I've been trying to diagnose my RIA snubby .38 sometimes having failures to fire. I thought it was my reloads (ie, some priming issue), but I just borrowed a friend's Smith, and fired 50 without a hiccup. Over the weekend, I fired 25 commercial rounds through the RIA, and 3 of them failed.
So, I bought some snap caps, and tried diagnosing the problem further. I installed them, and pulled the trigger in DA at least 30 times. Then, I operated the revolver in SA a number of times.
You can see, almost all of the primer strikes are directly in the middle of the primer. But for the ones where the arrow is, you can see that they are at the extreme edge of the primer.
I went through the dry firing again, this time, at the end of every trigger pull, I kept the trigger depressed and tried to rotate the cylinder. Occassionally, the cylinder will spin free to the next chamber!
You can feel it in the trigger even. When you pull the trigger, and the cylinder advances, you can feel a mushiness.
I've contacted RIA about the issue and sent the photo. I'm just wondering if anyone has thoughts about what could cause that? The revolver only has about 200 rounds through it, all standard pressure. It's been cleaned and lubricated.
I wanted to keep it as a SD/HD firearm--but I obviously cannot do that if it's missing so often. Also, it scares me that it IS hitting the primer, just not when it's aligned properly. The last thing I need is for it to go off, and miss the forcing cone. Send a bullet directly into the side of the barrel or frame. That sounds like a recipe for a catastrophic failure.