How can I tell if my mag spring is kinked? ( a little lengthy sorry)

[MrIzhevsk]

Hi all,

I've got a Jericho (baby eagle) in .45 and I've got two magazines with it so far. I've noticed that one of the magazines is a little different in a couple ways than the other.

For one, it is a little harder to load. With the other, I can load all 10 with just my index finger to push the follower down and a little extra pressure from the next cartridge being pushed in. With the magazine in question, I have to put it on a surface or into my hip and jam my thumb down into it once I get to 7 or 8 previous loaded rounds. Next thing is it seems to be a bit stickier to load, even with a very thin layer of molly paste. Another small thing is the small plug at the base of the magazine that fits into the plastic cap on the bottom doesn't sit quite as flush as the other. I've disassembled the magazines and the springs themselves look fairly identical.

Now I haven't gotten to shoot it much, and I've only had one range session to test for reliability and it seemed to be a moot point as i had one or two FTL with the 'good' magazine. The failure that occurs is the round jumps high above the feed ramp and gets stuck into the hood of the barrel. Does this sound like something that a kinked magazine spring would cause?

The second best comparison I can think of would be from the guys who own EAA witnesses in .45 acp since nobody that owns a Jericho ever seems to pipe up these days . So has anybody ever had a .45 witness or a .45 jericho that had some magazine discrepancies? What were they and how did you solve them?

Thanks for reading,
STu

 

[MrIzhevsk]

Thanks Doc, The magazine shells internally are glossy smooth so I don't think any sanding is necessary. I do recall, however, that my father insisted on putting "molly paste" on the insides of the magazines to ease loading them a bit (they were VERY stiff to load to 10 rounds but I attributed this to them being new). They have since become much easier to load. The molly paste idea was actually in place before the gun was ever actually fired so I'll see shortly if it contributed at all to the unreliability of the weapon. I noticed that when the stuff was first put in it would get this black goop all over the rounds. I would periodically clean them off bit by bit and I think reliability got better, so we'll see if this works.

Thanks again,
STu

 

[Runningman]

Magazines should have no lube in them. Clean all the moly out of them and make sure springs are in the proper direction.

 

[GLOOB]

Magazines should have no lube in them. Clean all the moly out of them and make sure springs are in the proper direction.

I've heard this said before, many times. Then, there are always a few people that take the other side. The guys at Pro-Mag certainly seem to disagree.

Upon inspection of 2 brand new Pro-Mags for a Bersa, I found white moly grease in both of them. There was just enough to notice in one mag. The other had a huge glob suspended on the spring that must have been a heaping teaspoon.

I'm sure the glob was an error. But the point is, they appear to be shipping their mags with grease on the springs.

 

[MrIzhevsk]

but should my magazine springs really make that krinkling sound when I load them? I'm assuming its because its a double stack or something as I've never heard this sound when loading 1911 magazines.