Mysterious failure to feed with SIG522

I have perhaps jinxed my rifle, it had a very good record for almost 6000 rounds and I was crowing about it, but all of a sudden I have feed issues with this rifle. The issues happen with three different magazines, three different ammo types, and they happen whether the rifle is held off-hand or supported on the magazine.
I am now getting at least two feed failures per mag.
The rifle has been field-stripped and cleaned and the magazines have been carefully cleaned inside and out.

Last night I took photographs. There are two types of jams.

Type 1: the round is not chambered because it hangs up against the chamber edge at the extractor notch. This happens with all three mags, and with CCI Mini-mag and Remington Viper ammo. It happens with rounds at any position in the mag. The round hits that extractor notch with enough force to damage the bullet. First an example with the Viper ammo.

Here is the round stuck:



Here is the bullet:



And here is a composite image showing which part of the barrel is making the impressions (match the coloured arrows):



And an example of the above jam with CCI Mini-mag. Here is the round caught as before:



Here is what the bolt side looked like:



Here is the bullet:

The second type of jam, which is now more common and is almost guaranteed to happen at least once in every mag, is the round that gets caught in the breech, angled up so that it completely missed the chamber. This happens with RWS, CCI Mini-mag and Remington Viper ammo and it happens with all three magazines and happens at any time (not related to the cartridge number in the mag).

Here is an example with RWS target rifle:



Here is the round:



As you can see it has taken a good hit, the case is bent.

And now an example with CCI Mini-mag:



And here is the round:



This is very frustrating. Before shooting last night, the rifle and mags had been cleaned thoroughly and all lube removed. I then put only the lube that was required. This has made no change at all.

The other thing I don't understand is these magazines are not all the same age, so they have not been subject to the same amount of wear. I have one original SIG magazine and I have two Black Dog magazines. I've been charting exactly how many rounds have been fired using each magazine from day 1.

Here is the round total by magazine as it stands now:

Original SIG mag: 4475
Black Dog mag 1: 870
Black Dog mag 2: 1169

Here is the round total by magazine, prior to when all this jamming started:

Original SIG mag: 4225
Black Dog mag 1: 650
Black Dog mag 2: 1079

If this was a magazine wear issue I would expect to have fewer jams with the Black Dog mags, but this isn't the case, it happens with all three mags...

Hi Swiss

My mags don't do that, the round always comes to the top, the follower does not hang up. Also, I am having this issue with one original Sig mag and two Black Dog mags.

Update: tonight I tried some tape on one of the magazines to reduce play in the magwell. The tape worked fine but this did not solve the problem. In fact the problem is worse, cannot get three rounds shot in a row.
Thinking of sending the rifle and the mags to SIG.

Mag catch loose, letting the mags sit a hair lower in the magwell?

Click to expand...

It can't be that because it jams if fired from the bench, resting on the mag also.

It is a mystery for sure. I am going to take it apart one more time, clean it and photograph all the parts.
Not sure how I can check the extractor tension, any tips on that?

All guesses are appreciated

It looks okay to me, took the bolt out and attached a round, it stays even when inverted. I gave it a small shake and it stays. Took some pictures of the bolt face and extractor area:

Here is anther curious thing. Before this spate of chamber jams, I would from time to time experience a failure to extract, where the case was caught by the bolt at the breech. As this new jam has come in, that old extract issue has gone away. I don't know if that is significant.
Have a look at this spreadsheet, and you will see what I mean:

https://www.yousendit.com/download/TEhWd0VNNnk4NVUwTWNUQw

(If anyone wants to use it, feel free. I can make a different version available if you have an older version of Excel)

I am going to bump this because I want to know if anyone else is having a similar issue with their SIG522.
My rifle is still with the distributor, and they have subsequently received another 7 rifles in with jamming issues (not certain if the symptoms are the same, he couldn't tell me details).
He is asking SIG in the US if there is a bad batch of 522s.
In the meantime I would like to hear from SIG522 owners who have at least 6000 rounds through the rifle: how has it been going?

I'm having a very similar problem. Rifle has a 2012 date sticker on the box. I presume yours came from Garlands? Did they sort it eventually?

Click to expand...

They did sort it eventually, and I use the word "eventually" literally. I only got the rifle back on the last day of June this year.

They replaced the recoil spring guide rod and that seems to have done the trick, however the rifle has not had a lot of rounds through it since I got it back. It has had 871 rounds through it with four different types of ammo and there have been only 3 failures. One was a stuck mag follower (no fault of the rifle) and I had two failures the last time I was at the range where the empty case was not ejected from the breech and was caught by the bolt at the same time that a new round was being chambered.
I suspect the fault here is a really dirty rifle, it hadn't been cleaned for 400 rounds at least and the magazines hadn't been cleaned ever (these are three new mags).

I am really annoyed with Garlands because they smashed the two magazines I sent with the rifle (one original SIG mag and one Black Dog mag) and they claimed they arrived broken. However they only made the claim about a month before the rifle was sent back, and I had been in touch with them before that time to discuss extractor issues etc. One guy on the phone even suggested I had packed them broken, that I had sent broken mags with the gun...
I had photos of the case contents before it was shipped and you can clearly see the mags are fine. If they had arrived broken, I would have heard about it when I checked with them after the bag arrived, that all the contents were okay.

Then they tried to say the mags were damaged by Parcelforce (on the return journey), and I should claim the damage from them (which is inviting fraud, since Garlands told me the mags were broken before they shipped the rifle).

They left the red dot on, draining the battery.

And to top it all off, they sent the rifle to the wrong address, it went to an editor of a shooting magazine. Unfortunately he opened the case and tried to tidy up the plastic bits from the broken mags and also a shattered CD case which contained a CD with all the fault logs and photos of the rifle failures on it.

I therefore can't sue Garlands because the case contents as seen by the club president and myself on initial opening were not in the same configuration as they were when they left Garlands.

In summary I would have to say you will probably get terrible service form Garlands and if there is any damage done whilst the rifle is there, you can bet they will evade, deflect and dodge any responsibility for it!

I had to buy three new mags: an original SIG 10 rounder and two CMMG 25 rounders. These magazines have performed very well with the new guide rod.

Black Dog has recently switched to metal or nylon feed lips that are replaceable. Contact them, they will warranty your original Black Dog mags and allow you to upgrade to the newer metal lips model for $5 per magazine. I had a fair number of my first generation Black Dog mags develop cracks in the feed lips, they let me update them all at once instead of waiting for the remainder to also fail.

Click to expand...

Thanks Wally, that's good to know. As a coincidence I emailed someone at Black Dog yesterday asking about the billet aluminium mags, as I would like those for gallery shooting. The web store says they are out of stock and I want to know when they will be back because I want them!

That's the standard Garlands strategy: blame the mags!
How many rounds have you fired through the rifle?

My failures weren't dependent on ammo at all. These are the rounds I fired before the gun went back to Garlands (I had 42 failures and 27 of those were within one or two weeks).

CCI Mini-Mag 5185
Eley Sport 50
Eley Tenex 10
Lapua Midas M 310
Remington Thunderbolt 90
Remington Viper 90
RWS R50 20
RWS Target Rifle 440
Gecko LRN 4
RWS Match Rifle 10
CCI AR Tactical 265
Federal American Eagle 40
Federal Game-Shok 30

I now use almost exclusively CCI mini mag, unless I am using the moderator in which case I switch to Eley Sport or RWS Target, so I can fire without ear muffs.

The CCI AR tactical wasn't as good as the CCI Minimag, groups were not as tight.

Here's the post-Garlands spreadsheet (feel free to use that for your own reliability log):

https://www.hightail.com/download/OGhmZm1Td0lCMTd2WnNUQw

If you need to shoot without ear muffs I suggest Eley sport + a moderator (you'll need to get a moderator with 1/2 x 28 threads). Mine is an ASE Utra rimfire which you can get from Jackson Rifles for around £80.