Early Slide Lock - How to Fix

[wsimpso1]

Hi, I have a widebody 40 that slide locks with one round left in the mag with great regularity. It won't do it in hand cycling, only when it is being fired. Put one round in the mag, and the follower does not even touch the slide stop. The stop does have a detent in it, and I have never had this gun slide lock with more rounds in the gun, so I doubt that rounds are hitting the slide stop.

I suspect (can not confirm without high speed video) that the front end of the follower is being driven up and is hitting the slide stop, but I have more that a few doubts about knowing what to do about it.

I do remember out of the deep recesses of my memory someone bending the mag springs for some purpose, but I was unable to locate it using the search function. I thought that the pictures were on BE.com. I don't remember what bending the mag spring was supposed to do, but if it makes the follower go straight up rather than nose first, great!

Other specifics. 5" widebody, nothing fancy in the gun, 12# recoil spring, 16# main spring, Para top end, Para followers and springs (they all do this). I have adjusted the mag lips to be .380-.385 apart, and it feeds 100%.

Any thoughts, advice, etc?

Billski

[wide45]

Para mags?

The trick spring bend was for SV mags. It would raise the front of the follower.

Do you want the slide to lock on empty? Most limited, and open competitors eliminate the feature, and never worry about premature lockback.

There have been a bazillion posts on this subject. A quick search will find instructions on tuning the slide stop to fix your problem

Edited November 30, 2007 by wide45

[G-ManBart]

Have you taken the top end off, put the slide stop in the frame, put a loaded mag in and stripped off rounds by hand to see if the follower managed to contact the stop when it got to the last round? It certainly makes it a lot easier to see what's going on that way. It will also let you see how close the bullets come to brushing the side of the stop even though you don't suspect that. If it's even close, it's easy enough to trim a little off the stop. R,

[bountyhunter]

" Hi, I have a widebody 40 that slide locks with one round left in the mag with great regularity. "

Now if I was having this problem, the first thing I would assume needed trimming was my thumb.....

I have seen (and caused) this exact problem when I had to fiddle with the spacing of the magazine's feed lips to allow the nose of the round to ride a little higher up to get good feeding.... it also allowed the follower to ride a little higher and could bump the slide stop sometimes.

Edited December 1, 2007 by bountyhunter

[wsimpso1]

Thanks for the postings!

I actually have posted on one of threads that the FAQ's pointed me to. I actually have been through a lot of searching prior to starting the thread. The threads that exist do not seem all that useful. Really. That is why I set up a new thread.

I have played with the gun with the top end off, and (as I wrote above) the followers do not touch the slide stop then. Bullet contact with the slide stop does not seem to be the issue: Running it by hand shows nothing even close, and examining rounds chambered while shooting shows no marks from it either. The problem is exclusively with one round left in the mag, so I have good reason to be skeptical that neither bullets nor my thumb is causing this. I have never had problems of this type with my single stack guns. or other people's widebodies. I know about tuning followers or the slide stop. The amount of material that I would have to remove to make the follower not push the slide stop up is pretty big. Until I am sure about why a gun that behaves fine when hand cycled but misbehaves when fired, I am reluctant to go cutting on stuff. I was looking for insights.

I really suspect that the front edge of the mag follower is tipping up... The commentary about opening the feed lips precipitating the problems reinforces my thoughts that the mags might need to be made a touch narrower in the front. I will check into that.

If all that I ever did with it was shoot USPSA, I would have already disabled the slide stop. Not all of us exclusively shoot USPSA. I want my slide stop to work.

I appreciate the news on the STI mag spring bend. That does appear to be the wrong way to go.

Any other thoughts about how this is happening?

Billski

[dawulf]

Hi Wimpso 1,

Are you using factory ammo or reloads? My para limited gun did the exact same thing. After some fiddling around with my reloads I found the gun functions better with my reloads out to 1.185" or longer. Anything shorter my will gun slide lock with one round left fairly regularly. It has been my experience that when the gun malfunctions the first thing I look at is the ammo, then the magazines and then the gun. Hope this helps.

Good Luck,

Tom

[falconpilot]

I just bought 5 New Super Tuned HS Mags from Shooters Connection for my Dawson Edge .40. I ran into the exact same problem. The two mags I had before both have Dawson followers , and the ones(new ones) from HS have Gram followers. Instead of grinding on my gun(slide stop/lockback), I did what has been suggested here. I took the top end off, inserted the mags and looked where the mag follower was contacting the slide stop. I then used a dremel tool to remove just enough off the followers to keep the follower from making contact with the slide stop. This complete cured my problems, and now I can run the complete 20 rounds thur the mags..Although the slide doesn't lock back now, all I have to do is install a new follower, and the slide locks back in case I ever want to shoot Production, IDPA or etc. This way I don't have to modify a fitted part of my gun.

The gram followers right higher up in the mags than Dawsons followers when used with the Dawson SNL +1 basepads. This allows you to get an easily reloadable 20 in the mag..

Hope this helps..

Jim