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Posted: 6/1/2002 2:55:42 PM EDT
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I have a Colt Mustang that I obtained recently (sort of-long story), it had been taken apart and reassembled improperly. I had a gunsmith do some work on it but don't think he took removed the extractor mechanism. I bought a box of 50 rounds of some kind of ball ammo-White Box maybe (but I don't remember & I threw the box out) & a box of Winchester 85 grain silvertip hp-since I would guess that this is the best defense round in this caliber. I ran the box of ball through it and about 25 rounds of the Winchester Silvertip through it. The gun functioned without a hitch. I cleaned the gun after firing it. I'm good about cleaning up guns and I made sure I cleaned this one because I figured it might be more sensitive to cleanings than my Glocks and Beretta 92. I bought 3 boxes of Remington UMC 95 grain ball ammo- the box actually says 95 gr mc L380AP on it. Today, I think in the second mag through the gun, a spent brass failed to eject. I think this was on the third shot. I cleared the malfunction and I think it might have fired the next two rounds. After that it would have the same malfunction on every round. The malfunction was: the pistol would fire and the slide would come back a little, enough that I could see the brass in the pistol, but it would not go all the way back and eject the brass and load the next round in. When I then manually operated the slide the pistol would eject the spent brass and load the next round. I had 10 rounds of the Silvertip with me. The guns fired the two magazines of Silvertip with no problem. I only have these two magazines, which are the original Colt magazines the guns came with as far as I know. I took the pistol apart when I got home and although it's dirty from being fired, nothing really looks amiss to my untrained eye. Any ideas as to what's up? Is this gun just a little finicky about ammo selection? |
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Really sounds like the Remington is a bit underpowered for your Colt. The only other possibility I can think of, which is extremely unlikely, is that the Remington is hotter or has softer and/or thinner brass than the Winchester and is somehow binding up the pistol when the brass expands. The only realistic scenario I can think of for this is a chamber which is larger inside than at the extreme breech end of the barrel. Thus the brass becomes somewhat bell shaped when it expands and resists being pulled from the chamber. (The Seecamp uses this kind of delay mechanism.) Colt .380’s are nice little guns, but they’re made a little sloppily! Have you compared the Winchester and Remington empties? |
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Some things you could check. Carefully inspect / compare the extractor markings on good/bad ammo - do the marks look the same? I'm just guessing but maybe the extractor is slipping off the bad casings during the recoil phase? You say the slide is 'coming back a little'. How can you know this, it happens so fast its a blur? After firing a bad round did the hammer cock? If it did then I'd guess your slide is completely cycling rearward but the extractor is slipping off the UMC for some reason. I have never had any problems with UMC in 380 or 45ACP. |
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