Leaving P-mags Loaded

[RetiredUSNChief]

Amazing.

As an engineer, I'd like to point out something:

If a product is designed to hold a certain capacity, then it's OK to load it to that capacity.

People hash this out all the time, back and forth, and it's not necessary.

Load. The. Magazines.

Load them and use them or load them and store them. It does not matter BECAUSE THEY ARE DESIGNED TO WORK THIS WAY.

As stated above, magazines are consumable products, too. And they can be repaired or replaced as necessary.

You're ONLY going to cause damage/premature failure if you over compress them...and frankly that's hard to do without modifying the magazine followers to show you to physically insert more rounds into the magazine box.

Your wear and tear on magazines is due to cyclic stresses...loading and unloading/shooting. And they will last a ridiculous number of years doing this.

Might just as well debate only shooting your guns twice a year with lead bullets so you don't wear them out the way people go on about this.

 

[Drail]

Mr. Vickers and I agree 100% on magazine duty. He has flat worn equipment out for many many years and knows what happens. He also had some awfully good Instructors and holds an Engineering degree.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

Mr. Vickers and I agree 100% on magazine duty. He has flat worn equipment out for many many years and knows what happens. He also had some awfully good Instructors and holds an Engineering degree.

Mr. Vickers has "flat worn equipment out" because he USES the equipment. Not because he loads up his equipment and lets them sit on a shelf for months or years at a time.

 

[mcb]

Mr. Vickers has "flat written equipment out" because he USES the equipment. Not because he loads up his equipment and lets them sit on a shelf for months or years at a time.

Agreed this is one of those things you just sort of have to do a few times yourself and get a feel for how robust, or not, some pieces of hardware is. This is one of the big benefits of competitive shooting. If your equipment is not going to measure up to hard use competition is going to reveal that in short order.

I have put tens of thousand of rounds down range in competition and I have dropped magazines on concrete, stone/gravel, grass, mud etc. I have accidentally stomped on and/or kicked my own magazines, I have had RO's and scorers accidently stomp on my magazines. It happens when you use them that much and that hard. Most of the time the survive, every once in awhile they fail. When you go wrist deep in the muck to fish out your magazine that you just accidently stomped into the sloppiest part of that muddy-wet stage during a running reloads. You take that poor mud filled magazine back after the stage and find a deep puddle of rain water to rinse as much of the muck out as you can and then tear it apart and use your magazine brush (you do have a magazine brush in you range bag right?) and a rag (or napkins you swiped from the concession stand) to get most of the rest of the mud out. You then reassemble, and use it, without issue, on the next stage of the match. Those are the incidents that lets a shooter start to get a feel for just how tough many magazines are.

I am not saying you want to use your match magazines for you CCW or home defense gun. But if your buy a P-mag (or any magazine) and are running the cowboy shat out of it at your matches you start to gain confidence that the ones that have not been abusing that are sitting with the home-defense gun are going to work just fine if god forbid you called on to use them for real.

 

[Walkalong]

A cheap no name mag? Dunno, but I would be comfortable loading P-Mags one round short and leaving them that way until needed. I wouldn't load every single one I had, just a few to be ready. I don't really expect to need ready a bunch of loaded mags, so only have a couple of them loaded that stay that way.

In general I don't worry about this sort of thing.

 

[herrwalther]

I have 7 first gen Pmags. Long before they were granted a patent. And they were going for $40 each. I bought them before I deployed. They got used then and quite a bit since. Sometimes they will spend 1 to 3 years loaded while I use my GI mags with the enhanced followers. My Pmags always still work. Even when I have had GI aluminum mags fail.

 

[DustyGmt]

The regular pmags all come with covers.

magpul sells the cheaper MOE line that does not come with covers. Look them up and you can see the difference in pricing

I know there are the cheaper Gen2 Pmags that say MOE, are the Gen3's not considered an MOE product. I always just thought of them in terms of Gen M2 and Gen M3 Pmags. I bought a bunch of the Gen2's when they were pretty cheap and only have a handful of M3's. I have never had an issue with the M2's. Good mags. The M3's are the marines new official mag now correct? They're not using USGI metal mags anymore are they?

I have a bunch of USGI's, they have always worked, not fun to unload manually compared to a Pmag but that's rarely a concern.

 

[hso]

wondering how they respond to being left loaded

Are you referring to springs (they don't take a set if left loaded), or feed lips with the pressure from the loaded magazine?

 

[DMW1116]

I was specifically concerned with the feed lips. This is not an HD rifle, so the mags dont need to be loaded and ready. I cannot imagine firing a 308 inside a building. Plans A through ZZ have all failed at that point.

 

[Charlie98]

I know there are the cheaper Gen2 Pmags that say MOE, are the Gen3's not considered an MOE product. I always just thought of them in terms of Gen M2 and Gen M3 Pmags. I bought a bunch of the Gen2's when they were pretty cheap and only have a handful of M3's.

Hopefully, someday... someone will author the 'Definitive Guide to Magpul Magazines, by Generation.'

I just looked through my stash... I must have mostly Gen2's, I'm guessing... because they don't specifically state it on the side. I have a few Gen3's, so marked. I have one or two with NSN's. Oh, well... they all work, and that's what matters.

 

[DustyGmt]

Hopefully, someday... someone will author the 'Definitive Guide to Magpul Magazines, by Generation.'

I just looked through my stash... I must have mostly Gen2's, I'm guessing... because they don't specifically state it on the side.

Hmm. Maybe you have an even earlier generation. I have like 40 Gen2's and they all say M2 on the side on the upper half of the mag. They also have a manufacture date on them too, which is kind of different.

 

[armoredman]

None of the Gen 2s I have seen for sale ALL over the place, (even the local pawn shop has a huge stash of them), have covers. The only reason I would buy the more expensive Gen 3 right now is to run in a CavArms lower which I don't have anyway. The Gen 2s seem to work quite well in my FrankenAR.

 

[DustyGmt]

None of the Gen 2s I have seen for sale ALL over the place, (even the local pawn shop has a huge stash of them), have covers. The only reason I would buy the more expensive Gen 3 right now is to run in a CavArms lower which I don't have anyway. The Gen 2s seem to work quite well in my FrankenAR.

Maybe I have more Gen 3's than I think I do because I have a bunch of covers. I like the M2's. I trust every magpul product I own. Their drum while not terribly practical, is still a fantastic drum. Everything they put out is quality and they are exactly the kind of company I want to have my money. When VT halted sales of standard capacity magazines Magpul arrived at the capitol with a truck and passed out mags for free to all. Probably goes without saying, they have me as a loyal customer for life.

The fact that all their products are 100% reliable is a bonus, lol.

 

[Charlie98]

...and they had the guts to tell Colorado to take a flying leap, and relocate to Texas when Colorado went all anti.

 

[valnar]

I don't buy the argument for "load them up" to capacity for long term storage. I don't care what your degree is. Proof is in the pudding. There is a known issue with the polymer lips and it's widely reported.

I fix the problem with belt and suspenders. I don't buy PMags - only Lancer L5AWM. I also down load each 30rd mag I have by a couple rounds for good measure.

 

[mcb]

I don't buy the argument for "load them up" to capacity for long term storage. I don't care what your degree is. Proof is in the pudding. There is a known issue with the polymer lips and it's widely reported.

I fix the problem with belt and suspenders. I don't buy PMags - only Lancer L5AWM. I also down load each 30rd mag I have by a couple rounds for good measure.

The cap fixes the "widely reported" issue with feed lip creep.

 

[valnar]

The cap fixes the "widely reported" issue with feed lip creep.

View attachment 973752

Perhaps. But that is a band-aid, not a structural fix. But yes, it'll do the trick.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

I don't buy the argument for "load them up" to capacity for long term storage. I don't care what your degree is. Proof is in the pudding. There is a known issue with the polymer lips and it's widely reported.

I fix the problem with belt and suspenders. I don't buy PMags - only Lancer L5AWM. I also down load each 30rd mag I have by a couple rounds for good measure.

You can disregard a person's degree, experience, and knowledge in engineering, but that doesn't change anything.

What you're talking about is a design flaw and working around it. We're not talking about design flaws.

If you have a defective alternator on your car that won't carry full load, you replace it. If it's a problem with a particular brand, you get another brand. If you continue to driving your vehicle around without operating heavy electrical loads because of this defect, then you're "living with the problem" caused by the defect.

If a particular magazine has a defect, the real solution is replacement of them with magazines which are not defective. EXACTLY what you have done, in fact, with the purchase of Lancer L5AWM. The fact that you can "live" with the problem by not fully loading them for extended periods is beside the point.

As to the "cap"...yes, that does not fix the magazine design. But with respect to what people are talking about with respect to storage it is perfectly suitable. There are lots of things which are designed to be stored on one condition/configuration and used in another condition/configuration.

And I don't think this is a problem for fully loaded magazines which are maintained inserted in their firearm. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

 

[Charlie98]

It's kind of odd... but almost anything, anywhere has a shortcoming. You know the feed lips on a USGI aluminum mag aren't going to bend... but they have other problems. There is a possibility the Magpul lips will deflect over time if left loaded without the cap... but, generally, no other problems. As far as spring weakness, take your pick... you do what you think is necessary. As one poster mentioned, I leave my loaded mags downloaded 1 round so I can get a positive seat and lock in the magwell, I do the same with my M1a magazines, but I am not at all worried about spring deterioration for a modern magazine left loaded, and I find it unlikely I could ever wear one out from use cycles.

 

[Sirclintler1]

Do you have any data to back this up? I have beat the hell out of a fair number of 20rd 308 PMags and never found the need to down load them.

Magazines are a consumables, use them and repair or replace as needed. I am not going to down load a magazine to try to eek a few extra uses out of them. Load'em up. Put the caps on them if you are storing. The feed lips are the weakest part of a PMag and the cap protects those.

I agree with MCB, mags are consumables IMO, have plenty, use it once and try again if you don't loose it in battel, they are cheap enough, or carry some parts in your pack. The time it takes it load a 30/40 rd mag far exceeds the cost of new mags

 

[Hugger-4641]

I've got some 30rd p-mags and Mission First 5.56 mags that have been fully loaded for about 6 years now and cycled periodically with no problems. I wouldn't be afraid to load them up and store them.

 

[bassjam]

Magpul sells those covers to protect from impacts and dust and they don't make any claims that they are needed to prevent any sort of creep of the feed lips.

https://magpul.com/firearm-accessories/pmags/pmagimpact-dustcover-genm2moe-3pack.html

Like others have said as well I've also had seven AR15 pmags loaded with 30 rounds for 6 years now, no dust covers on any of them. Each range trip 2 or 3 of them get emptied and then filled back up and stored like that until next time; no issues so far. I'll try to report if I start seeing failures but I see no reason they shouldn't last decades kept loaded. The biggest downfall plastic will can compared to aluminum mags is the plastic will start to degrade over time if left outside full time in the sun due to UV exposure. I'm sure Magpul has addressed this though since these mags aren't designed for kitten glove handling. Different polymers are more resistant to UV rays and additives can be added as well.

 

[daniel craig]

Are you concerned about the springs?

From what I’ve researched most decently made springs aren’t worn down or made less effective by compression. It’s what they’re designed for. Most are made less effective by stretching beyond their max or by constant compression and extension over time. So the whole “you’re going to ruin your spring keeping them loaded” is a myth.

As for the longevity of the feed lips under constant pressure....they’re polymer if I remember correctly so they should be pretty resistant to deformation.

With that said, I see no reason why a PMag would be impacted by long term storage unless moisture was allowed to enter and rust the spring. In that case, load it and vacuum seal it with a desiccant pack if you’re really worried about moisture.

 

[gyp_c2]

https://www.vickerstactical.com/magazines.html

Actually MS Vickers always says what he means.
He was referring to 30 rd aluminum magazines.
I believe Magpul 30 rd mags were designed from the ground up to hold 30 rds.
I could be wrong but I seem to remember that subject coming up in a Magpul sponsored class a few years back.
Yer' mags, yer choice.
I keep 7 fully loaded. The rest I proof test and unload.
Have no idea about 7.62 mags from Magpul.
I bet they'd be happy to answer any questions tho'.