I have a Glock 17 (gen 2) and a Glock 19 (gen 3) that have been extremely reliable. The 17 has been nearly trouble free for the last 2000+ rounds (one stovepipe malfunction). The 19 has been good for ~450 rounds.
I picked up a (latest version) Magpul Glock Pmag and I experienced multiple failure to extract malfunctions in both of my Glocks. I was shooting a mixture of brass, steel, and aluminum cased ammunition but I believe all malfunctions were with Blazer Aluminum. A large percentage of the ammunition through these Glocks have been Blazer Al with no issues. I experienced no malfunctions with the factory magazines this day.
Has anyone experienced, seen, or heard of the new Pmag, or any mag, causing FTExtract malfs? I believe bad magazines rarely to be causing this type of malfunctions.
OK we screwed up.
After initial release of the Glock PMAG 17 GL9 a few days ago we started seeing random issues of failure to feed with the new magazine in other Glock models, primarily the Glock 19 and 26. Of all the challenges of building a Glock magazine with a single new composite, issues like drop free, impact strength and feed lip retention were foremost on our mind. The failure to feed came as a bit of a surprise to us and we immediately headed out to the range to investigate.
In short order we found the problem. Without getting into technical details, some small, but critical geometry changes did not make it into the initial production molds. We should have caught this but no failures showed up on our factory guns during live fire testing and flaws in our internal processes of checks/balances did not flag the oversight as it should.
So as I said before, we screwed up and here is what we are going to do about it.
Molds are being updated with the correct geometry as we speak and a replacement magazine body with the correct geometry should be available by May 4th, 2015. These will be date coded 5/15 or later and will replace any magazine bodies in service of earlier manufacture. Just use your existing spring, follower, and floor plate with the new body.
-If you purchased your magazines direct from Magpul, Brownells or Midway, you do not need to do anything, replacement magazine bodies for the magazines ordered (1 for 1) will be shipped to you automatically.
-If you purchased your magazines from a gun store, replacement bodies will be sent out to the store in question for you to pick up.
-If neither of the above works for you then Magpul customer service will handle the replacement directly.
In short, we are updating ALL of the affected magazines released as quick as we possibly can.
Richard Fitzpatrick
President/CEO -Magpul Industries Corp
The issue of the first gen bodies was only evident in the 19 and 26 models and it was failure to feed issues. I was experiencing FTExtract malfs in my 19 AND 17.
Hard to attribute FTExtract to a magazine issue–I’m trying to think how it could occur… There was one individual who had last round FTEject with our mag, but not Glock, and that was likely caused by a combination of a load that barely cycled the gun and “broken in” glock mags vs new PMAGs and differences in the spring rates and follower wear.
FTExtract would be hard to even figure out how the mag could be a contributing factor. We did test with Blazer aluminum as one of the ammunition types. It doesn’t like aluminum case ammo when dirty, same as steel, but runs fine with brass, always, or if you want to run the steel and aluminum case, you just may have to make sure mags are cleaned once in a while.
Is ejection positive with the ammunition normally? Empties flying 3-5 feet?
Some empty/fired cases were found to be partially extracted from the chamber with a live round attempting to be fed into it. Is it possible the magazine is sitting too high and upon extraction the empty casing is getting pulled rearward into the magazine/next round in magazine?
Yes, positive extraction. Empties travel nicely, pretty consistently. No brass to face.
I plan to pick up a couple more Glock Pmags and see if it is just a bad mag or if my Glocks don’t like them. No issues with other ammo either so I feel like the Blazer Aluminum was a contributor.
I have found that alloy cased Blazer ammo to cause failures like that in several of my pistols that never have those stoppages with brass or even steel cased ammo.
My SIG P228, Hi-Power and Colt Combat Commander all have problems with the Blazer alloy cased ammo. They are normally VERY consistent feeders with brass ammo of all flavors.
I was told by a gunsmith that I trust that the alloy cased are lighter than the brass or steel ones and the lighter cases might throw off the timing of the slide cycle on some auto pistols. Makes sense to me.
That alloy cased ammo…in several calibers…has caused stoppages in guns I never have problems with, otherwise. Therefore…I pretty much try to avoid that stuff. Besides, it is also extremely filthy ammo to begin with.
Thanks for the feedback, Brickboy. I think I remember that 1 in 2000 stovepipe I had was with Blazer Al, using factory mags. I’ll do some more testing with the Pmag and quality ammunition to see how the 17 and 19 perform.
I received my second Magpul Glock Pmag today and decided to run some Blazer Aluminum through it to see what it would do in my Gen 3 Glock 19. It ran flawlessly using both of my Pmags for the 100 rounds I had. Not sure why it ran so well. I didn’t clean the handgun or do anything to it. I also ran 50 rounds of Wolf steel case ammo also and that ran fine with those mags. More testing to ensue. So, no news is good news here.
I did more shooting with Magpul mags using Blazer Aluminum and had lots of failures to extract with this combination this time.
I was able to further diagnose and speculate on what is actually occurring. As the slide comes to the rear after being fired, the slide extracts the empty casing but the rim of the empty casing is impacting the leading edge of the top round’s casing while in the magazine. The impact is significant enough on some shots that the extractor claw loses grip of the casing and leaves it partially extracted.
Speculation as to why: It appears that the rear rim edge of the Al casing is beveled much less than the brass or steel cases allowing it to catch the next round in the magazine much more easily. Here is a picture. The aluminum is the aluminum colored one and the brass…well, you can figure it out
From what I remember…I never had any issues running alloy cased 115gr Blazers through my 9mm Glocks (2nd gen G17 and 3rd gen G19) just the SIG 228 and Hi-Power. To this day, my Glock 9mms still pretty much eat whatever I throw in them.
I hope the Magpul mags for Glocks work out. I want to buy a few and try them out myself but I have not seen them locally.
hi lincoln, how old are your glocks? purchased new/used? if you have the test fire date that is easiest way. no matter what anyone says, glocks have just NOT got it all figured out since replacing all their tooling and molds. there are many factors together here. 1. they have gone to all mim parts instead of using real steel/bar stock like they should be using. HELLO! ILL PAY THE EXTRA $ 100, SOMEONE PLEASE MAKE A TOOL STEEL FIRING PIN AND LOCKING BLOCK! (we already have apex to thank for extractor).
anyways, the main issue is many slides were not within spec. some will have nice and tight extractors that really grip tight… lol! others, regardless of what extractor you put in there, will be loose and barely hold on… to the case.
easy thing to try is switch to a non loaded chamber indicator spring loaded bearing. this piece is a little bigger than the one that shipped with your glocks (assuming they have loaded chamber indicator to begin with).
it will add more tension on the extractor and should give you the desired results. its like kegels for your glock! lololol
ps if you buy this part, watch out for failure to feed. if you have too much extractor tension, it will not be able to override the case rim when going into battery/slide closing. youll be shooting ok and then a dead trigger. push the slide forward a MM into full battery/lock and-- thats your sign!
ask me how i know all this, i have some slides that are already teenager tight and others that should be thrown out!!!
I’ve seen the same thing happen with Glock mags with aftermarket springs (stronger Wolff). I don’t think it’s a Glock PMag specific issue.
If it’s not too much trouble, please try the following and let me know what happens:
With a mag fully loaded (and inserted in the gun), and a live round in the chamber, hand cycle the slide to get all the rounds out one by one.
At some point, does the slide refuse to go rearward (without forcing it of course)? If so, notice where the slide stops moving rearward freely. That’s probably where the rear (rim) of the case of the round coming out of the chamber hits the front of the case of the top round in the mag. The slide is not rearward enough to throw the round out. So the slide will just stop.
