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Front Fell Off


Jay870

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This is a first for me.

 

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break2.thumb.jpg.ea5cc28d169fe7b8ecdcb3354d2dd8ff.jpg

 

 

Practicing tonight, gun is shooting fine. On the last shot of a bill drill there was a failure to extract. As I'm trying to clear it I notice that there is an awful lot of slop at the chamber end of the barrel and I figure I finally broke a slide stop. I pull the slide stop and it comes out in-tact. As I rotate the gun around to figure out WTF the barrel slides 90% of the way out the muzzle end of the slide while I'm still looking at the FTE case hanging out of the chamber at the ejection port. 

 

Gun is a standard TS .40S&W (Cerakoted all black after I did the grip reduction). Bought the gun used here a few years ago. If previous owner's round count estimate of 3K is correct then it has 30-35K down the pipe. Had it stripped for a cleaning about 600 rounds ago and I always look things over pretty well on the rare occasions it is clean and didn't see anything of note. Barrel shot great and ran great until the front fell off. 

 

 

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8 minutes ago, robertwyatt said:

Is the rest of the gun okay?

 

Yeah, rest of the gun is fine.  There was no squib or double charge or any other drama, barrel just straight up broke in half.

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12 minutes ago, Hi-Power Jack said:

You positive a bullet didn't hit another bullet stuck in the barrel?

 

As positive as I can be I guess. Everything sounded and felt normal, first sign of an issue was the FTE. I'm no engineer but I'd need some convincing that there was enough energy to snap the barrel clean, drive out the squib, drive out the fired projectile and leave a perfectly fine looking piece of brass partially extracted with zero damage to anything else.

 

7 minutes ago, mwray said:

By chance you would reveal the name of the barrel?

 

CZ OEM original barrel, SN# matched the frame & slide. 

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I broke another barrel on my CZ Czechmate last week but not as spectacularly as yours. It is in getting one of the newer version barrels fitted now. 

 

As as an aside the actor in the video, John Clarke, died a couple of weeks ago :(

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Looking the the second picture it appears the lower portion of the fracture is dull, gray and appears to be very granular.  The upper portion smooth and bright.  

 

Years ago (more like decades really) I remember a conversation my dad had with a metallurgist who was inspecting a broken tie rod on our family car that looked the same.  His comment was the dull gray, granular area was a classic indication of metal fatigue.  The bright area is when unfatigued metal failed do the stresses and fractured quickly under load.

 

There is a possibility the barrel, slide stop, and slide were not fitted correctly putting excessive stress on the barrel/breach junction of the barrel assembly.

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22 hours ago, my00wrx1 said:

one of the newer version barrels

 

18 hours ago, PRanta said:

new TS Orange barrel. It is newer design

 

A quick search isn't pulling up much visually on this, anyone have a link to pictures that can help ID whether someone has the old or new version?

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Years ago when I was in the Second Chance game I had several 1911 barrels do something similar after an extended round count. Back in that day Blake Gann was the gun builder and he applied a simple fix that stopped this, at least on my guns, from happening again. Wherever there was a sharp angle cut ahead of the chamber as where yours broke and in and around the locking lugs he made the sharp angle a small radius between the angle and the barrel. The small round radius would relieve the stress areas where the barrel machining created stress points that start out as stress cracks. I realize we were not getting the pressures with our .45 ACP pin guns that the .40 creates but we were shooting rounds with enough pressure to make the comps work well that without a doubt were +P++ and would crack the frames in short order. after this simple modification which took him no more that 30 minutes to do I never had another stress related barrel failure. I don't have any pics of this mod as those guns were long ago used up but I learned then that a sharp cut or angle on a barrel could create an area prone to stress cracks and it would be reasonable to assume that is what happened to yours. The constant beating that the barrels take and who knows how much stress is on these points seems like a miracle they last as long as they do.

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