that larger size in, and it really gets out dirt that the regular bore brush won’t.
For the fresh round pick up issue, I’ve found that it needs higher velocity ammo to be reliable. I use ammo that’s listed as 1200 FPS or more (which is the velocity from a rifle barrel, not this little one), seems to throw the slide back far enough to pick up a fresh round.
Anyone have any other tips on making these pop guns reliable?