What is the most unreliable semi auto you have shot ?

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larryh1108 said:
I have a Llama .45 1911 "clone" that I'd put against any 1911 out there in the under $1000 range.
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Yeah, my dad has a 30+ years old Llama .45 ACP. It only likes round nose bullet, but many 1911s back when it was made had the same story. It will shoot round nose bullets like no one's business, which is fine with us because it is just a plinking gun anyway. We've fired 5,000+ rounds through it with maybe 2 or 3 failures to load and those were on extremely lightly loaded reloads. If you load it up fairly heavily, it is flinging empty brass 10 feet into the air
 
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Lately, it's been an HK P30, FTEs. After about a 1000 rounds, it seems to work just fine. I think the P30 is a wonderful handgun. This just seemed to be a problem with some of the first P30. I purchased a second, and have not experience any problems at all.
 
my wife has a pink sig mosquito 22lr. it is only reliable with cci lead round nose. its like they made the mosquito for the cci round. i tried the bulk 550 round packs. it wouldnt cycle the slide far enough to feed the next round.

i tried the cci stingers and with those it was to much power, basicly it would open the slide with so much force that it would feed the next round but it would smash the case in there and bounce the slide open and lock it back, while leaving a unfired round in the chamber that you had to pry out. i tried the heavy recoil spring( it came with the light spring installed, heavy is in the case) it still did it with the heavy spring.

so we only shoot the cci that it says in the manual. it came with a 10 dollar rebate if you bought 4 or more 100 round boxes.
 
Bersa Thunder .380 shot area of football field at 10 yds, sent it back because crown was messed up they refunded my money.
 
I would say a Davis P32 I had when I lived in N. Charleston. Somebody gave me the gun when they heard I was moving down there. At anything over ten feet that gun was "spray and pray." Pull the trigger as fast as possible and pray that you get lucky enough to hit the guy and pray the gun stays together.

The trick to getting it to feed a whole clip was to only load five bullets. I never could figure out the trick to make sure the thing hit with in eight inches of where you aimed it.

The one thing it was consistent in doing was failing to extract rounds. It would bull the case up just enough that the front edge would get rammed in place when the slide tried to return.
 
by rhubarb

Ok, I counted them:

Bersa 2
HK 3
Hi Point 4
Raven 4
CZ 5
Tanfoglio 5
Kahr 6
Glock 7
Sig 10
Llama 11
Para 11
Jennings 12
Taurus 12
Springfield 13
AMT 14
Colt 14
S&W 15
Beretta 17
Keltec 17
Ruger 17
Walther 22
Kimber 25

(clipped for brevity)

Just saying. Draw your own conclusions.
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Thanks for doing the count. I agree that there is absolutely no statistical significance to any of this. I think it is safe to say that all firearms have the potential for malfunction, even the best names in the business, out of the box.

The info that we would need that I doubt any firearms mfgr has nor would be willing to share if they did, is total number manufactured of any given model, types of problems, those satisfactorily fixed, number of rounds fired, etc. It would be interesting to see what this kind of data looked like though. Any gun board I've been to has bashers of any given make or model, some more than others. Hard to know really if any of that is based on good evidence, personal experience (which is always 100%) or simple prejudice and hearsay.

Interesting thread and no,I didn't read all of it. Stumbled on your post from a search I did. I own a Taurus PT99, Glock 26, SIG P220, S&W 2206, Soviet PM, P-64, P-83 and all of them are reliable. Luck might have something to do with it, IDK. For long arms, my Colt Sporter, Norinco SKS, Benelli SBE, SA M1 Garand and Marlin Model 60 are all reliable too. I can think of a couple of these that did have a little break-in period or didn't like some particular ammunition (forget Thunderbolt in an M60!) but don't really count that as an unreliable semi-auto.
 
Jennings .22, any surprise. After smithing I actually got it to empty the mag a few times. I hope my cousin eventually took a sledge hammer and disposed of it.
 
The semi that gave me the most trouble both before and after it was sent to the factory for repair was a Kahr PM40. Both fte and ftf issues in every mag(what a joy) and when it did fire, it recoiled so hard the mag followers split....twice
 
Sig Sauer P250 in .45ACP.

The gun itself would fire, and never did jam. Functionally, it was reliable. However, the trigger was absolutely horrendous, and the pistol was very inaccurate. I couldn't hit the backstop it was so bad.

I traded it off at a huge loss to get two Kel-tec P-3AT's for EDC. Those Kel-Tecs fire where I point them, and have yet to jam or act funny in any way.
 
A toss up for me, both back in the 80s, I had a Universal M1 Carbine that would not feed half the time and a Randall 1911 commander sized pistol, I think they called it "The Raider". A true "Jamomatic". I traded the Universal carbine for a mostly full bottle of Vodka and a new Jennings .22 LR pistol, which did work fine, and the Randall I sold to a Randall freak. He did not get that stainless hunk of junk working either.
 
Back in the mid-70's I went through 3 Stoeger Lugar .22's. They looked awsome and were accurate, but couldn't eject anything after the first 3 rounds...
 
My worst experience ever was with a walther P22. I got so pissed at it and did not want to sell this POS to anybody. I ended up putting my diegrinder throught it and put it in my scrap metal bucket. I felt very good afterwards.
 
glock_17_4U said:
was it a high point or some unheard of fly by night outfit
BTW:i consider xds,mnps, an all the polymer pistols that came out after glock knock offs, so be specific about the comany, if you know.
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Another, 'everything that has a polymer frame is a knockoff of the Glock"

I am thinking the Glock must be a knockoff of the HK VP70, seeing that it was around before the Glock. Right. The Glock is just another Knockoff, I guess.
 
Worst: ODI Viking. This was a 1911 licensed to use the Seecamp-patented DA conversion. The DA parts had nothing to do with the failures. I reckon many of these were bad, because they failed almost immediately, as a company. As this was before the age of the internet, poor reputation had to spread by word of mouth; it got back to me that ODI made junk, and I dumped this one. This was so long ago, I have forgotten the nature of the malfunctions, but I believe they were all or mostly misfeeds of various types.

To be clear, the Seecamps were not in any way involved in the production or quality control of ODI products!

Several autos have warped or broken a part during the first few rounds fired, but these were problems that could be fixed/corrected.

Several autos, notably all three of my Kimbers, and a Colt Lightweight Commander, malfed just often often enough for me to either not trust them, or gradually lose faith. Some may say user error, but then what of my other 1911s that NEVER malfed?
 
A co worker had a Phoenix Arms .22 pistol. It literaly couldn't make it through a full mag without a jam.

Funny thing is he asked if I wanted to buy it. I said I was born at night, not last night. LOL
 
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