Danger of Rounds Cooking in a Hot Car?

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Danger of Rounds Cooking in a Hot Car?

Posted: 6/1/2008 7:48:17 PM EDT

Say you leave your firearm in the car during work. You leave it chambered and it gets terribly hot inside the vehicle. Is there any danger of a round cooking off due to heat?

Posted: 6/1/2008 7:50:17 PM EDT

[#1]

Quoted:
Say you leave your firearm in the car during work. You leave it chambered and it gets terribly hot inside the vehicle. Is there any danger of a round cooking off due to heat?

Absolutely not.

Think about how hot the chamber gets during firing, and rounds do not cook off. It gets nowhere near that hot in a vehicle.

Posted: 6/1/2008 7:58:50 PM EDT

[#2]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Say you leave your firearm in the car during work. You leave it chambered and it gets terribly hot inside the vehicle. Is there any danger of a round cooking off due to heat?

Absolutely not.

Think about how hot the chamber gets during firing, and rounds do not cook off. It gets nowhere near that hot in a vehicle.

+1

your car would have to be on fire before a cookoff would be possible...

Posted: 6/1/2008 8:07:56 PM EDT

[#3]

... Nonexistent

<----------- Ask me how I know

Posted: 6/1/2008 8:08:33 PM EDT

[#4]

Nope.

And I'm in Texas.

Posted: 6/1/2008 8:31:11 PM EDT

[#5]

It takes 300+ degrees before a cookoff.

Posted: 6/1/2008 8:41:48 PM EDT

[#6]

I have had guns loaded in my trunk in Las Vegas heat with zero problems. I did have a Glock 31 feel a little bit gooey soft when I pulled it out of my trunk after sitting in 130 air temp so the vehicle temp must have been hotter than that and it was fine. The grip just warped easily. So I switched to H&Ks. Those guns do not warp with heat. When I say warp I mean the frame bending easily.

Posted: 6/1/2008 8:49:04 PM EDT

[#7]

Quoted:
I have had guns loaded in my trunk in Las Vegas heat with zero problems. I did have a Glock 31 feel a little bit gooey soft when I pulled it out of my trunk after sitting in 130 air temp so the vehicle temp must have been hotter than that and it was fine. The grip just warped easily. So I switched to H&Ks. Those guns do not warp with heat. When I say warp I mean the frame bending easily.

got a pic of the warped glock?...that sounds interesting

Posted: 6/1/2008 8:52:04 PM EDT

[#8]

Quoted:
I have had guns loaded in my trunk in Las Vegas heat with zero problems. I did have a Glock 31 feel a little bit gooey soft when I pulled it out of my trunk after sitting in 130 air temp so the vehicle temp must have been hotter than that and it was fine. The grip just warped easily. So I switched to H&Ks. Those guns do not warp with heat. When I say warp I mean the frame bending easily.

Pics or it didn't happen.
I don't even like Glocks, and I find that a little hard to believe.

Posted: 6/1/2008 9:02:05 PM EDT

[#9]

No dudes it wasnt permanent warp. It was so hot that when I squeezed the mag mouth that it deformed a bit then i stuck a mag in it to hold its position until it cooled off in AC. Then it went back to normal so I learned not to keep a Glock in a hot trunk. It wasnt a permanent warp- thank god! I woulda been pissed and had to send it back to Glock for a "FRAME UPGRADE".

Posted: 6/1/2008 9:07:25 PM EDT

[#10]

Glocks are designed to warp under intense heat to reduce the damage from a KB.

Posted: 6/1/2008 9:24:42 PM EDT

[#11]

There are guys in Iraq and Afganistan that will face heat that we dont really see here in the US, except for a few locations in the South West. Imagine sitting in/on a fucking tank or hummer all day long in the Iraqi heat

It would suck.

Posted: 6/1/2008 9:49:13 PM EDT

[#12]

Unless your car gets as hot as a MG barrel under sustained fire, I don't think so. There's a reason why dedicated MG's are open bolt.

Posted: 6/2/2008 12:56:58 PM EDT

[#13]

Quoted:
There are guys in Iraq and Afganistan that will face heat that we dont really see here in the US, except for a few locations in the South West. Imagine sitting in/on a fucking tank or hummer all day long in the Iraqi heat

It would suck.

That was my first thought.

Think about those guys in Iraq or Afghanistan carrying several thousand rounds in the back of a Humvee when the temperature outside is 110 to 120 Degrees. If that won't cook off a round then leaving in your car in the US won't.

Posted: 6/2/2008 1:15:28 PM EDT

[#14]

Yes, if cookoffs happened in hot cars, you would hear news stories about it all the time in Texas, Arizona, & New Mexico.

Posted: 6/2/2008 1:22:13 PM EDT

[#15]

Posted: 6/2/2008 1:40:54 PM EDT

[#16]

I guess maybe the only thing I'd worry about is maybe the ammo performing after lots of time in a car. What I mean is if the temp is going up and down a lot, maybe the powder would be affected. Not sure to what extent this would be a concern, maybe none, but I think I'd probably change out the ammo occasionally. Maybe someone with more experience on this could chime in.

Posted: 6/2/2008 1:49:38 PM EDT

[#17]

Even if it did cook off (which it won't) the case has less mass than the bullet, so the bullet won't go far and the case would go not much farther.

If the round is chambered, yeah it'd hurt something. But now we come back to it not happening in the first place...

We had no problems with ammo cooking off or poor ammo performance due to heat in Iraq, with any weapon, M9 to 50 cal.

Posted: 6/2/2008 2:05:13 PM EDT

[#18]

The thought crossed my mind because I got in the other day, after the black car sitting in the blacktop parking for 7 hours. I reached for the Glock 27 which is kept in the overhead console, at the front of the headliner, where it meets the windshield. I touched the metal on the slide, and couldn't hold my fingers there for more than a second without it starting to hurt pretty bad. I just wondered how likely it was to put a bullet through my roof into the car in front of me!

Thanks for the opinions...

Posted: 6/2/2008 2:07:30 PM EDT

[#19]

Quoted:
The thought crossed my mind because I got in the other day, after the black car sitting in the blacktop parking for 7 hours. I reached for the Glock 27 which is kept in the overhead console, at the front of the headliner, where it meets the windshield. I touched the metal on the slide, and couldn't hold my fingers there for more than a second without it starting to hurt pretty bad. I just wondered how likely it was to put a bullet through my roof into the car in front of me!

Thanks for the opinions...

Only if the heat made you twitch and pull the trigger.

Posted: 6/2/2008 8:32:00 PM EDT

[#20]

Nope. I have had a .17Mach 2 round lost in my truck for a year now and it hasn't popped off.

Posted: 6/3/2008 6:51:59 AM EDT

[#21]

It's a lot hotter inside of a Humvee in the sandbox than it could ever get inside your glovebox.

Posted: 6/3/2008 7:43:53 AM EDT

[#22]

Quoted:
Glocks are designed to warp under intense heat to reduce the damage from a KB.

Seriously? You're not just having a lil' joke?

Personally, I don't know why glocks have a hole in the bottom of the frame. They should just come from the factory loaded. After you shoot a rival crack dealer or two just recycle it.

Posted: 6/3/2008 7:49:36 AM EDT

[#23]

Quoted:
I guess maybe the only thing I'd worry about is maybe the ammo performing after lots of time in a car. What I mean is if the temp is going up and down a lot, maybe the powder would be affected. Not sure to what extent this would be a concern, maybe none, but I think I'd probably change out the ammo occasionally. Maybe someone with more experience on this could chime in.

That was my thought: no way is it going to cook off but its probably not good for the ammo. You know they say "store in a cool dry place".

Posted: 6/3/2008 8:31:05 AM EDT

[#24]

I knew a fellow who lived in the Mojave desert. He used to keep his box of .222 Remington Magnum rounds on the dash of his truck.

The box was sun bleached and I mentioned to him (I was helping him on "trash day") that the high temps probably weren't too good for the condition of his ammo. He told me the cartridges still worked fine on coyotes...

He died just shy of his 90th birthday.

I would say don't worry about it!

ETA: This could be an issue if you are carrying a big bore revolver, for instance, with lead loads. That is, if the bullets have grooves in them loaded with bullet lubricant (a type of wax). Also, if you carry a .22 rimfire and the lube melts on the bullets and fouls the powder charge.

Posted: 6/3/2008 8:33:28 AM EDT

[#25]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Glocks are designed to warp under intense heat to reduce the damage from a KB.

Seriously? You're not just having a lil' joke?

Hah, no, I was totally full of shit there.

Posted: 6/3/2008 9:26:20 AM EDT

[#26]

Quoted:
The thought crossed my mind because I got in the other day, after the black car sitting in the blacktop parking for 7 hours. I reached for the Glock 27 which is kept in the overhead console, at the front of the headliner, where it meets the windshield. I touched the metal on the slide, and couldn't hold my fingers there for more than a second without it starting to hurt pretty bad. I just wondered how likely it was to put a bullet through my roof into the car in front of me!

Thanks for the opinions...

It only takes a bit over a hundred degrees for metal to be too hot to touch.

It gets to over 120 in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the other ME countries we are in. Inside a humvee it will easily get to over 140, 130 if you have one of the ones with a working AC. No cookoffs.

You'd die, and literally be baking (and I mean literally the way it actually means, your body would have to be baking as if someone locked you into a big oven) before you had to worry about the temp being high enough to cookoff a round.

Posted: 6/3/2008 11:10:47 AM EDT

[#27]

There's a .22LR round caught in a crevace in my truck's cab.

It's been there for a few years and hasn't cooked off yet!

Posted: 6/3/2008 11:22:03 AM EDT

[#28]

Quoted:
There's a .22LR round caught in a crevace in my truck's cab.

It's been there for a few years and hasn't cooked off yet!

I hear that if you blow a fuse and replace it with a .22LR, you'll end up up the intarweb!

Posted: 6/3/2008 11:23:23 AM EDT

[#29]

Quoted:

Quoted:
There's a .22LR round caught in a crevace in my truck's cab.

It's been there for a few years and hasn't cooked off yet!

I hear that if you blow a fuse and replace it with a .22LR, you'll end up up the intarweb!

Or on mythbusters!

Posted: 6/3/2008 12:32:02 PM EDT

[#30]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Say you leave your firearm in the car during work. You leave it chambered and it gets terribly hot inside the vehicle. Is there any danger of a round cooking off due to heat?

Absolutely not.

Think about how hot the chamber gets during firing, and rounds do not cook off. It gets nowhere near that hot in a vehicle.

+1

your car would have to be on fire before a cookoff would be possible...

That's what I was going to say.

My vehicle almost always has a firearm in it, no problems yet.