Posted: 2/21/2009 11:30:54 AM EDT
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I saw the deal at www.militarygunsupply.com and decided to try out10 of these Korean magazines.
At first appearance these magazines look very well made and very close dimensionally to OEM magazines. My first issue appeared when loading the magazines with the Glock OEM loading tool. As rounds are inserted, the cases assume a very pronounced rim down attitude. After 4 or 5 rounds are in the tube they would bind up and the top rounds can just fall out as the follower now does not move. This occurred in 7 of the 10 magazines. A smart rap on the magazine would knock them looses allowing the follower to move once again. After loading and unloading the magazines a dozen times the problem lessened, but did not totally go away. Now to the range..... The first few firings I found many small issues such as failing to lock back, locking back prematurely and plain old not feeding at all. All these issues went away after firing a full mag 3 or 4 times. My biggest problem was with one magazine in particular. This one magazines floor plate and insert broke after impacting the ground during a reload. The floor plate cracked and the insert split into two parts. That is all I have for now. I'll have another report next week. |
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Thanks very much for this info, OP.
This is what I want to see. Reports from many different individuals. Now I see that some folks are reporting 100% reliability, some not so much. At this point it kinda sounds like they're hit and miss. Maybe decent range mags, maybe. I for now will still stick with factory mags. Got a bunch, and NONE of them have ever let me down. |
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I still think they are great range mags.
I am just going to hold off passing judgment on whether or not they can be "trusted". The initial issue with the loading seemed to work its self out, but the one that broke when it hit the deck ( it was 8 days old) did not inspire confidence. I'll post a pick of the damage soon. For the price, they make ok blasters. |
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I posted this in theG19 KCI thread, these were the G17 mags.
Quoted:
Quoted:
Just ordered a 10 pack from Military gun supply for $113 shipped. That would have gotten me 4 Factory mags for the same price.  Update: I got 10 in the mail today and compared them to a brand new never loaded factory mag. Initial quick impression is they looked to be almost identical to Glock mags in quality. Then I took the first one apart to compare them to factory mags. They are VERY similar in construction the only "problem" I noticed is that they have little pieces of plastic(very small) that are left hanging on here and there from the manufacturing process, as some other people have noted. Other than that they appear to be almost identical to Glock mags with a few very minor differences. I don't have the tools to check tolerances but others have already posted their findings. I reassembled the mag and started loading it. The spring was very stiff(stiffer than the brand new, never loaded factory mag I was comparing it to) and difficult to load all 17 rounds. The more I loaded and unloaded it the easier it got. So I figured I'd load all 10 mags and leave them overnight to see if the spring got smoother, and also disassemble them to "clean them up". On 2 of the 10 mags they had an issue with "binding up" around the 6th round or so I loaded. Upon disassembly and closer inspection I found that as I looked into the mag there are round holes along the sides of the mags metal lining (Glock mags have these "holes" as well) and there was small "tags" of the plastic material hanging on here and this was what I believe was the cause of the "binding" issue with the follower. I took a nail file and filed off the little plastic tags that were present and this seemed to cure the "binding" issue. They seem to all be cycling fine now but a little on the stiff to load side. As I said this does seem to get better the more they sit fully loaded and/or cycled. Overall I think they are a deal if you don't mind spending a little time to "clean them up". I paid $11.38 each shipped which is less than half of what factory mags are currecntly going for, when you can find them. I don't know when I'll get to shoot with them but I would definitely not use them for CCW purposes until I got a number of problem free feeding cycles out of them and they proved to be reliable. I had the same binding issue with 2 of the 10 I got. It seemed to me that there were little platic "tags" of material that on the inside "holes" in the FML that were binding the follower. I removed these with a sharp chisel and a nail file. Seemed to fix the problem. I also tried the OEM spring from a brand new Glock mag I had and it seemed to help the tilting of the follower. I think I might change out all the springs as they seem to me to be the "weak link" of them. Overall I think that they are a good deal and you can always swap out parts with Glock factory parts and be GTG. All of my factory parts were interchangable with the KCI mags so you can order Glock parts and change out whatever you need to. ETA: I haven't had a chance to shoot with them yet but after sitting fully loaded overnight they seemed to be much improved. The springs were VERY stiff at first and got better the more they were loaded/unloaded. They deffinately seemed good enough for range/beater mags. I would have to get a lot of problem free cycles through them before I used them for CCW though. |
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I bought 10 mags and have put about 1K through them.
They all function fine but don't drop free in my G34 like the factory mags, and only when it is cold I got out the calipers and the KCI mags are .200" bigger in the front to back dimension. I sanded them down to factory dimensions and I'll post whether this works. No problems with feeding but I can't use them in competition if they don't drop free. They will now be for range use only, I just ordered 10 factory mags today to replace them. 
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