Long Life for Production Magazine Springs

[Smitty79]

I'm listening to a Ballisticradio podcast with a high end engineer on the show. He's confirming the failure mode for mag springs. Loading and unloading is what does it and loading them to stacked coils is as bad as it gets.

I shoot a CZ in Production. I almost never load the these Mec-Gar mags to more than 12 rounds. Given that peak stress is what "kills" mag springs, does this mean these should run a long time or should I still be changing them regularly.

I'm shooting about 10k rounds a year trying to run even wear on on 12 mags. That means that each mag is going to be loaded and un-loaded around 100 times a year (Some unloading without firing, but not much).

Please recommend replacement springs. I'm thinking of Wolff +10s.

[pxm142]

My Production gun saw similar round counts as yours and I changed them every year, just because. I never pushed them to see if they would go further, but the old springs showed very little difference in length compared to the new ones. I think they had plenty of life left in them, but I saw it as cheap insurance to swap them out during the winter tear down.

I always used the Wolf +10's myself. I can't say anything bad about them, they always did the job. I liked the 10 packs.

[Ultimo-Hombre]

This is purely anecdotal but may offer some perspective to your question.

I have a set of STI mags with OEM springs and followers that I use just for dry fire training. They are reloadable at 19 rounds tight. I load them up with dummy rounds for each dry fire session which is between 5 and 10 sessions per week. Have been abusing these springs like this since January of 2013. This winter I started using these mags for live fire training in the especially miserable range conditions where I'd be dropping them in the mud and snow. To my surprise they still function, really without flaw.

So that's concievably over 1000 cycles of loading for dry fire and let's say a hundred for range use.

Now I sure don't count on these for match use or even training in decent weather, but it has shown me just how much abuse STI OEM springs can take and still function pretty darned well!

For my match mags I replace springs once per year. These are a combination of ISMI and Grams which I suspect would last even better under abuse!

[Ultimo-Hombre]

Oh and sorry, I know this question was posed with production mags on a different platform, so like I said anecdotal and advice worth exactly what you paid for it

[motosapiens]

My experience with mecgar mag springs is they will last pretty much forever if you don't load them all the way to max.

I wouldn't even give it another thought. I'd just shoot, and maybe after a few years, spend $40 on new mag springs just for peace of mind.

fwiw, I use a separate set of mags (10-rounders that came with my cz) for dry-fire. I leave 2 of them loaded all the time, and drop them in the lawn or in the living room or wherever I'm dryfiring. That at least removes any dryfire cycles from my real mags.

Edited February 22, 2015 by motosapiens

[Smitty79]

My experience with mecgar mag springs is they will last pretty much forever if you don't load them all the way to max.

I wouldn't even give it another thought. I'd just shoot, and maybe after a few years, spend $40 on new mag springs just for peace of mind.

fwiw, I use a separate set of mags (10-rounders that came with my cz) for dry-fire. I leave 2 of them loaded all the time, and drop them in the lawn or in the living room or wherever I'm dryfiring. That at least removes any dryfire cycles from my real mags.

I do the same. I have 12 mags I rotate for shooting and 4 that are dry fire only.

[ekratman]

After the last two matches where I had a failure to feed, I just finally ordered new mag springs for my glock mags. They were really cheap. Seems like very cheap insurance. Some of these mags have 6 year old springs in them.