1911 9mm top round giving nose dive jam

[tazman]

There should be any easy fix for this but I am not certain what it is.
RIA Rock Ultra FS in 9mm. Magazines are Mec Gar ten round, Mec Gar 9 round, and Springfield Armory 9 round.
With 9 rounds in the mag, every single one of my magazines nose dive jams on the first round in this pistol. The rest all feed fine.
With the 10 round mags fully loaded, the first round chambers and the second round jams. Clear that one and the rest feed fine.
I thought it might be my reloads, so today I was using factory round nose ammo. Same problem. This is not supposed to be happening.
Accuracy is good. All other handling is good. I really like the way this pistol is set up and I want it to work.
These magazines all work in my Springfield Range Officer without any issues.
The RIA has a ramped barrel and the ramp is polished clear to the bottom where the jam is occuring.
Do I need to get stiffer springs for these mags or is something else going on?

[LUCKYDAWG13]

I had a issue like that once after i changed my grips put my old ones back on it everything was fine this was on a Sig p938

[35remington]

Single stack magazines have a propensity for this the more rounds they hold. Add in short 9mm rounds, which are shorter than 45 ACP even when they are longer, and the top rounds have a propensity for diving deeply before hitting the ramp. The shorter the round the deeper it can dive.

And, yes, in a way, it is more likely to happen when a gun made for longer rounds like 38 Super and 45 ACP is adapted to a much shorter cartridge....so I guess you could say this IS supposed to happen. Actually, some 9s made on 1911s work fine. It is a matter of quantifying what this gun is lacking that your better feeding 1911 9mms have.

Anything leap out at you comparing the two? Are they ramped the same?

Do the magazines have a filler along the back to take up excess room?

[Der Gebirgsjager]

Odd that they all do it. What happens if you load one less than capacity in the mags?

[wv109323]

My guess is that the rounds are binding in the magazine at some point. Load a magazine and see if you can see any marks on the rounds.

[tazman]

Odd that they all do it. What happens if you load one less than capacity in the mags?

When I load them with 8 rounds, they feed properly.
I think I may have found the culprit.
Both guns have ramped barrels.
The first round dives in both guns but does not get hung up in the Range Officer.
I looked closely at both my Range Officer and the RIA as suggested by 35remington. I found that the ramps were not identical. They were the same angle but not shaped the same where the bullet nose rides. The spot on the frame where the bottom of the ramp mates up with the frame is rounded so it doesn't have a sharp edge on the Range Officer. That spot is flat and sharp on the RIA.
There are marks on the bullet nose where they impact that spot when they nose dive.
Just for grins, I installed the barrel from the Range Officer into the RIA and checked function. No joy. The bullets still nose dive and jam.
I even held the magazines up into the frame firmly and dropped the slide. Still jammed.
With 8 rounds, no jams. I think I will round off that edge a bit and see if that is enough to stop the jamming.
The bottom of the ramp on the barrel does NOT extend past the frame there so it should not be an issue. I will just need to make sure I don't go too far with this and cause that to happen.
It is getting late tonight. In the morning, I think I will install the RIA barrel into the Range Officer and see if that will cause it to jam. It is possible there is more to this than just that one sharp edge.

[onelight]

Does it do it when you load a full mag in the gun with the slide forward and then chamber the first round by racking the slide ?

[tazman]

If the mag is full of rounds, I can't lock it in place with the slide closed. Not enough give in the mag that way. It simply will not go all the way in and I am not going to hammer it in.

[onelight]

If the mag is full of rounds, I can't lock it in place with the slide closed. Not enough give in the mag that way. It simply will not go all the way in and I am not going to hammer it in.

I am not a pound um in guy either
I was curious if the slide running backwards over that top round would pull the nose up , I had a gun that did that once and a heavy mag spring fixed it.

[tazman]

I tried installing the RIA barrel into the Range Officer this morning and it would not go so that is out.
I tried some different ammunition that has a less pointed nose than the FMJ I had been using. It worked better but was not a cure for the problem.
Here is what the interior of the RIA and the Range officer look like. RIA on the left.


Here are pictures of the feed ramps on the barrels. RIA on the left


Here are pics of the frame area where the barrel ramp meets the frame. RIA on the left


Notice the differences in the edge of the frame. The bullet nose is getting hung up on the sharp edge of the frame in the RIA. The Range Officer is much more rounded right there.
There are also differences in the way the ramp is done but that made no difference when I had the Range Officer barrel in the RIA. The bullets still hung up on the edge of the frame.
The tip of the bullet nose has a sharp dent in it where that edge is biting the bullet. The nose is hitting the frame and bottom of the ramp when it nose dives.

What are your thoughts?

[Der Gebirgsjager]

I think your observations are correct. Photo #6 looks like a bit of a rounded area at the top of the ramp in the frame. I would assume that the bottom of the barrel portion of the ramp hangs over the frame ramp a bit at that point, snagging the nose of the bullet as it travels upward, and some polishing with a Dremel and abrasive tips of various grits will be needed to blend the two areas. Photo #4, there seems to be a nick on the right edge of the ramp. Photos #3 and #4, the ramps do not look well polished to me. In my opinion a good polish job on the ramps of both pistols would help, but it is of interest that they will function with one less round loaded in the magazines. I have a couple of pistols that are as you've described, in that the magazine has to be pushed in extra hard when loaded to full capacity, but this doesn't seem to be a problem with them as they have the original style barrel ramp and the feed from the top of the magazine into the chamber is more direct. Without having your pistols on my bench, my remote diagnosis is that the ramps need a better polish job, especially where the barrel ramp and frame ramps join, a better overall polish, and the magazines loaded with one less round. Cutting off one leg of a "Z" type magazine spring might also help and allow a full capacity to be used, but that's unknown until you try it, and if it doesn't work you'd need to procure a new spring. It seems to me that you've got a combination of problems here, with the aforementioned ramp problems and too much upward pressure in the fully loaded magazines which offers too much resistance to the closing slide and puts the loading cycle out of time. I'll bet that you're not the only person experiencing this problem with this design, and quite likely improved magazines will be offered down the road. Best I can do without being "hands on".

[35remington]

The top round dives deepest, and if there are feedway path issues the first round out of a fully loaded magazine will find it. Subsequent rounds strike the ramp progressively higher as the magazine empties which explains why it is only the first few rounds that do it.

[onelight]

If me , and I could not find an easy fix , I would just load 1 less round, would not bother me in the least for my use as a range gun ( I normally just load 5 )

[Burnt Fingers]

I have the same pistol and it has the same problem. Wilson Combat magazines solved the problem.

The biggest problem is the taper of the 9mm case. They don't stack in a straight line. The 1911 was designed with those big old fat .45 ACP cases with no taper. 10mm, no taper, .38 Super, no taper...9mm taper.

Take 10 .45 ACP rounds and line them up while they are laying on their sides. Have all the cases touching. Now do the same thing with 10 9mm rounds. See how they start to curl?

[tazman]

I picked up a couple of Wilson Combat magazines today as suggested by Burnt Fingers and took the gun to the range. These magazines cured the problem.
The Wilson mag has a small feed ramp built into the front, top lip of the magazine so the top cartridge can't nose dive.
I loaded these to full capacity and sometimes to only 9 rounds. Loaded them in the gun and fired two or three rounds and loaded the mags again just to see if it was going to continue working.
Worked like a champ. No failures and no nose dives. Everything smooth as could be. The magazine also seats into the pistol easily when the slide is closed making it a true 10+1.
If you have a 1911 in 9mm, I will heartily endorse these mags. The model number is 500-9.

[Texas by God]

Good that the Wilson mags fixed it. I would take the spring from one of the problem mags and compress and band one coil of the spring to see if too much spring tension was the problem. Or just cut a coil off.

[tazman]

Good that the Wilson mags fixed it. I would take the spring from one of the problem mags and compress and band one coil of the spring to see if too much spring tension was the problem. Or just cut a coil off.

I guess I am just not understanding the process correctly. I need help with this. Why would too much spring tension cause the nose dive?
I would have thought the opposite was true.
Please explain because I am having a hard time visualizing this.

[Texas by God]

Tazman, my thought was that since the mag worked when downloaded to 8 rounds, duplicating that level of compression might help when the mag is loaded full. As each round is fed, the compression force is lessened. By effectively shortening the spring by cutting or compressing and wiring or clamping maybe the sweet spot can be found. Just what popped in my head; maybe it would work, maybe not.

[onelight]

I think the heavy spring combined with other features in the design of the mag could cause it .
The follower and the top of the mag both influence how the round behaves as it moves toward the feed ramp.
I think the bigger issue is a mag that when fully loaded cannot be inserted in the gun with the slide forward with reasonable pressure. They need a redesign of the mag to call it an 8 shot.
I would call it a 7 + 1 . I have had guns with mags like that fully loaded you could not lock them in the gun with out damaging the top round unless you ran the gun dry and loaded on an open slide.
You see some interesting designs in springs and followers to get max capacity.

[tazman]

Tazman, my thought was that since the mag worked when downloaded to 8 rounds, duplicating that level of compression might help when the mag is loaded full. As each round is fed, the compression force is lessened. By effectively shortening the spring by cutting or compressing and wiring or clamping maybe the sweet spot can be found. Just what popped in my head; maybe it would work, maybe not.

OK. That makes sense and will be easy enough to try. The Mec Gar mags come apart from the bottom easily. I can see what I can find to hold a coil or two compressed.
It may be necessary to cut a coil off. There isn't much room in there when the mag is fully loaded. Compressing the coil may not achieve anything until fewer rounds are in the mag.

I just remembered, I had a couple of times when the top round popped out of the magazine while it was lying on the bench. I wasn't sure if the lips of the mag were over stressed or if I didn't get the top round in far enough. It may be that the spring is too strong.

I think I need to check these new Wilson mags and see how the spring tension compares. I didn't pay any attention to that when I loaded them.