Colt 1911 Failure to cycle unfired rounds

[Dire]

I have three series 70 Colt 1911's, two combat commanders and one commanding officer's model, all of which are recently experiencing problems ejecting a live round when I am unloading the weapon.

The appearance is that the ejection port on the slide is not long enough, but I know better.

I have tried to determine what has changed on these weapon, which have worked reliably for years:
1. I have some new magazines (Wilson and mcCormick), but have switched back to colt mags to no avail.
2. I have tried different ammo, suspecting that certain manuf. ammo may have a greater overall length. No better results with 230 gr. ball.
3. Lastly, all have been worked on in the last year by the same gunsmith, but I don't want to cast dispersions. I have wondered about extractor tension, ejectors (which haven't been worked on to my knowledge)

I am not a gunsmith or a 1911 expert, but I suspect that there is a simple answer since three weapons are suddenly different.

Lastly, I have read posts on this site forever, but never posted. If I am in the wrong place on the site, please forgive and point me in the right direction. Thanks.

 

[earlthegoat2]

If you have never done a good cleaning of the top end now would be the time. Remove the firing pin and extractor and clean well.

Has any alterations been done besides the magazines?

It sounds like an extractor problem. Usually is with most 1911 failures.

The extractor will get caked up with gunk. It would explain why it has worked for years and just now is starting to have a problem. The extractor is not getting a big enough bit on the rim.

Are you pulling the slide back with some authority to eject the live round?

I reread and see you have 2 commanders and an officers, all of which have extended ejectors. I have heard of relieving the front of the ejection port as being a pretty standard solution. I have never done it myself though. Maybe shortening the ejector would work too. They are cheap enough to replace if that is not the problem.

 

[Dire]

Thanks for the reply.

I don't think cleaning is the problem since the issue is with three pistols and I have removed the extractors and cleaned them. It could be an improper extractor tensioning by the gunsmith (whose work is in common with the three pistols in recent history).

In fact, the gunsmith attempted to install a Wilson Bulletproof extractor (that I provided) on the Colt Commanding Officers model, and sent it back with a note that it was "out of specification". I was skeptical, but thought that anyone disqualifying the machining of a Wilson component must really know his P's and Q's.

I am suspecting an extractor tensioning issue because the gunsmith is in common with all of the pistols, but I sent one back to him and he indicated he tested it with "dead weights" (vs. a digital scale which might rule out a calibration issue). I'm not sure what he is using for his tensioning standard though.

 

[earlthegoat2]

A different ejector profile may also be a solution.

When you are getting these ejection failures, have you dropped the mag out first?

Reason being there will be slightly different ejection characteristics when ejecting with a full mag and ejecting with no mag. The ejector can be the cause of this.

There are many reasons this could be occuring. It is one of those things that will require a systematic approach to fixing.

I cannot help but be skeptical of your gunsmith too. A Wilson extractor out of spec? Stranger things have happened. The smith worked on all three and now all three have problems. That woudl be the logical place to start. Whatever it was that was worked on by the smith.

 

[Jim Watson]

Did he change ejectors?
Ejectors on the short guns are already longer than a full size 1911 and can affect clearing a loaded round.

 

[Drail]

Extended ejectors on an older original style Colt (pre "enhanced") will cause this problem. It is pretty common. You can either change back to a standard ejector or do what Colt did back in the 90s - open up the port with a relief cut in the front. I would change out the ejector if this is to be a CCW. If it's going to be a range only gun I wouldn't worry about it as long as it feeds, fires and ejects 100%. If you work on a lot of Colt 1911s you will see this. The extractor could be hanging onto the round just a little longer than it should and the round is not starting out the port soon enough.

 

[Dire]

Thanks. I'll check into the suggestions, since all of the weapons in question are decades old. I have attempted more elaborate replies to the above posts, but two failed, so I apologize.

 

[rcmodel]

It is common for guns with unmodified ejection ports.

Unless you really yank the slide back hard, the bullet tip will hang on the ejection port edge.

Even GI 1911's do it with mil-spec 230 FMJ.

Maybe you have Wilson shock-Buff's in the guns?
That takes 1/8" off full slide travel, and can contribute to the case not hitting the ejector as hard to knock it out when cycled by hand.

Or maybe you are just getting older & weaker like the rest of us, and aren't pulling the slide back as fast & hard as you used too?

rc

 

[ekgandj]

The easiest way to test the extractor, put a round underneath it and it should be snug enough the round does not fall out of the slide. But you should not have to really push it in, it should slide in with a little pressure and then stay. If that is what you find most likely it is you ejector.


Sent from iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[BBBBill]

Shock buffs? And I thought a "Commanding Officer" model was an S80 variant. Don't recall those from the pre 80's era. The "out of spec" extractor makes me think it was a pre 80 extractor for an 80 series gun.

 

[Dire]

I'll have to check the series on the Commanding Officer's model...I think you might be right because I had to educate myself on the assembly/disassembly of one of the pistols because it was new to me.

I have sent the Commanding Officer's model back to the gunshop, who will send it back to the smith. We found that he uses dummy rounds for testing his work because he does the work in a condo. We also found that the length of dummy rounds is significantly less than any rounds we compared it to, which could explain why the problem wasn't obvious to him. The dummy rounds manually cycled fine. I'll let him look at it.

In the meantime, I have borrowed a friends Lyman digital trigger pull guage and his weigand extractor tension guage and tested the two combat commanders. One had no tension...an excessive gap between the slide.

The second combat commander measured around 27 oz.

My Goldcup, which has always functioned fine, has about 18 oz. extractor tension...so I'm going to do a little internet work to look for the correct spec. My Kuhnhausen books are elsewhere at the time, so I'm doing it the hard way.

Thanks for all the input so far.

 

[rcmodel]

SAAMI MAX length for a FMJ-RN 230 is 1.275".

They will hit the ejecton port on any mil-spec 1911 at that length.
Extractor tension has nothing at all to do with it.

rc

 

[Dire]

Thanks, RCMODEL.

I was beginning to come to the conclusion that extractor tension might not be the problem, since I couldn't seem to fix the problem with extractor swapping, tension changes, etc.

If it is the ammo, I have three different brands that don't work in three pistols. However, until recently I mostly shot surplus ball ammo...so you have me thinking again (very dangerous Maybe I dismissed the ammo too soon.

Its time to pull out the caliper, try more ammo and continue looking.

Of course, I'm sitting at my computer wondering why anyone would build a pistol with physical dimensions that couldn't physically accommodate ammo that is within specifications. How silly! There's either a politician involved or the ammo specs were written after the gun design.

 

[Dire]

OK, haven't pulled out the caliper and begun a technical review of all ammo lengths that I can put my hands on, but the ammo that hasn't manually cycled in the three pistols in question works just peachy in my 1918 mfg. US ARMY Colt ....with a very old military magazine.

This might tend to rule out new (long) ammo with older pistol specs., but I'm just guessing here. (P.S. I didn't fire Cor-Bon through this 1918 mfg. pistol, so we don't really need to go there...)

I'm going to bed tonight with my two Jerry Kuhnhausen books, but my world is in limbo. I have always taken solace in the notion that if chicken little came running through the room and the sky began falling, my .45's would be there to comfort me...now I'm on a mission to learn about things they figured out in 1911.

I know you guys have way too much good information for anyone's own good, so I'm going to have to let you teach me a thing or two. What's this ejector/extractor profile thing as it relates to this problem...or any other suggestions regarding a methodical troubleshooting procedure?

I suspect I might not be the first to have this type of problem, so excuse my late entry into the arena!

 

[Dire]

Reply to Jim Watson: At least one ejector was changed, but not on all pistols as far as I know. A wilson ejector was sent back as being "out of spec" and replaced with one he had on hand.

Reply to BBBBill: No shock Buff or any other change to the original recoil spring/guide has been introduced.

Reply to ekgandj: Thanks. Tension was all over the place when I tried to measure it with the tools at hand... I played around with two of the pistol with different extractors from different pistol...which tension tested on both sides of what was in the pistol...and the problem didn't change.

There seemed to be a lot of distance from the back of the cartridge to the face of slide, but that is my impression...not based on any vast experience. Is there a critical dimension there?

All ejectors remain unaltered from original factory.

 

[bbuddtec]

That's food for thought there... apparently, having all of your weapons "serviced" left you with no reliable weapons... something I will always keep in mind now

 

[rcmodel]

Let me make one more suggestion.
Take out the recoil spring and put the gun back together.
Now try ejecting loaded rounds through it.

Bet it works now doesn't it?

If so, you just ain't putting enough mustard on the slide when you try to eject loaded rounds with the recoil spring fighting you.

The only fix for that is to pull harder & faster.

rc

 

[Dire]

I'll try it w/o the recoil spring tonight. Thanks for the suggestion.

Correction on earlier post in response to Jim Watson...ejectors were all unchanged, at least one extractor was changed, but not all (to my knowledge).

 

[Dire]

Tried w/o the recoil spring and there seemed to be a glimmer of hope, but it quickly faded.

I went back into the returned parts and reinstalled the original factory extractor. I checked the tension and it was light as compared to the specs. in my Jerry K. book. I increased the tension to the high 3 pound range and reinstalled...and it immediately began functioning. If I pull the slide very aggressively, there is occasionally a problem with the Chip McCormick magazine, but things are dramatically better.

The biggest difference I can see is that the extractors in the poorly functioning pistols appear to have very thin "hooks" on the extractor lip...as if the gunsmith relieved quite a bit of metal from the inside of the claw forward (the surface that contacts the cartridge rim).

I found the next best extractor (from the perspective of claw thickness that I had on hand and tensioned/installed it on the second pistol and it is manually cycling well about 75% of the time, but it seems to do better with older magazines...and the claw of this particular extractor has been relieved some.

Is there a reason to relieve this dimension on an extractor?

Neither seem to like a very aggressive rearward pull on the slide at this time and the magazines vary the likelihood of the problem with both pistols preferring the colt magazines in the pistol's current configuration.

Anyway, there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel and it appears that it might be several variables like extractor tension, extractor "claw" thickness and and some interrelationship with magazines......

or maybe I just lucked into where I am and don't have a clue how it happened!

I'll be curious what the "fix" is with the third pistol that I sent back to the gunsmith.

Any technical explanations are welcome.

 

[BullfrogKen]

Maybe you have Wilson shock-Buff's in the guns?

I'm still leaning towards your gunsmith put shock-buffs in all three when you let him work on them -

3. Lastly, all have been worked on in the last year by the same gunsmith

Are you sure you know what a shock-buff looks like when you see one?

 

[VinnAY]

Until you know and can state exactly what work has been done to your guns, its all useless trying to diagnose the problem.

Now to my hypothesis: extended ejectors were installed and you have GI high cut style ejection ports. The reason that the live round won't clear the port is because ejection is starting too early in the slide cycle, i.e., extended ejector.

Any talk of extractors I think is unrelated to your reported problem. It's well known that extended ejectors, and there are some long ones on the market produced as such for "tuning", will cause problems with live round ejection.

It's even become fashionable to modify ejection ports with a relief on the forward edge to help just this sort of problem.

Now, if that is the case, you can very simply file back (shorten) the ejector.