15-Oct-11 – 01:48 by ToddG

40,936 rounds 8 stoppages

(+1 w/non-LCI extractor) 0 malfunctions 1 parts breakages

Proving once again that cleaning guns is bad, Friday night I stripped my G17 and discovered that the extractor was chipped. While the pistol continued to function normally, a chipped extractor is an official Bad Thing and it was replaced. As you can see from the photo above and the photo at right, the chipped extractor had a significant number of wear points. Luckily, I had a spare extractor on hand. Now I just have to hope it works.

The Glock, for all its troubles early on, went farther than any other endurance test pistol before it had an actual broken part. The M&P had a trigger spring break at 37,427. The HK45 came next, breaking a trigger spring at just over 35,000. The P30 broke its first trigger spring around 19,000 rounds… that was before I wised up and began replacing the spring every 12.5k instead of the official recommended 25k (which I did for the HK45, as well).

And for those who like to keep track, the G17 went 9,608 rounds since the last time it was cleaned.

Regarding the great self-ejecting magazine mystery, my hope of finding a guinea pig to run the magazines at last weekend’s Aim Fast Hit Fast class went unfulfilled. I’m getting together with some shooters this weekend and hopefully one or two of them will step up to the challenge.

Otherwise, last weekend’s class in Salt Lake City was a great opportunity to test the new Glock 9mm ejector. A few of the students, the ROs, and I got to stay late on Sunday and get in some extra shooting so I went through almost 500 rounds during the class weekend. In addition to playing on the plate racks (hey Scott… keep practicing and I’ll give you a rematch next year!), I also gave JJ Racaza’s 3-per-target version of the Triple Nickel a try. Suffice to say, I am not JJ Racaza. I scored a 5.13 and missed one shot. Or, in Triple Nickel terms, I failed. On a brighter note, I did turn in a couple of sub-5 clean F.A.S.T. runs during class.

I played around a bit with the New York trigger return spring again this week. While it was manageable for most things and made my press-outs feel better, it was noticeably slower and made critical shots — especially one-handed — more difficult. It might be something I could just adapt to over time, but my current setup of a dot connector and standard trigger return spring still gives me a trigger pull a bit over five pounds. I prefer the heavier takeup of the NY spring, but wish it could be mated to a lighter overall break in the ~6# neighborhood. The gen3 guns with a minus connector and NY1 spring are perfect. Lacking that, I’ll stick with the stock setup on my gen4 guns.

Friday night I had a good run of F.A.S.T. scores. The first three are with the NY1 spring, then I swapped it out and ran the rest:

4.79 (clean): 1.65, .47 / 2.04 / .21, .21, .21 4.70 (clean): 1.62, .48 / 1.95 / .23, .21, .21 4.85 (clean): 1.52, .81 / 1.91 / .22, .20, .19 4.99 (clean): 1.61, .58 / 1.95 / .20, .24, .41 4.53 (clean): 1.46, .47 / 1.94 / .23, .22, .21 4.51 (clean): 1.56, .55 / 1.80 / .22, .19, .19 4.38 (clean): 1.47, .46 / 1.82 / .21, .21, .21 4.57 (clean): 1.61, .49 / 1.85 / .22, .20, .20 6.38 (-1 Head): 1.45, .54 / 1.81 / .20, .19, .19

There are some interesting things to note. My first shot with the NY1 combo, and my reload, were both slower on average. That was definitely a result of having to work harder on the press-out, though again that was probably more a matter of familiarity than anything else. The press-out feels better with the NY1, it just doesn’t work better at this point. Also, the stronger reset of the NY1 was definitely something I got used to quickly. If you look at the body splits for the first run I tried after going back to the standard trigger spring, you’ll see I got a case of trigger freeze before the last shot and turned in a wild 0.41 split.

The progression after changing the trigger return spring was also interesting to me. On the first run (#4 above), I stayed at the pace set by the previous runs with the NY spring. Then I got back on track with the initial shot but was still a little cautious with the press-out from the reload and the body splits. On the third run after the switch (#6) everything came back together.

This weekend, as mentioned, I will be spending some time on the range with a group of very accomplished shooters. Hopefully, it will provide a chance to get some decent video for next week’s update. Assuming the new extractor works. Wish me luck.

Train hard & stay safe! ToddG

Previous Glock 17 gen4 Endurance Test posts at pistol-training.com: