Need help with Tupperware Troubleshooting...

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tydephan

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I had a great night at the range. 200 rounds through my M&P9. About 90 rounds of 223 through my AR at 100m. All reloads and I still have all my fingers. The .223 groups were sufficient.

My dad, however, didn't have such a great night. He was shooting his Glock 22 and some of our reloads. He had a lot of Failures to Fire. I'd say on average he had a failure to ignite about every 5-7 rounds. All rounds were struck. I wouldn't consider them to be light strikes, but they don't seem as hard as some of the others I've seen and certainly didn't exhibit the glock keyhole type of strike that a fired primer reveals.

So I'm trying to troubleshoot the issue.

Ammo?
These are our reloads. So it's possible ammo is the cause. I'm using wolf small pistol primers, which is the same primer I'm using in the 9mm rounds I fired tonight, and all 200 lit off without a hitch in my M&P9. Using Titegroup as the powder and shooting a 165gr Flat Nose jacketed projectile. Brass is mixed nickel, mostly Winchester. All rounds fed in properly and gun was observed to always been in battery.

Gun?
I disassembled the Glock and pulled the striker. Nothing seems off to the eye, but this is his service pistol and it has seen many rounds through it since 1994, and to my knowledge has never had the striker replaced. Could the striker spring assembly be failing causing a strike not quite hard enough to ignite?

I'm going to try test out the same lot of reloads in my M&P40. I didn't have it with me tonight to test.

Any ideas?
 
Wolf pistol primers have been reported to have a higher misfire rate than other brands, but not that high.

Maybe a detail strip of the slide and clean out the firing pin (striker) channel might be in order. How many rounds have been fired through the Glock?
 
One of the shooters in my group had the same problem with his Glock 22 - light strikes on the primers and the same reloads shot fine in all other pistols. He never had this problem before.

I asked him some questions - he had it for several years, shot tens of thousands of rounds BUT never cleaned the slide.

I took the slide apart and pulled the striker pin assembly. When I looked inside the striker tube, there was hard accumulated black gunk towards the breech face where the striker pin pokes through. I used a long thin flat screwdriver and Hoppes #9 solvent to get the gunk out. Since I had the slide apart, I took the rest of the Glock apart and cleaned it. He has not had another problem with light strikes since the cleaning (even using the same reloads).

Check the striker tube for obstruction or gunk build up. If there is gunk build up, cleaning should solve the problem. If there is no gunk buildup or the pistol still has light strike problem after cleaning, then the striker spring may be the problem.

Also, were you able to test if the rounds fired on the second strike? If they did, it might be that the primers weren't seated fully in the pocket (properly seated primer should be just slightly below the case bottom, not flush). If the primer is not fully seated, first strike will seat the primer cup deeper and second strike will fire the round.
 
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W.E.G., thanks for the link.

tydephan, the discussion on the link reports nickel plated (silver colored) Wolf small pistol primers seem to have harder primer cup than brass (bronze colored) primer cups and they have experienced failure to fire. Fully seating the primers helped with these.

I have been using Wolf large pistol primers (brass/bronze colored) for the past year to save my stock of Winchester and have not had any problems.

What color are your Wolf primers?
 
They are silver, and arrived about the time of that thread that W.E.G. linked to.

The Glock 22 that dad owns was his service pistol, which was issued since 1994. It might have had a "detail" cleaning somewhere along the line, but I doubt it. It has likely had tens of thousands of rounds through it over the course of its life. To my knowledge, it is all original parts except a Lasermax guide rod (one of the early ones where the spring isn't captured.)

I inspected the striker last night and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. The striker channel was dirty, and there was some copper fouling that I got cleaned out. I used some bore cleaner and let it sit for awhile. As cheap as strikers are, I'll likely just go ahead and order him another one while we troubleshoot the reloads.

It could be a primer seating issue, but I'm pretty conscientious about pushing the primers until I feel them seat. He didn't try to fire any a second time.
 
tydephan, that could be and easy enough to test - if someone else you know has a newer (say a Gen3 Glock) model, see if these rounds fire fine in theirs.

If you can, you can even swap out the striker and see if your reloads fire fine.
 
Without changing out anything else, I would suggest you get a box of Winchester White Box 115 grain fmj and shoot that in your dad's G22. See what kind of failure rates you get. If you get no failures then it is your reloads in the G22 that are the problem. If you have lots of failures, then it is the G22.
 
90% of the time you don't get a primer to go off in reloaded ammo its because it wasn't seated fully into the bottom of the primer pocket. Usually this is from failing to apply enough pressure to fully seat. With single stage and hand priming tools you can feel the primer seat. With progressives its more difficult or impossible to get that feel and any out of adjustment to the primer ram can fail to seat them properly.

The main test with the ammo is to fire them again and see if they go off. Usually the first firing pin strike will seat the primer the rest of the way and then the second hit will set it off.
 
tydephan, since semi-auto cases head space in the chamber with the case neck rim only, I have test fired primed cases (no bullet, no powder) in the garage in the past. It makes a loud "pop" but will allow you to test the proper seating of the primer.

You can prime some cases in your press like you normally do and test fire in the Glock. If you still have problems, you can deprime/size some cases and make sure the primer pockets are clean and then prime the cases with care to fully seat them (primers just slightly below the case bottom). If the FTF problem goes away, you found the solution.
 
So, out of the 12 FTF we had yesterday, I went back to the range tonight and attempted to fire those 12 out of MY Glock 22 (not the same pistol that failed to fire them last night.)

8 ignited. 4 did not.

Primers all look seated barely below flush.

In addition, I fired 30 more rounds through my Glock 22 and had 3 more failures to fire. Only one fired on a second strike attempt.

I ran 30 rounds through my M&P40 and all fired. It got a new striker assembly earlier this year.

I dunno guys. Seems like a primer defect to me. I know those are extremely rare, but there are numerous documented instances of this same primer having issues in the thread that W.E.G. linked to. And mine is even in the same lot of primers as those being mentioned in that thread (9-09.)
 
Tydephan,

Exact same issue I had with the nickel Wolf SPP. Only with several revolvers. These same pistols were 100% with all other primer types I have used (CCI, Win, Federal)

I found the brian enos link you were provided earlier and contacted the company. They provided a refund.
 
They provided a refund.
Click to expand...
Consider yourself fortunate, my friend.

Here is their reply to me:

Unfortunately we do not offer a performance guarantee on our primers only our ammunition, we have found that there are too many variables that could effect the overall performance of a reloaded round not firing properly. We also are not permitted to have the primers sent back to us do to hazerdous material and warehouse safety issues and therefore have no way of accepting them back.

Sincerely,

WOLF Ammunition
Customer Service Department

I think it's fairly suspect, since they show the "100% gaurantee" graphic and verbage on the primer page of their site.

Regardless, these will be the last Wolf products I'll ever purchase. I guess I wouldn't be so bothered about it all had there not been documentation of Wolf admitting they have issues with these primers:

Per the Brian Enos thread linked above said:
I have an email thread from them. The key portion of the exchange that triggered that post you quoted:

To Wolf Customer Service:

"Hello,

I'm following up to an issue I had with Wolf Small Pistol Primers. You graciously refunded the unused portion of the 10,000 primers I purchased, and for that I thank you. It's a sincere pleasure to deal with a company that believes so strongly in their products.

I'm writing because I need to purchase more primers, and was wondering if you had identified a specific lot number (or group of lot numbers) that were responsible for the large percentage of misfires I was experiencing.

If the answer is yes, and the problem has been corrected, I will be placing another order shortly and will happily purchase Wolf.

Thank you,

Dodge DeBoulet"

Wolf Customer Support responded:

"Dear Dodge,

No the problem has not been corrected, please do not repurchase any of our primers at this time, the problem has not been resolved, please note that we will not process another return for you at this time, since you are aware of the issues.

Sincerely,

WOLF Ammunition
Customer Service Department"

To which I replied:

"Thank you for the update, I do appreciate it. Believe me, I'm not looking for another refund . . . I just want some small pistol primers.

Is there any way I can get notification of when it's "safe" to buy your primers again? And is the problem limited only to small pistol primers? I will also be reloading for .44 magnum soon, which uses large pistol magnum primers.

Again, thanks!"

And Wolf's response:

"Dear Dodge,

The problem seems to be with the small pistol primers, they are harder then other brands of primers, many people I've spoke too however have been switching out their old firing pins with stronger or harder hitting ones with stronger springs and this seems to be eliminating the issues of misfires and failures to ignite. We do not know if and when our factory will be changing the primers, hopefully sooner then later.

Sincerely,

WOLF Ammunition
Customer Service Department"

Per Wolf's recommendation, I purchased a higher-powered striker spring for my M&P .40 with no improvement in reliability.

This post has been edited by Dodge DeBoulet: 14 April 2010 - 08:15 PM
Click to expand...
 
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tydephan, try to get the refund through the vendor you bought the primers from and not Wolf.

Most major retail chain/national online vendors have more liberal return policy.
 
Thanks bds. But I've already tried that. Wideners told me to contact Wolf.

I'll be informing them of Wolf's response, at least so they know they have a vendor that doesn't support their products.
 
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