Thanks Bill,wlockridge wrote:My recommendation is sort of a conglomerate of above but the suggestions are what I've personally found to work for me. Don't know what kind of horsepower that red army is pushing but I'd be willing to bet that It's not as much as a modern day ammo such as Buffalo Bore, Hornday ect, just guessing as I've never seen the specs. As to the mag falling out it's most likely that 17# hammer spring, had the same issue, go back to the 18# and that should go away. Second is your mags, dissemble them completely and run a cotton ball soaked wit you favourite gun cleaner through the insides several times and them push balled paper towel through them till it comes out nearly clean. then lightly oil another cotton ball and push it through. Make sure that the follower is good and clean and free from any type of burrs that might interfere. if you find any take a emery board to them until smooth. oil and replace. The follower should slide up and down inside the magazine smoothly. Next stretch the mag spring out just a little bit, don't get carried away. Lastly check the lips on top for any kind of bending or cracking.
As far as the recoil spring goes, it's kind of particular to the power of the ammo that you're using. Mine will not fire a CCI Blazer reliably with the 22# spring in place, I have to change to the 20# and it works flawlessly. The reason being that it's just not powerful enough to push the slide ALL the way to the rear. If the slide doesn't go all the way back, the pistol will NOT function properly resulting in jams, and the slide failing to lock back on the last round. If you know that you're going to be shooting lower or higher power ammo it's a simple 30 sec. procedure to change the recoil spring. Last try a different brand of ammo. Ammo that sits on the shelves or in a warehouse for multiples of years can lose some of it's potency no matter what brand, and there's a lot of that out there now as manufactures have been scrambling to keep up with demand.
Lastly clean, clean, clean. 90% of the time when these guns don't fire it's because poor maintenance. When cleaning don't forget those mags. These are blow back pistols which means a lot of crap ....... well blows back every time you shoot them and some right down the mag. I clean mine, mags and all, every time I shoot. Hope this helps.
Bill
Just to clarify, Yesterday I was not using the 17# main spring. I was using the super heavy stock one. I also started of using the stock recoil spring which I believe is around 18#. The ammo I was using is not old ammo. Red Army Standard is new ammo and similar to Silver Bear, but I am going to try other ammo as well.
I guess I would love to know more about what is happening mechanically when the mag drops. I would think with the super heavy OEM main spring this could not happen. I was also wondering why the mag drop (which I believe causes the failure to lock back) is now happening only on the last round? Like I said earlier, with stock springs, I had much better luck and had no FTF of any kind. I guess it would be nice to know what is happening internally to release the mag?
With the 17# main spring, I could only fire 1 or 2 times without a Jam/FTF. Anyone watching me on Saturday would have thought I brought a complete POS to the range.
I have cleaned this gun extremely well as well as the mags before going to the range each time. I wanted to make sure I eliminated that as possibility to my issues and clean my guns as soon as I get back from the range anyway. I will take another look at the mag springs and give them a little stretch, but keep in mind, I had no problem firing the last round at all yesterday. I am Just getting a mag drop after the last round now with no lock back of the slide. I may switch back to the stock mag release just to see if it could be the issue. However, I love the new release as it makes it a fast one handed operation to release it.