Broken Barrel

[Duane Thomas]

I've been doing a lot of practice lately with my HFC Glock 17, hundreds of shots a night. I began to get periodic instances where the gun wouldn't cycle, instead the slide would come back about halfway and stop. At that point it was pretty much impossible to pull the slide to the rear, but you could push it forward, at which point whatever was the problem freed up and you could cycle the slide normally thereafter. This occurrence became more frequent over time.

Tonight I'm running a BAM plate rack, I fire fire four shots, I'm up to the last plate and suddenly the gun stops working. I look at the gun and the barrel is sticking out the front of the slide - and I mean ALL the way out the front of the slide, like two and a half times what we'd expect, but the barrel hood is still locked into the ejection port. Obviously the barrel has broken in two.

I have no idea how to get the gun apart now. I do the whole pull the trigger, pull down on the slide lock levers thing, but the slide will only come forward a fraction of an inch before it hits something inside the gun and stops moving. I don't want to force things, obviously. I have no idea how to fix this gun - though obviously a new barrel is doing to have to figure in there somewhere - or even if it can be fixed.

[Duane Thomas]

Well, I got the gun apart. I had forgotten that, unlike a real Glock, you're not supposed to pull the trigger first before pulling down on the slide lock levers. The barrel had separated right where the tube meets the barrel hood. Has anyone else ever had this happen? Is this common? I'm just hoping this is not going to be an ongoing problem.

[the4thpower3]

I've heard of this happening more often lately. Same with plastic slides breaking.

Honestly, the first things people should consider when purchasing an Airsoft gun is,

plan to buy a metal slide and barrel (or a gun that already has those items); decide

if propane or 134a is going to be used.

[Duane Thomas]

The slide and barrel on the HFC Glock 17 is already metal.

I can only imagine the reason this is happening more often lately is because, with the current ammo/primer situation, so many serious competition shooters, the sorts of people whose trigger pulls per year are measured in the hundreds of thousands, have discovered Airsoft for the wonderful training tool it is. It's just that we work our Airsofts a lot harder than most people.

[Lee King]

Yup... This is exactly what I was talking about with Jay on the "Postal Match" thread. My barrel snapped off exactly where you are describing. My solution was to buy a new hood. Evike.com had one that looked pretty close and for $15 it seemed cheap enough to try. I was running a Western Arms Wilson Combat FBI model. The part I bought was for a Western Arms SVI Infinity but a 1911 is a 1911.. right? Or something like that. It seems to work ok so far. It's a little tight where the feed ramp fits in the hood but I'm hoping it will loosen up with shooting.

This particular combination of barrel and hood etc. was 2 part. The outer barrel just screwed onto the hood. Is the glock built the same way? I read on the airsoft canada forum this kind of break is common if you thread the outer barrel tight to the barrel hood. Something about the hood can't flex where it needs to and the barrel acts like a fulcrum when it tries to flex. What they suggested instead of tightening the barrel all the way, was to tighten it most of the way and either use plumbers tape to keep it from backing off or blue locktite.

[Duane Thomas]

The HFC Glock 17 barrel is a brass tube inside a black metal sleeve. Touching a magnet to the sleeve/barrel hood it appears to be nonferrous so I'm thinking pot metal. When I first got the gun it was hitting way low, and group size sucked, lots of fliers. A local gunsmith had shown me the trick he called "poor man's bedding," i.e. if the tolerances inside a rifle are tight enough to start with, you can simply apply strips of masking tape to the appropriate points inside the stock. It sounds cheesy but it actually works really well. I did the same thing to the HFC, applied layers of tape to the underside of the brass tube to raise it up, and also provide much less slop and movement, inside the plastic sleeve. Not only did this give me perfect POI/POA but group size tightened dramatically. Now I'm wondering if this may have been a contributing factor to the barrel separation.

No, the HFC Glock 17 barrel is not a screw-together proposition. The sleeve/barrel hood appears to be one piece of metal.

[Lee King]

Does this kinda look like what you need?

[the4thpower3]

Once most people start realizing plastic and cheap metals parts break, that's when the real money spending begins. You'll want to start upgrading virtually everything. I think people that realize this before buying into Airsoft for practice and wind up steering clear. I'm not trying to turn anyone away from Airsoft , but I think people should be aware that this becomes a whole other hobby... But still cheaper than real guns

[Duane Thomas]

Does this kinda look like what you need?

Lee, yes it does. Actually a fellow Airsoft fanatic is sending me his own broken HFC Glock 17 as a spare parts vendor. The barrel in that one is okay, and I'll just do a discreet barrel transplant. Right now I'm trying to figure out if this going to be an ongoing problem, and if my little tape trick was a contributing factor. Do I just need to bite the bullet (or Airsoft BB as the case may be) and stockpile HFC Glock 17 barrel sleeves?

[Duane Thomas]

Mike, currently I have an article on Airsoft in the Personal Defense book, out on the stands now. I am very unhappy with the editing that was done on that piece. My verbiage is NOT that choppy and incompetent. One thing they edited out was my comment toward the end on how, if you shoot Airsoft a lot, eventually something will break, and my advice to have a backup gun, so you can just switch over to that while you work to fix the broken gun, rather than having your entire Airsoft training program screech to a halt. Good advice - now I just need to get a backup gun so I can follow it myself.

Especially given the current Airsoft Glock importation situation, I think I need to get really good at maintaining, repairing, and possibly upgrading what I have. What would be your advice on which parts to upgrade right off the bat, to avoid the predictable problems in the future?

[kevin c]

I've had the same jamming-as-the-slide-comes-out-of-battery problem in my HFC G17, Duane, though mine hasn't auto-disassembled so far.

I did the tape thing too. The jamming started afterwards, but I found that just letting the gun warm up between magazines prevented the problem. Since I have two Glock Airsofts (the second is a KWA G34) I alternate the two (mags are not interchangeable, unfortunately). Works ok so far.