Montana Gold .45 ACP OAL?

[jazzman007]

Hi Everyone,

I'm looking for input on OAL for Montana Gold 200gr JFP bullets in a .45 ACP. I shoot a Springfield XD45 4" and, after many failed attempts, found these bullets to feed nice and smoothly. My initial testing was with 1.185", which I found simply by incrementally seating it deeper until it dropped into the removed barrel smoothly.

Does this sound like a reasonable way to determine OAL on my gun? With 5.0 and 5.2 gr of Unique, it wouldn't consistently eject - 5.4 gr ejected perfectly. I've now got a box of 1000 of these and a few hundred brass to load up for USPSA shooting and wanted to get some input before I crank them out.

Thanks!
John

 

[Walkalong]

Looks like 1.185 is the longest you can load that bullet in your XD barrel. Good going there. We've seen several threads here where loads failed to chamber in XD's and all that was wrong was too long an O.A.L. Seems XD's have short throats as posted by smart folks here. So, you done good there.

I always use to load a new to me bullet at an O.A.L. that I thought would work, and then load some longer and some shorter. 20 each is plenty. Then I would shoot them and tweak from there. I can usually get real close these days based on experience with many bullet styles.

Since you have fired that O.A.L. with excellent feeding and found the minimum powder charge to get good cycling, then you are indeed ready to load them in bulk.

You sound like a seasoned pro.

Welcome to THR

 

[Morgan]

My standard OAL for the 200gr Montana Golds is 1.175. Due to the shape of the bullet, they engage the rifling sooner than the 230gr, which I load to 1.250.

 

[tac_driver]

I reload the MG 185gr. JHP's to 1.200 for my Glock 21SF it feeds flawlessly now. Tried the barrel thing and had some FTE's. I would say between 1.230 and 1.200 runs best in that pistol with those rounds.