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I've been having some troubles with sand getting into my Beretta magazines and causing them not to function properly. All magazines are disassembled and swabbed out every Wednesday night with dry patches only, no oil.

It's only when I'm shooting IDPA matches (dropping mags onto the ground) and until last night I've caught the problem before before starting the stage.

Last night my Beretta had a failure that I later traced to a dirty mag that was dropped. After the first few rounds, the slide failed to pick up a new rounds from the magazine, and after a tap-rack drill I realized it was a no-go...dumped the mag, new mag in, all okay. After picking up the magazine I found that the follower was stuck low in the mag and several rounds in the top of the mag were loose in there, with the top two rounds nose down.

I'm supposing Beretta magazines are just that prone to failure from dirt and debris?? Does anyone know of any fixes for this, maybe different magazine springs?

Thanks,

JLaw

You don't say what model the magazines fit.

I briefly owned a 92 FS until I traded it for a 96 D which I prefer. I'm racking my admittedly sometimes faulty memory for ANY malfunction and can't come up with even one out of either pistol.

I also have 2 different models of the Cougar, one an 8000 L and the other an 8040 D. The biggest problem I've had with either one is both seem to have problems with getting the slide to lock open after the last shot.

My only other Beretta was a NEOS which I doubt you are discussing.

Stronger magazine springs may help if you have a failure to pick up the next round. It may be slow about advancing up during the cycle of the slide.

What kind of loads are you shooting? Are they perhaps near the power floor? If you slide isn't cycling far enough back because of underpowered ammo then it could still eject without stripping a new round.

Is it all of your mags or just 1 or 2. 92 mags aren't all that expencive. I spray the guts of the mags with a silicone Teflon spray after cleaning. Although my Beretta has never had this problem I don't drop them into the dirt. How many mags would it take for a "use only once" per match?

Three of the magazines are the originals with the pistol, the other two are for the Beretta 92FS. All are Beretta factory magazines, not aftermarket. I've noticed this trouble with three different magazines so far.

Far as the ammo goes, not shooting reloads yet so can't say if I'm near the power factor or not. I've shot lots of Remington UMC, very little WWB, some Blazer, and a few boxes of Monarch.

I'm almost positive it's the mags, not the ammo. I can take any one magazine, drop it during a reload, and around 1/3 of the time when I reload the magazine, I'll have trouble with the follower sticking too far down. The magazine makes that gritty, dirty sound when you work the follower up and down.

As far as how many one-time-use magazines would I need to make it through a match, probably a minimum of 7, 6 different ones at the start of each stage that would be dumped and one reload that I can save after the stage is complete.

JLaw

JLaw wrote:Three of the magazines are the originals with the pistol, the other two are for the Beretta 92FS. All are Beretta factory magazines, not aftermarket. I've noticed this trouble with three different magazines so far.

Far as the ammo goes, not shooting reloads yet so can't say if I'm near the power factor or not. I've shot lots of Remington UMC, very little WWB, some Blazer, and a few boxes of Monarch.

I'm almost positive it's the mags, not the ammo. I can take any one magazine, drop it during a reload, and around 1/3 of the time when I reload the magazine, I'll have trouble with the follower sticking too far down. The magazine makes that gritty, dirty sound when you work the follower up and down.

As far as how many one-time-use magazines would I need to make it through a match, probably a minimum of 7, 6 different ones at the start of each stage that would be dumped and one reload that I can save after the stage is complete.

JLaw

Could there be seams the the outer case, or sharp edges on the followers? Col. Bubbies in Galveston has surplus Mags for about $10.00

JLaw wrote:I've been having some troubles with sand getting into my Beretta magazines and causing them not to function properly. All magazines are disassembled and swabbed out every Wednesday night with dry patches only, no oil.

It's only when I'm shooting IDPA matches (dropping mags onto the ground) and until last night I've caught the problem before before starting the stage.

Last night my Beretta had a failure that I later traced to a dirty mag that was dropped. After the first few rounds, the slide failed to pick up a new rounds from the magazine, and after a tap-rack drill I realized it was a no-go...dumped the mag, new mag in, all okay. After picking up the magazine I found that the follower was stuck low in the mag and several rounds in the top of the mag were loose in there, with the top two rounds nose down.

I'm supposing Beretta magazines are just that prone to failure from dirt and debris?? Does anyone know of any fixes for this, maybe different magazine springs?

Thanks,

JLaw

I've had the same issue and it was the ammo.

I have a couple of Cougars and have had this happen a few times. I was using Winchester White Box. I think that the bullets weren't quite seated properly and they were getting stuck and it only happened when the rounds in question were loaded in the mag first. They were simply too long and litterally got jammed in the mag.

When this happened, and it was rare, I had to take the baseplate off the mag and force the rounds out with a cleaning rod pushing from the bottom. When I reloaded the mag, I just put those oddballs in the mag last and they shot fine. With my eye, I could barely tell that they are slightly different but apparently it was enough. I'm sure If I had a callipar with me I would have found a measurable difference.

Ever since I've stopped shopping at Wal-Mart for just about everything, I've been getting Monarch 9mm at Acadamy and I've never had the problem since.