PM45 6-round magazine spring catatrosphic failure!

[Bawanna]

Frankly I was shocked. The guy that gave me that Colt took it out of his duffle bag, told this story many times. He started to unload it and I asked him to just leave it as is. I thought that was good thinking on my part.
It was fully loaded but empty chamber. All I did was inspect the gun to make sure nothing was obviously broken or missing or anything that would blow up. No cleaning, a couple drops of oil on the rails as I recall and it ran like it was made yesterday.


I also got his M1 Carbine that was in the same duffle bag and had been since Korea as well. It's mint. Not a speck of rust or even wear. In the canvas type carry case they had. I think he was an officer of some sort. The 45 is well worn, character worn, not abused. The M1 looks like it never came out of the bag.

I've never shot it YET.

[wyntrout]

Update: I heard from Kahr about the magazine. They have offered to replace the mag if I send it in. A new spring would be better, so I just replaced the spring with an old 1911 magazine spring that seemed to fit with a little alteration for the coil at the top to fit the follower. It's just not worth the time and expense of sending the magazine back to Kahr.

I have lots of random springs from various 1911 makes and just grabbed something that fits. In this case a S&W 645 magazine spring from a mag with a broken tube. The 6-round mag is not something I carry... just for the range. I carry the 5-rounder in the pistol for CCW and carry a 7-round extended-grip mag as a reload.

Wynn

[RRP]

Wyntrout's experience should be a lesson to all of us. Guns are mechanical devices and they can (and will) fail. Thank goodness wyntrout discovered and fixed the problem before he needed the pistol to save his life.

We wouldn't go on a long trip without first checking tire pressure and oil level. We should perform the same due diligence if we're going to trust our lives to a pistol. Four years is way too long between test drives.

[CJB]

Col. don't be shocked.

The US ARMY Ordnance did a test, that was printed in The American Rifleman back in the early 60's (or maybe it was late 50's... don't crucify me!). They basically had 1911 magazines, that for some reason, were found to be charged with seven rounds of ammo, what that had been in storage since the first 1911 was still in warranty. Old stuff. WWI era.

They tested the ammo, and the magazines and found zero defects in either - which is not surprising. For the old clorate primed 45 ammo, the saving grace was the bitumen seal on the bullet, and the lacquer seal on the primer. For the magazines - it has been established that compression within the designed range of the spring does not kill the spring, or alter it significantly. Repeated flexing will weakin the spring to a great degree. This is why locking back the slide on a new pistol is more or less useless, and so is hand racking. And why charged magazines - with decent quality springs - wont be greatly effected.

So, the question remains, did Wyn load and unload that magazine a few gazillion times in his sleep?

[Bawanna]

I'm convinced in my head that it was just spring material gone very bad from the get go.

Too brittle or something. Even if loaded a gazillion times it would just be weak and girly man, still shouldn't break like that.

Faulty material.

[b4uqzme]

I'm convinced in my head that it was just spring material gone very bad from the get go.

Too brittle or something. Even if loaded a gazillion times it would just be weak and girly man, still shouldn't break like that.

Faulty material.

That's what killed my comedy career........faulty material.

[TheLastDaze]

this was probably HT the same time the problem strikers were.....

that's a bummer for sure.....

[Bawanna]

That's what killed my comedy career........faulty material.

Oh man, you too huh? Dang near pandemic.

[wyntrout]

UPDATE:

The 6-round failed at home before the range trip. At the range a 5-round PM45 mag failed... shattered spring like the 6-rounder. I also had a few malfunctions with one or two of the 7-round extended-grip mags... failure to feed and the slide not locking back on empty magazine.

I cleaned the pistols... PM45 and G21 SF that night... pretty quick for me... and found more problems with the PM45 mags as I tried to set some up for home defense. The other 5-round mag had a broken spring, too, and I decided to look at all of the magazines and took them apart. I also used my wooden mag depressor to test the springs before disassembly to see if any would fail. At the range, after the 5-round mag failed, I loaded all of the remaining mags at least once more to test them and then put about 5 magazinefulls through the remaining 5-rounder.

I'll post some pictures of this, but I noticed that the 7-round mags all had wimpy springs that were pretty weak and didn't seem correct. I had a spare each for the 5 and 7-round mags, so I counted the coils. The new 7-round spring had 18 coils and the new 5-round one 14. ALL of the 6 7-round mags and the 5-rounders had 14-coil springs! I couldn't tell what the 6-rounder had because it broke into 10 pieces... shattered.

I must have spent 20 minutes and lots of cussing trying to get that 18-coil spring into a 7-round magazine! That's the hardest thing I ever had to do with a Kahr! And yes, I DID try to use a straight pick to hold most of the coils in place, but that didn't work as the remaining coils couldn't be depressed enough with the pin in place. Anyhow, I finally got the danged thing together and loaded it with 7 rounds to see what that will do as it takes a set. I put the 14-coil one into the 5-rounder and loaded it, too.

I know that my wife was glad when I finally stopped screaming and cursing! Oh... and a little oil on the springs really help!

All of those magazines were replacements from Kahr back in January 2013... 7 when I had problems with splitting magazines and two more shortly thereafter that I had bought at Ivanhoe, so all 9 mags were from the same period. I don't know why, but it seems that someone used the wrong springs... easier to load?? And, maybe the temperature got too high during tempering of the wire so it was brittle.

I sent another email to Kahr about those findings and asked for replacement springs for all of the mags.

Man! The saga continues with my PM4544N (New 03/05/10) "Boomer", A.K.A. "Franken-Boomer"**Only original part may be slide lock after 5 trips back to the factory!

Wynn

[Harrylee]

Sounds like a bad run that no one caught except for you good luck with Kahr at least you didn't find this out when you really needed the gun!!!!