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Ejection issues with 170mm STI mags


Brent D

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I have been shooting my first open gun for the last few months and have about 4K rounds through it and have been troubleshooting ejection problems with the 170mm mags since day one. I cannot in this post list every detail of what has been going on, but here goes.

All of my mags have grams basepad, spring and follower as well as 9mm spacers. The tubes and guts were ordered from Brownells. The 140 mags run flawlessly, but when I run the 170, 10-20% of the time I get a case that appears to hit the bottom of the cmore mount and then gets crunched in the ejection port as the slide attempts to return.

I have experimented with all kinds of OAL on my reloads with no change in function. When I try to troubleshoot, I keep coming back to the same question: WHY IS THE PROBLEM ONLY WITH THE 170MM MAGS AND NOT THE 140'S? As a part of my troubleshooting, I purchased a tuned STI mag from shooters connection. This mag seems to run 100% better. How can a magazine effect extraction and ejection in 9 major?

I checked the problem magazines with my calipers and the opening on the top of the mag is about .02" wider on the tuned mag that works well.

I am new to this sport, as I have been shooting for about 1.5 years and this is my first open gun, but I am learning alot. Forgive me if some of my observation seems elementary.

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Maybe since the gap is greater and the top round in the mag sits higher, it’s pushing up on the spent casing a bit so the ejector hits lower on the case head. That in turn would cause the ejection to be angled up higher.

Part of the mag tuning process is to set the feed lip gap so it sounds like your mag needs tuning. You can either send it out for tuning or buy a dawson mag tuning kit and do it yourself.

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I've been through a few 170's and for 9mm or 38 you feed lips need to be .355 to .356 as stated before, make sure your reloads are no longer that 1.250 as well as properly crimped. Always take your spring out after a stage and give it a little strech out and the last coil should be at about a 45* angle so it properly pushes up on the follower, causing it not to dip forward. And you will probably have to replace your 170mm spring every 3-4 months vs. your 140's about once a year.

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