Live round stuck in chamber

[Praxidike]

What would cause a live round to get stuck in a chamber? I recently purchased a XD Mod 2 in 9mm, and went out with a couple of co-workers who where in the market for a carry gun. On the first magazine, the XD had a live round jammed in so tight that it took 2 range masters and a brass mallet to get it out.

I was shooting Walmart brand Tula BrassMax ammo which functioned fine in my 3 other 9mm handguns.

Any thoughts?

 

[Odd Job]

Before the cartridge got stuck, did you attempt to fire it? (was the primer struck)

 

[ugaarguy]

My guesses are of any of the following:

If you didn't clean the gun first you may have had oil/preservative in the chamber; the chamber could be slightly undersized, the chamber could be rough (not fully polished / finished), the brass may not have been sized properly giving you a round with a case that was slightly over sized.

Any combination of those could give you a tolerance stack that caused the round to become so tightly stuck.

 

[M-Cameron]

i was doing some training about a month ago.....and the EXACT same situation happened to me with my G17.

what happened was the primer in the Tula ammo backed out of the case.....and when the firing pin struck the primer, it pierced it, and got stuck in the primer, locking the slide shut, with the live round still in the chamber.

had to use the might of god to rack the slide back and remove the stuck round.

 

[ugaarguy]

After M-Cameron's post, can you clarify if this was a failure to extract while manual operating the slide, or if the slide was stuck shut as M-Cameron describes.

 

[dacavasi]

I had the same thing happen with an XD-45 Service model a few years back. Slide was stuck shut on a live round, would not fire, and it was a herculean effort to get it open, took about 20 minutes. Inspection of the subject round showed no obvious issues such as a backed-out primer or other. Sent it back to SA, and they replaced the ejector (not sure if this was the cause or the result of the failure). The only thing I could figure at the time was that I was shooting some reloads where I had experimented with slightly different COALs. One of the longest of those, which was 1.245", was the round that caused the failure. This is well below the max length specified in most reloading manuals (1.275"), and I was using a calibrated and verified Mitutoyo caliper, so my measurements were not suspect. Went back to shooting only 1.2" COAL loads and never saw that happen again. The longer loads fed with no issues in a Glock 21, Colt 1911, and Taurus PT145, but for some reason the XD could not, would not, digest them. Not saying this is your exact problem, but suspiciously similar.

 

[Praxidike]

I

I had the same thing happen with an XD-45 Service model a few years back. Slide was stuck shut on a live round, would not fire, and it was a herculean effort to get it open, took about 20 minutes. Inspection of the subject round showed no obvious issues such as a backed-out primer or other. Sent it back to SA, and they replaced the ejector (not sure if this was the cause or the result of the failure). The only thing I could figure at the time was that I was shooting some reloads where I had experimented with slightly different COALs. One of the longest of those, which was 1.245", was the round that caused the failure. This is well below the max length specified in most reloading manuals (1.275"), and I was using a calibrated and verified Mitutoyo caliper, so my measurements were not suspect. Went back to shooting only 1.2" COAL loads and never saw that happen again. The longer loads fed with no issues in a Glock 21, Colt 1911, and Taurus PT145, but for some reason the XD could not, would not, digest them. Not saying this is your exact problem, but suspiciously similar.

Same thing here. We were shooting factory Tula ammo, and he was able to fire 3 rounds before it jammed. We didnt see any obvious deformities once they got the round out, and that ammo did OK with everything else we shot... I might just send it back in, and hopefully they'll replace the barrel and the ejector.

This was the second time I took it to the range. Had a couple of light strikes (could had been the ammo), and a couple failures to go into battery while chambering the next round durring the first range trip with different ammo...

 

[Praxidike]

Before the cartridge got stuck, did you attempt to fire it? (was the primer struck)

It jammed after firing a round and trying to load a ne round into the chamber. The primer wasn't struck and the round didn't appear to be deformed.

 

[AZAndy]

I have an otherwise nifty Citadel 1911 that did the exact same thing, so I'm watching for answers here. I was shooting reloads which do fine in both a Colt and a Ruger, but maybe it's an OAL issue particular to the gun as suggested above. How I do love a mystery!

 

[judgedelta]

https://forums.1911forum.com/showthread.php?t=508883

 

[mgmorden]

I've seen it with reloads that were out of spec - actually had it happen a few times to myself before I started case-gauging all of my ammo (no trouble since that, though I now end up throwing out 1-3% of my reloads that fail the gauge)

 

[iagbarrb]

XD as well as Glocks need good quality ammo. Otherwise you will have problems as the one you had. You also have to be very carefull reloading if you reload for this guns. S&W pistols that use a similar system will not have this problem so often. If you like your XD, buy better ammo. This is only my experience with glocks and XD. I am not an expert.

 

[BearBrimstone]

XD as well as Glocks need good quality ammo. Otherwise you will have problems as the one you had. You also have to be very carefull reloading if you reload for this guns. S&W pistols that use a similar system will not have this problem so often. If you like your XD, buy better ammo. This is only my experience with glocks and XD. I am not an expert.

The Glocks and XD's that I have owned have never had any issue with cheap ammunition. In fact, I rarely put anything but the cheapest steel cased ammo through my Glock 21 and have never once had an issue.

 

[Schwing]

I had this issue a few years ago in my XD .45. It turned out that my reloads were about .003 too wide at the case mouth. I had flared them a bit much and not removed the flare enough.,

I never was clear as too why it was causing the issue but removing the flare fixed the issue. I feel your pain though, it was quite a project getting that round out.

 

[orionengnr]

Wife had this happen in her XD9 subcompact. Primer was just a smidge high, and that's all it took to tie it up good. Took some serious smacking to get it loose.

I had this happen with my Kahr PM45, but only with certain ammo. Seems the chamber was a wee bit short, and if the COAL was long enough...bingo.