I Blew Up My 34 Today

[banjobart]

The right side of the frame is blown out and very cracked. Half the trigger is gone. I hammered the frame back so the gun would fit in the original box for shipping back to Glock. The extractor is gone, I am glad it is not in my face. The mag flew out and the gun dropped on the ground, I was doing weak hand practice. The spent case is in two halves and the case head is completely blown. The barrel and slide seem fine, but I cannot remove the slide from the frame. I can rack the slide and pull the trigger. My hand hurt for awhile but all the fingers are still there, it's fine. Was it a double charge or did the gun fire before it was in battery?

[2alpha]

So much for perfection. Glock will say it was your fault no matter what. They don't produce bad guns!!! Glad your ok.

[Vince Pinto]

Sounds like an ammo problem to me.

Since you mention "The spent case is in two halves", this seems to indicate either a double (or excessive) powder charge, or perhaps there was a blockage (or excessive lead buildup) in the barrel.

Was the round a reload? Was it non-jacketed lead?

[Loves2Shoot]

"Was the round a reload? Was it non-jacketed lead?"

If you you are S.O.L. Glock says if you shoot lead or reloads, no warrantee. Glad to hear you are ok. As Flex says, good thing Glocks are cheap, if you blow one up, just buy another one, but then agin Flex can blow up S_I's also.

[the duck of death]

*QUOTE*

if you shoot lead

The Glock manual says nothing about lead.

[Flexmoney]

L2S,

I have yet to blow up anything!

(I can often find pictures to post though.)

[SteveZ]

I watched TDean have the exact same problem during a match last year with this G20...Tom was flying when all of a sudden...the rounds started falling out the bottom of the gun...I thought maybe the floor plate on the mag broke or something...his last round fired didn't sound any different then any other round he fired during the day.

But all was not good, the gun looked exactly as BB described. I'm guessing in Tom's case that the round was fired before the gun was fully locked up.

[Loves2Shoot]

Lead - The manual might not say anything, but from personal experience, I know the what the factory will say because I had afriend who had one blow and they said that if he was shooting lead bullets, tough luck.

Flex - You have too many picts of guns blown up for my liking

[Vince Pinto]

Points 7 and 8 on the Glock website are relevant to this discussion.

[TRG65]

Those statements are Glock's way out of doing anything. My misplaced sense of, I guess you would call it, fair play would hope Glock would stand behind their product and replace the parts for a small cost, better business than saying sorry you f****d up and didn't obey the rules. More like a no BS warranty (sound familiar).

It doesn't take very long for gunk to build up even shooting a clean powder like VV and plated or jacketed bullets. My normal range session is about 400-500 rounds (once hopefully twice a week), this is more than sufficient time for gunk to build up. Previously I cleaned my 34 about twice a year, if I was ambitious. Yes I said previously. I also had a 34 blow up on me. Mine didn't destroy the gun only the mag and the extractor. I found a small ring of copper or brass had been getting shaved off of the bullets and was building up on the front edge of the chamber. I believe this built up enough to change the headspace sufficently to push the case head slightly past the supported area of the chamber but not so far as to cause the gun to be out of battery. Now I wipe down the gun and scrub the barrel and especially the chamber before every match, that boils down to about once a week or two. I went from one extreme of cleaning to essentially the other because of a similar event.

[Vince Pinto]

As an anecdote about having a "no BS" warranty, I once had a guy call me to demand that Glock replace the 30 G17 pistols he purchased a few months earlier because they had a massive fire in their armoury and all the Glock frames melted.

After I realised it wasn't one of my buddies pulling my leg, I advised him that destruction by fire was not covered by warranty. He gave me a 5 minute ear-bashing and swore never to buy a Glock again.

Guess you just can't please everyone ............

[TRG65]

Vince

In what capacity do you work for Glock?

Just curious.

Better business example.

An individual has a business. A gentleman came in and said how much he love the product until his broke. The owner gives him a replacement sight unseen on the "broken" model. The gentleman proceeded to purchase several more lesser priced items. The owner still makes money on the sale above his costs.

I can't believe that Glock could be much different. People are in business to make money and margins need to be high enough to cover some unforeseen occurances and still be able to record a profit. The larger the business the smaller the margins need to be due to the increased volume, but the net effect is the same.

Anyway, I've been quite disappointed by the stories I heard about Glock's customer service recently. Unfortunately, they still make the product that works best for me (after appropriate modifications) in IDPA and Production.

[Vince Pinto]

I don't work for Glock. I own a law enforcement products company in Hong Kong and we're the sole distributor for Glocks to the law enforcement community here.

In a perfect world, yes, if a product breaks the manufacturer might replace it, no questions asked, but sadly it's far from being a perfect world.

To replace a Glock because, say, a customer used ammo which the manufacturer told him not to use would be the auto equivalent of GM giving a replacement car to a customer who put diesel into his petrol engined Chevy.

I've had first hand experience dealing with Glock for 10 years and they've always been extremely helpful, even before I was a distributor.

If Glock were as bad as you've heard, they would no longer be in business.

[chp5]

I've had good experiences with Glock warranty service.

Once I cracked the breech face on a G27. I was not the original owner, yet Glock replced the slide for free.

From Glock's perspective, a blown up gun could easliy look like a reloading mistake or something of that nature.

[banjobart]

I shoot a lot, and all my guns look like new. I clean them fastidiously after every outing. I have had only one other KaBoom in shooting 100,000 rounds of Dillon 550 made personal ammo. It was in a 1911 Kimber and only the mag and grips were destroyed. I try to keep range brass out of my own brass that has a known history. I only shoot qualiuty FMJ bullets in the 9mm.

There could have been an ammo problem with this particular pressure event, or the gun could have fired out of battery. I work with tools and machinery every day and have a knack for proper maintenance and understand a tool or machine is only as good as the proper care it receives.

I hope that Glock is reasonable and replaces the frame on a five month old gun. If this happens again after the gun is a year old or more I will just buy a new one and not bother Glock.

If Glock does not wish to fix my gun under warranty I will ask them to return my propertry so that I may Krazy Glue it back together and go shooitng.

[skeeter]

well i guess i fit right in to this one. i KB'd my 24 once changed lead bullets after thousands of trouble free rounds the new ones didn't work and lead build up was real bad, couldn't even see the rifleing when she went. all this with in 70 rounds. but the only thing lost was the barrel, which had a hair line crack on the side of the chamber. this is what happens when you get to much lead in the barrel. a case failure at 6 o'clock mag goes flying, maybe a broke trigger. if the barrel lets go or the frame then i'd think more to a double charge or bullet set back. thankfully you weren't hurt

[eel]

Bart,

Do you have a digital camera? Take several photos of the gun and case. If you don't have one, I can take the photos. Dean Speir has done years of research on Glock KB's and has never seen a documented case of a 9mm Glock KB.

I may not make it to Sat. Classifier.., broke my toe... can't walk or stand very long... ya I'm a pussy.

Eric

[Dean Speir]

Speak of the devil… and the devil shows up.

Glock will say it was your fault no matter what. They don't produce bad guns!!!

I realize that you're being ironic, 2alpha, but no, Glock doesn't produce bad guns, just ones that are a bit short of the "perfection" the company likes to promote.

But you're correct, if you call Smyrna with a complaint, Glock, Inc. has two responses depending on the circumstances:

• The shooter is limp-wristing!
  
• It's an ammo problem!
  

In fairness to Glock, that covers the majority of their complaints, #1, and, #2, it kinda looks like Banjo Bart's catastrophic failure is in fact ammunition-related. I've very much like to know more about it since I have in almost twelve years of tracking these events never been able to document a 9 X 19mm kB!… heard of a couple, but then everyone's "heard" everything at one time or another.

Glock says if you shoot lead or reloads, no warrantee.

Can you provide a cite on that, Loves2Shoot, because I'm with the duck of death on this one; I cannot find it anywhere within their manual. And when I asked GSSF's Chris Edwards a specific question about this very issue, he asserted that it was in their manula, yet he couldn't find it. (The most recent manual I have only warns this.)

Lead - The manual might not say anything, but from personal experience, I know the what the factory will say because I had afriend who had one blow and they said that if he was shooting lead bullets, tough luck.

With all due respect, if "your friend" allowed them, or anyone, to get away with something like that, then he deserves whatever he did or didn't get in the way of satisfaction. I'm not an attorney, but two of my crew are, and the phrase "absent specific language" seems to resonate here.

I've been quite disappointed by the stories I heard about Glock's customer service recently.

I, on the other hand, have some truly wonderful tales of Glock's customer service, including one just this week when one of my crew acquired a second-hand, slightly abused Model 30 which required some spiffing up and a new front sight. He contacted Smyrna and asked what he was in for since he wasn't the original purchaser, and he would also like to purchase one of the new (really neat!, BTW!) Glock pistols cases while he was at it. He was told to just send the Model 30 in, it would be refurbished to specs, and there would be no charge. Granted, that wasn't a kB!, look what happened to my Glock tale o'woe, but my friend was quite favorably impressed!

I suspect that what Banjo Bart will be offered will be a replacement pistol at cost… that is their standard proffer. I doubt that they will return an unrepair pistol… this was SOP for them when I first started clocking these events.

[TRG65]

Dean,

Would you like me to send you the pieces of the case and mag that was damaged when my G-34 experienced a rapid disassembly? If you are trying to document these events....

Email me your address.

[Dean Speir]

Would you like me to send you the pieces of the case and mag that was damaged when my G-34 experienced a rapid disassembly?

I had to re-read this thread a wee bit more carefully to deconfuse m'self, Seth… it seems that there have been two (2!) Models 34 which have gone topless… hmmmmn! What're the chances?!?

Chunks of a catastrophic case failure and a spontaneously ejected magazine are, unfortunately, dispositive of nothing. Detailed images and a lab report would be instructive, but it sounds like you never got around to that.

What does interest me, though, is if you and Bart compared your respective serial numbers, starting with the alpha-prefixes. I think that might be interesting, especially given the current "non-recall/recall" of a significant amount of Glock pistols within a certain range of manufacture due to the rear frame slide rail breakage.

But allow me for a moment to reinterate that I have never documented a kB! in a 9 X 19mm Glock (or one punched out two silly millimeters to 9 X 21mm when that was all the IPSC rage back in the early '90s). I just never believed that one could pack enough propellant, even VihtaVuori's snappy 3N37, into a parabellum case to provide an overcharge sufficient to kB! any pistol! (And, of course, the 9 X 19mm cartridge being a tapered round, Herr Glock never saw the requirement to have an unsupported chamber in the Models 17/17L, 18, 19, 24, 26 and 34, that he did with the other chamberings.)

But two catastrophic 9 X 19mm Glock failures… both Models 34… on the same Forum, yet! Given the actuarial tables on that, ol' son, you're talkin' loooooooooong money.

[TRG65]

After I got the casing out of the gun which took some work with a pair of pliars and then completely disassembled it; the only damage I could find was the extractor was gone, and the magazine was damaged. I fortunately didn't lose my frame or anything else. I had a match on the upcoming weekend, so I grabbed a replacement extractor from an old 17 and have shot 3 matches and probably 2500-3000 rounds of the same load since. The load is 3.2grs of VV320, FPSM, 147gr RN (plated), mixed brass, and OAL of 1.143. All in all not a very hot load it only clocks about 900 fps. Probably one reason I didn't see more damage.

Also I don't shoot a Glock barrel; this happened using a BarSto.

[Loves2Shoot]

With all due respect, if "your friend" allowed them, or anyone, to get away with something like that, then he deserves whatever he did or didn't get in the way of satisfaction. I'm not an attorney, but two of my crew are, and the phrase "absent specific language" seems to resonate here.

Dean,

That was not a "quote" from Glock, but a summation of the effective response that they gave. To say that he got what he deserved is ignorant. He spent 3 months trying to respolve the issue and was unsuccesful in getting them to do anything beyond the offer to sell him another Glock. He has since sold all of his Glocks and moved to the 1911 platform. Unless you are already a lawyer it is sensless to try to resolve this matter in court as the product's value is so minimal that you would easily spend more in fees trying to get this matter resolved in court. Thanks for your 2 cents though.

[Flexmoney]

HighTechRedneck,

Did you get rid of that old brass yet?

[TRG65]

Kyle,

I've got the case fragments and the damaged mag sitting beside the computer here as I type. Why?

I have kept, now, a couple of my accidents to remind me of what can happen with guns.

Seth

[skeeter]

dean, it's nice to see you on this forum. but aren't we talking about two differnet things, seems to me that a case faliure and a gun that goes to pieces are not the same. i use to load 45 brass till it split then throw it away, i had once a case that let go at the 6 o'clock. it just blew the mag out no other damage. then a friends hot loaded 45 with a double blew the top ssplit the grips set of the other 2 rounds in the mag off caused a big mess. has glocks ever kb with factory rounds? seems to me every kb i've seen had to do with bad ammo.