Ever had a weak mag spring straight from the factory?

[DaisyCutter]

I have a Glock 41 pistol and I purchased a couple spare OEM Glock mags for it last week and ran a police qualification. Today I did a proficiency shoot, and noticed one of the new mags would rattle when loaded and shaken. The rattle was from a loose cartridge. I also noticed when unloading the mag, the delivery of the cartridges was "mushy", not "snappy".

So on the way home I bought a replacement mag spring, and disassembled the mag. The week old spring was about 3/4" shorter (at rest) than the replacement. I installed the new spring and the rattle is gone.

Has anyone ever gotten a new factory mag with a weak spring? This is the first mag spring I ever replaced. I have 30 year old FAL military mags with original springs and Glock 22 duty mags from 2004 with original springs. They all work fine.

I always religiously downstack my mags one cartridge, mostly to facilitate reloads and also not overstress the spring.

I'd feel better if someone else has experienced this. Very strange this happened to a new mag. Puzzled?

EDIT: the weakly sprung mag functioned 100%. I'm just OCD about my equipment, and abhor rattles.

 

[Drail]

Like everything else , there are quality tempered steel springs and there are rejects. Sometimes the rejects make it into production only because somebody isn't paying attention. 30 year old mil spec springs are generally better quality than a lot of what gets sold today. I have always used quality aftermarket springs from Wolff (Gunsprings.com) Firearms manufacturers will often use whatever they can buy in bulk for a low price. When a stack of cartridges binds in a magazine the follower may be binding - be sure to check that also.

 

[rtz]

Contact Glock about it. That spring shouldn't have shipped out.

 

[Hangingrock]

Not a Glock but a SW99-45. S&W replaced the springs under warranty. The magazine follower would not activate the slide lock to lock the slide open after the last round in the magazine was fired. The failure to lock occurred with the magazines provided with the pistol from the factory.

 

[fastbolt]

Yep. Had it happen.

Think of it this way, when a spring maker ships out a crate of 10,000 magazine springs to a gun company, or a magazine maker/vendor, do you really think that each and every individual spring has been examined and tested as it came off the machines? Not hard to imagine that some springs might be at one end of the allowable normal tolerance spec range, but others might be at the other end, and perhaps a defective one might come along and be missed during normal QC.

I've been told by one of the gun companies how they didn't learn about a heat-treat problem with some magazine springs, they'd received from one of the their spring vendors, until assembled magazines had been shipped and were in-use by LE clients. Some of the springs weakened prematurely and caused some reported feeding stoppages in some guns. The company replaced any spring reported to be defective.

Same thing can happen with recoil springs, or the springs used in recoil spring assemblies, every now and again. (Although an "assembly" may sometimes exhibit a problem with something other than the spring, like a tube, rod, end cap, screw, etc.)

Another thing that can happen with magazines is an assembly problem. Plastic inserts or followers may not be positioned or seated correctly, or a spring may have been installed upside down and/or backwards. I've seen that a few times. I've even heard of an instance or two where 2 followers were somehow put inside a magazine body during assembly.

This is why it's prudent to check for normal function before actually putting a gun in-service, including each magazine to be used. It's quite common for it to be recommended to armorers to not only perform bench-check inspections, but to do live-fire testing whenever parts are replaced in duty weapons, including something as simple as a spring.

I like to test-fire each new magazine for my personal pistols with 25-50 rounds fired, before putting the magazine into service.

Paying attention to the operation and functioning of magazines during periodic range sessions isn't a bad idea, either, in case some particular mag spring may start to weaken sooner than expected. (Ditto recoil springs and RSA's.) Just reasonable and prudent attention to equipment operation and functioning.

 

[jmr40]

I've seen a lot of CZ's with bad springs in both the gun and magazines. It seems the problem is better than it used to be.

 

[BSA1]

Yep. On a new Colt Gold Cup none the less!