mattw
06-23-2020, 12:32 PM
I picked one of the up new on Friday, by Monday it was in the mail back to Springfield. I had read about some feeding issues, did not appear to be with all guns and I had hopes of getting lucky! I am a fan of Springfield as I own several of their 1911's and none have ever had to go in for repair. I have been spending some time with a Kimber Micro Raptor in 380 and fell in love with the platform and size. But, something felt better about the Springfield in my hand, have not been able to put a description to that something yet. BTW, the Kimber and Springfield mags are interchangeable between the guns, but the feed issues still persisted. The Kimbers do fit the Springfield better than the factory magazines.
I had a small mix of commercial ammo and my 92 grain Lyman cast reloads running 3.2 of 231. This pistol comes with a standard length 6 round mag and an extended 7 round mag. The 7 round mag really makes it fit a normal sized hand well, my daughter with tiny hands really likes it with the 6 round mag.
My daughter and I fired around 150 rounds in the little pistol, really love the feel. But, we had around an 11% FTF rate! For defensive use, it is about the worse kind to have. The round starts to engage the extractor but does not over come the tension and lack of radius on the extractor and does not make it up enough for the ejector to engage the round. They are actually hard to get under the extractor with the frame removed. The bottom edge of the extractor will scuff and sometimes really scratch the area behind the rim when it tries to go in. I think this is the root cause of the failure. So, it is a forced mag drop and clear, sometimes the shell is not even under the edge of the extractor and must be dumped from the chamber. This happened across all ammo I tested and was 100% consistent in this failure mode. There were not failures to extract, no stove pipes and it did not matter which magazine. Oddly enough my daughter (tiny hands) was getting beaned by brass often and the ejection pattern was 6 to 9 feet... ok so she limp wrists it. My ejection pattern was right over my should and 15 to 20 feet away. She had no more FTF than I did. It also did not seem to matter what the headstamp of the brass was. I also found out that Springfield will not sell internal parts for this pistol. It also did not appear to me that a chamber or feed ramp polish would fix this issue, the issue could not always be repeated with the same round of ammo but I was not able to fire the same round always loaded in a different mag count or mag.
I will say at 10 to 12 yards, it is one extremely accurate pocket pistol. Actually more accurate than the Micro Raptor, but the Kimber feeds everything all of the time. At 12 yards with the factory night sights and 4 flavors of ammo ranging from 960 fps XTP's to 850 fps Lyman I was able to keep all of my shots in about 2 to 2.5 inches about 1.5 inches below sight point and that was with 80 or so rounds and 2 that I pulled out. I suspect that will get tighter when the gun just runs and I can focus on shooting not clearing.
Here are a couple of pics of the FTF. I really hope Springfield returns me a pistol that will run 100%.
264015264016
I had a small mix of commercial ammo and my 92 grain Lyman cast reloads running 3.2 of 231. This pistol comes with a standard length 6 round mag and an extended 7 round mag. The 7 round mag really makes it fit a normal sized hand well, my daughter with tiny hands really likes it with the 6 round mag.
My daughter and I fired around 150 rounds in the little pistol, really love the feel. But, we had around an 11% FTF rate! For defensive use, it is about the worse kind to have. The round starts to engage the extractor but does not over come the tension and lack of radius on the extractor and does not make it up enough for the ejector to engage the round. They are actually hard to get under the extractor with the frame removed. The bottom edge of the extractor will scuff and sometimes really scratch the area behind the rim when it tries to go in. I think this is the root cause of the failure. So, it is a forced mag drop and clear, sometimes the shell is not even under the edge of the extractor and must be dumped from the chamber. This happened across all ammo I tested and was 100% consistent in this failure mode. There were not failures to extract, no stove pipes and it did not matter which magazine. Oddly enough my daughter (tiny hands) was getting beaned by brass often and the ejection pattern was 6 to 9 feet... ok so she limp wrists it. My ejection pattern was right over my should and 15 to 20 feet away. She had no more FTF than I did. It also did not seem to matter what the headstamp of the brass was. I also found out that Springfield will not sell internal parts for this pistol. It also did not appear to me that a chamber or feed ramp polish would fix this issue, the issue could not always be repeated with the same round of ammo but I was not able to fire the same round always loaded in a different mag count or mag.
I will say at 10 to 12 yards, it is one extremely accurate pocket pistol. Actually more accurate than the Micro Raptor, but the Kimber feeds everything all of the time. At 12 yards with the factory night sights and 4 flavors of ammo ranging from 960 fps XTP's to 850 fps Lyman I was able to keep all of my shots in about 2 to 2.5 inches about 1.5 inches below sight point and that was with 80 or so rounds and 2 that I pulled out. I suspect that will get tighter when the gun just runs and I can focus on shooting not clearing.
Here are a couple of pics of the FTF. I really hope Springfield returns me a pistol that will run 100%.
264015264016