Odd CZ issue

[kalipsocs]

I went shooting over Christmas and decided to really get the P-01 past the break in point. So I ran somewhere close to 200 rounds through it of Wolf 9mm. The stuff is seriously dirty but it did great...until the last magazine. I was going to do a rapid fire exercise to see how well I could keep it on target, and as I was shooting it jammed on me. The slide was almost impossible to move and after bout 10 mins of trying to break it free it came loose and gave up the offending round. I tried to chamber the next one to which it would not go into full battery. The slide was about an inch back from being in battery and the round completely jammed in the barrel. I took it apart and freed the round and went home upset at what seemed to be a massive failure requiring some gunsmithing or possibly a new barrel. Cleaned it when I got home and tried to chamber a round just to see if it would work before I called CZ. It locked up fine! Cycled a whole mag by hand and all kicked out perfectly with no "odd" marking on the cartridges. Anyone ever had something like this happen? I have never had a gun so dirty that it would not go into battery.

[BobCat]

My CZ is not a P-01, it is a plain 75B, but I thing the pistols are quite similar. I've never had it fail to chamber a round, no matter how many rounds I'd fired. Never shot any Wolf ammunition though.

One of my favorite loads is about 5.5 grains of Unique with a generic 115 grain ball bullet. Unique is known as a "dirty" powder, but since I clean my carry pistol after shooting at the range and before loading and holstering to go home, I don't worry about how dirty it was.

Is your Wolf steel cased? Is it lacquered? Is there any way you might have had a piece of debris in the chamber (i.e. a piece of bullet jacket or some actual solid thing, not just soot or powder residue)?

I admit your experience trouble me, since the cause is unknown and my own carry pistol is of similar design. If you find out anything more, post it, ok? And best of luck with your CZ.

Regards,
Andrew

[Excaliber]

My CZ is not a P-01, it is a plain 75B, but I thing the pistols are quite similar. I've never had it fail to chamber a round, no matter how many rounds I'd fired. Never shot any Wolf ammunition though.

One of my favorite loads is about 5.5 grains of Unique with a generic 115 grain ball bullet. Unique is known as a "dirty" powder, but since I clean my carry pistol after shooting at the range and before loading and holstering to go home, I don't worry about how dirty it was.

Is your Wolf steel cased? Is it lacquered? Is there any way you might have had a piece of debris in the chamber (i.e. a piece of bullet jacket or some actual solid thing, not just soot or powder residue)?

I admit your experience trouble me, since the cause is unknown and my own carry pistol is of similar design. If you find out anything more, post it, ok? And best of luck with your CZ.

Regards,
Andrew

From a diagnosis standpoint, if cleaning fixed it, there must have been either something wrong with the jammed round itself, or something in the chamber or on the slide rails somewhere it didn't belong.

I would have liked to have seen what would have happened if you removed the offending round (which may itself have been oversize or otherwise defective) and tried to chamber the next round.

From my own experience with many thousands of rounds of Wolf ammo, firing 200 rounds of even the older, lacquered steel case stuff isn't nearly enough to build up either powder fouling or residual lacquer in the chamber to the point where a round won't chamber. However, I thoroughly clean my guns after every range session. Taking an uncleaned gun to the range on repeated occasions is asking for eventual malfunctions.

I'd advise making sure the gun is clean and properly lubricated according to the manufacturer's instructions (particularly the slide rails and slots on the slide and frame, which some folks neglect to properly clean and oil, leading to a buildup of a gummy residue that can impair function). Take it out to the range and fire another couple hundred rounds. My guess is that the situation won't be repeated unless the cause was a bad round and you encounter another.

[BobCat]

Excaliber,

The OP said,

The slide was almost impossible to move and after bout 10 mins of trying to break it free it came loose and gave up the offending round. I tried to chamber the next one to which it would not go into full battery.

So there were two rounds that would not chamber, leading me to suppose it might not have been the round itself, but some debris that would not allow the slide to go into battery. Also, he said that after he cleaned it, he cycled a whole mag through by hand with no problems. He did not specify that these rounds included the two problematic rounds; that would be good to know.

Anyway, a friend of mine once told me, "People with nothing to worry about will worry about nothing." That's me. I hear of someone having a problem with a pistol similar to mine, and I get concerned.

BTW I clean mine before I reload and reholster, just because if G-d forbid I get stopped, I don't want to be carrying a pistol that smells just-fired. Too much TV in my youth...

Regards,
Andrew

[Excaliber]

Excaliber,

The OP said,

The slide was almost impossible to move and after bout 10 mins of trying to break it free it came loose and gave up the offending round. I tried to chamber the next one to which it would not go into full battery.

So there were two rounds that would not chamber, leading me to suppose it might not have been the round itself, but some debris that would not allow the slide to go into battery. Also, he said that after he cleaned it, he cycled a whole mag through by hand with no problems. He did not specify that these rounds included the two problematic rounds; that would be good to know.

Anyway, a friend of mine once told me, "People with nothing to worry about will worry about nothing." That's me. I hear of someone having a problem with a pistol similar to mine, and I get concerned.

BTW I clean mine before I reload and reholster, just because if G-d forbid I get stopped, I don't want to be carrying a pistol that smells just-fired. Too much TV in my youth...

Regards,
Andrew

I have to agree with you. I didn't read the OP carefully enough. Thanks for pointing this out.

[kalipsocs]

The original ammo was Wolf steel case and based on appearance no lacquer. The firearm was not cleaned before the session, however, only in the sense that it had been carried. It is cleaned after each range session and I make sure that the feed ramp, extractor and rails are extra clean. Lubrication is a given. Once the original problem round had been cleared the subsequent round was the exact same Wolf. After that, I had some Blazer Brass in my car I tried to chamber and had the same effect as the Wolf. After the cleaning, the rounds that chambered fine were the same rounds of Blazer that would not chamber previously, including the exact 2 rounds that jammed (again, Blazer not Wolf).

So...to sum up the details....after the malfunction, 2 rounds of Wolf that would not chamber, 1 of which was jammed into the barrel requiring disassembly to extract. After that, 2 rounds of Blazer Brass that also would not go into full battery. A cleaning, and then hand cycling 14 rounds which did included the 2 Blazer brass that would not chamber. Total fired rounds was 200+ before problems arose, all Wolf steel case.

I also would like to mention that when I took the gun apart for cleaning, the inside was extremely dirty. It could have been the ammo, could have been the elements as there was about 20 mph winds in a place with lots of dirt and other particulate, but these were awfully hard jams for just dirt or dirty ammo, or both. Either way, action now is smooth and extraction strong. Hopefully that will clear up any confusion as my original post was done quickly before boarding a flight.

EDIT: BobCat, when I freed the round jammed in the barrel, I looked into the breach, barrel for any such obstructions to which I could see none....just powder residue as far as I could tell.

[Excaliber]

The original ammo was Wolf steel case and based on appearance no lacquer. The firearm was not cleaned before the session, however, only in the sense that it had been carried. It is cleaned after each range session and I make sure that the feed ramp, extractor and rails are extra clean. Lubrication is a given. Once the original problem round had been cleared the subsequent round was the exact same Wolf. After that, I had some Blazer Brass in my car I tried to chamber and had the same effect as the Wolf. After the cleaning, the rounds that chambered fine were the same rounds of Blazer that would not chamber previously, including the exact 2 rounds that jammed (again, Blazer not Wolf).

So...to sum up the details....after the malfunction, 2 rounds of Wolf that would not chamber, 1 of which was jammed into the barrel requiring disassembly to extract. After that, 2 rounds of Blazer Brass that also would not go into full battery. A cleaning, and then hand cycling 14 rounds which did included the 2 Blazer brass that would not chamber. Total fired rounds was 200+ before problems arose, all Wolf steel case.

I also would like to mention that when I took the gun apart for cleaning, the inside was extremely dirty. It could have been the ammo, could have been the elements as there was about 20 mph winds in a place with lots of dirt and other particulate, but these were awfully hard jams for just dirt or dirty ammo, or both. Either way, action now is smooth and extraction strong. Hopefully that will clear up any confusion as my original post was done quickly before boarding a flight.

EDIT: BobCat, when I freed the round jammed in the barrel, I looked into the breach, barrel for any such obstructions to which I could see none....just powder residue as far as I could tell.

If cleaning fixed it, then it almost certainly was not a weapon related malfunction, but I'm still scratching my head about how a gun cleaned after every range session could jam up as tightly as you described with ammo that fed fine after cleaning. Blowing dirt that lodged in just the right spot in the slide rails is an unlikely but possible explanation, but wouldn't fit if after disassembly the partially fed round was still hard to remove from the chamber.

Even if the Wolf ammo was the lacquered variety, I've never seen it cause a feeding issue in a pistol, and I'd shot a ton of it through my guns before Wolf converted to the polymer coating.

I'd suggest running a couple hundred more rounds through the gun, and if the problem doesn't recur, you can pretty confidently chalk it up to a very unusual event that, while not fully explained, may never be duplicated.

[BobCat]

kalipsocs,

Good to know you looked in the action and did not see any large particulate.

I'm stumped. I think Excaliber is right; if you run another couple hundred rounds through it and the problem does not recur, write it off as a fluke.

I had a class once, called _Design Use of Materials_ after which I was pretty much convinced that no mechanical device designed and fabricated by humans, out of any known material (irons, steels, aluminum alloys, copper alloys, titanium alloys, ceramics, wood, polymers, whatever) could ever possibly function for more than 5 minutes without breaking.

I was obviously incorrect, but took away an abiding expectation that "it will break" (whatever it is) given a chance to do so. This is about the same as Murphy's Law. So, change the oil and filters, keep air in the tires, lube the U-joints and ball joints, keep lead and copper fouling out of the bore and grit out of the action; a little light oil is better than a lot of oil mixed with dirt - you know all this. And, when you've satisfied yourself that the malfunction was a one-off fluke, please post a followup. Thanks!

Regards,
Andrew

[NcongruNt]

This reminds me somewhat of my recent squib issue with WWB in my Hi-Power. While yours was not a squib, there are a couple things that it could have in common.

After the squib, my action was also very dirty, and it there were lots of unburned grains of powder littering the action (I believe only the primer ignited, as the bullet barely cleared the chamber). From the way the slide cycled, it was apparent to me that some of the grains had gotten in the slide rails, retarding movement of the action and making it feel gritty and somewhat difficult to move. It's possible that not all the powder in a round previous to your jam had not burned off and made its way into the action or lugs. That may explain the stickiness of the action with the absence of obvious blockage in the chamber or ramp. If it just happened to be a couple of grains, it could be something that came out without your notice when you removed the slide. The fact that the interior of the gun was very dirty seems to support my suspicion that not all the powder burned properly in a previous round, causing the problem.

Just my 2 cents.

[bridge]

This happened to me today with my Colt Commander. I was shooting Blazer Brass and Monarch through it...some seriously dirty ammo. After about 200 rounds I started to get a few FTF and FTE's. On the last mag I thought I had another FTF but the slide wouldn't budge. I was a little upset, thinking that something had seriously gone wrong. The gun is only a few months old. Once I got home I was able to get it loose and found that there was a substantial amount of fouling in the slide, the feed ramp...well, everywhere. After a thorough cleaning everything works fine. Darn dirty ammo...I'll stick to WWB for the range ammo.