Tallball
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- Joined
- Oct 2, 2014
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A couple of years back I decided to get a pistol in 40 caliber S&W, mostly because that was just about the only caliber of ammo that was easy to find at the time. I got one of those S&W SD40VE's... I think that's what it's called. It's the inexpensive Smith and Wesson that is basically a copy of a Glock. I got it LNIB for $199 or something like that. It functions perfectly, but I do not love it. It is a bit on the small side for me, and the trigger is absolutely horrible. But it works fine and I can always shoot it when other ammo is hard to find, so what the heck.
I am friendly with the owner and his son who operate the closest local gun store. They are nice guys, and it turns out that some of our ancestors - who are somewhat (in)famous - served in the military together. That pretty much cemented our friendship. He does all of my FFL stuff for me, and I stop by at his shop every now and then to see what he has in his cases.
This summer I noticed that he had a brand-new RIA double-stack 1911 in 40 caliber S&W. When I asked if I could hold it he started grinning. Of course it fit my enormous hands perfectly. As soon as he saw me holding it and smiling, he knew that he had made a sale. He had just sold a Dan Wesson for me on consignment (long story), so we dickered a little bit and I ended up paying him around $100 cash and walking out with the gun.
I took it out to the range a couple of days later, and wow do I love shooting that thing. It is so big and heavy that the recoil is almost nothing. And it is quite accurate. I seem to shoot it just as well as my CZ75, which is my most accurate center-fire semi-auto. But I kept getting FTF's, one in almost every full magazine that I shot.
So I bought a couple more OEM Mecgar magazines, figuring that it might just be a magazine issue. It seemed not, since it malfunctioned exactly the same way with all three of them. I took it to the range about four times in all and ended up putting about 500 rounds through it. The FTF's never got better. The problem was that a round would make it about halfway out of the magazine and end up stuck there, with its weird flat-nosed bullet just barely touching the feed ramp.
I had heard that RIA has good customer service, so I called them up. The lady I spoke with was very nice and emailed me a shipping label. I mailed it off to them and the Federal Express guy had it back at my house a few weeks later. The form said that they had replaced the recoil spring, and someone had obviously done a very nice job of polishing the feed ramp. So I figured that I was good to go. But the next time I took it to the range it had exactly the same FTF's. I was annoyed and figured I would have to send it back to them again.
My FiL is my shooting buddy. He is a retired engineer and very interested in mechanical problems. After his normal profanity-laced tirade (his favored form of communication), he said that he would do a little research. So he hunted around on the Internet for a while and called me up a couple of days later, asking if I could bring the pistol and its magazines over to his house. He also wanted me to bring the Smith and Wesson. I am over there pretty often anyway, so the next Saturday morning I brought it over.
After a profanity-laced tirade (after 15 years or so I find them to be rather amusing) about how hard it was to find info about these pistols, he told me that he had finally run across a thread or article that said that the factory magazines might have their feed lips too close together. He is a very thorough guy. He had already measured the feed lip gap on all of his 9mm pistols and compared it to the diameter of the 40 caliber round. When I got there he had his calipers ready and measured the feed lips of my RIA magazines (Mecgar) and my Smith and Wesson magazine. It turns out that the Mecgar double-stack magazines all had feed lips that were almost as close together as his 9mm magazines. The Smith and Wesson feed lips were "significantly" farther apart - we are talking thousandths of an inch here. He asked if he could widen the gap on one of my RIA magazines and I said sure. He carefully widened them until they were about the same as the Smith and Wesson. When we tried feeding some rounds form the magazines into the chamber, the altered magazine fed them farther up the ramp, closer to the chamber than the unaltered magazines did.
We both think that he has probably solved the problem. We probably won't get a chance to shoot it until next weekend, so that is when we will find out for sure. As he was widening the lips he accidentally made a tiny crack in one of them (inducing, you guessed it, a profanity-laced tirade). Neither of us think that it will affect our testing session. He said that if the magazine feeds correctly during our test, he will file the other magazines for me so that they will have the adjusted gap without the risk of cracking them.
I thought I would post this long and semi-pointless story to see what y'all thought about it. Do you think that the problem is probably solved now? I wrote down the measurements, if anyone is curious. Of course I will post an update after I take it to the range. If the problem is fixed, it is probably good to have this information posted here in case other shooters have the same problem.
I am friendly with the owner and his son who operate the closest local gun store. They are nice guys, and it turns out that some of our ancestors - who are somewhat (in)famous - served in the military together. That pretty much cemented our friendship. He does all of my FFL stuff for me, and I stop by at his shop every now and then to see what he has in his cases.
This summer I noticed that he had a brand-new RIA double-stack 1911 in 40 caliber S&W. When I asked if I could hold it he started grinning. Of course it fit my enormous hands perfectly. As soon as he saw me holding it and smiling, he knew that he had made a sale. He had just sold a Dan Wesson for me on consignment (long story), so we dickered a little bit and I ended up paying him around $100 cash and walking out with the gun.
I took it out to the range a couple of days later, and wow do I love shooting that thing. It is so big and heavy that the recoil is almost nothing. And it is quite accurate. I seem to shoot it just as well as my CZ75, which is my most accurate center-fire semi-auto. But I kept getting FTF's, one in almost every full magazine that I shot.
So I bought a couple more OEM Mecgar magazines, figuring that it might just be a magazine issue. It seemed not, since it malfunctioned exactly the same way with all three of them. I took it to the range about four times in all and ended up putting about 500 rounds through it. The FTF's never got better. The problem was that a round would make it about halfway out of the magazine and end up stuck there, with its weird flat-nosed bullet just barely touching the feed ramp.
I had heard that RIA has good customer service, so I called them up. The lady I spoke with was very nice and emailed me a shipping label. I mailed it off to them and the Federal Express guy had it back at my house a few weeks later. The form said that they had replaced the recoil spring, and someone had obviously done a very nice job of polishing the feed ramp. So I figured that I was good to go. But the next time I took it to the range it had exactly the same FTF's. I was annoyed and figured I would have to send it back to them again.
My FiL is my shooting buddy. He is a retired engineer and very interested in mechanical problems. After his normal profanity-laced tirade (his favored form of communication), he said that he would do a little research. So he hunted around on the Internet for a while and called me up a couple of days later, asking if I could bring the pistol and its magazines over to his house. He also wanted me to bring the Smith and Wesson. I am over there pretty often anyway, so the next Saturday morning I brought it over.
After a profanity-laced tirade (after 15 years or so I find them to be rather amusing) about how hard it was to find info about these pistols, he told me that he had finally run across a thread or article that said that the factory magazines might have their feed lips too close together. He is a very thorough guy. He had already measured the feed lip gap on all of his 9mm pistols and compared it to the diameter of the 40 caliber round. When I got there he had his calipers ready and measured the feed lips of my RIA magazines (Mecgar) and my Smith and Wesson magazine. It turns out that the Mecgar double-stack magazines all had feed lips that were almost as close together as his 9mm magazines. The Smith and Wesson feed lips were "significantly" farther apart - we are talking thousandths of an inch here. He asked if he could widen the gap on one of my RIA magazines and I said sure. He carefully widened them until they were about the same as the Smith and Wesson. When we tried feeding some rounds form the magazines into the chamber, the altered magazine fed them farther up the ramp, closer to the chamber than the unaltered magazines did.
We both think that he has probably solved the problem. We probably won't get a chance to shoot it until next weekend, so that is when we will find out for sure. As he was widening the lips he accidentally made a tiny crack in one of them (inducing, you guessed it, a profanity-laced tirade). Neither of us think that it will affect our testing session. He said that if the magazine feeds correctly during our test, he will file the other magazines for me so that they will have the adjusted gap without the risk of cracking them.
I thought I would post this long and semi-pointless story to see what y'all thought about it. Do you think that the problem is probably solved now? I wrote down the measurements, if anyone is curious. Of course I will post an update after I take it to the range. If the problem is fixed, it is probably good to have this information posted here in case other shooters have the same problem.
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