Starfire .40 jamming - Help!

[LevelHead]

Got me a used Starfire in .40. Wonderful little gun. I knew nothing about them but the price was right.

I bought two boxes of Blazers, and they jammed about 20-30% of the time. Every time it was the same thing. The flat nose would hang up on the feed ramp. A slight nudge on the slide and it would ride home.

Is this common? There are no obvious defects on the feed ramp, and the gun suffered no other failures. Cleaning it did not help. It *seemed* more common on a full mag - first two rounds, though it did happen on the last round once or twice.

I'll try regular ball next, which I'm pretty sure will solve my problem, but if flat-nosed cartridges don't work, I don't have much hope for hollowpoints.

Your thoughts are welcome.

 

[armoredman]

First, a Firestar, maybe? Feed ramp polishing would be the ticket. Take it to local GS, and ask for throat and polish, and you should be good.

 

[PCRCCW]

Ill go you one better Dave............needs a new recoil spring. The one its got is beyond toast and cant strip the mags properly. The Feedramp will help also.

Shoot well.

 

[LevelHead]

UPDATE

Yes - it's a Firestar 40. I confused it with the Guild Starfire IV guitar -sigh- memories...

I swapped out the recoil spring with one from Wolff. No change. I'm wondering if it's the mag...

The gun jams much more on a full mag than on a low one. I can't force it to fail except with a full mag, but then sometime it won't fail at all. Sprint seems fine, so I'm inclined to think it's not that.

Here's a question for you all: The Ejector is loose. It wobbles from side to side. In fact when re-assembling after cleaning sometimes I have to move the Ejector to get the slide to fit. Bad? Doesnt' sound good.

I've only ever owned Sigs, Kahrs and HKs so this is a new world for me. It's my tinkering gun.

Anyway it's off to the smith if I can't figure it out.

 

[Drakejake]

There can be many causes and cures for jamming: gun needs to be cleaned and lubed, bad mag, weak recoil spring, operator error (insufficent recoil resistance), bad extractor, ammo that isn't suited to handgun. Try some other ammo. It is common for some guns to jam on certain types of ammo. Make sure to keep you arms straight and stiff when firing to resist recoil and let the slide do its job. Get some fine sandpaper and polish the feed ramp, but just do a little. Take the mag apart and clean and lube it. Some of these fixes should work.

Drakejake