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I purchased a used Kimber Ultra Carry II and I have fired approximately 126 rounds of FMJ with only one misfeed / jam on the last round of the magazine. I also purchased 20 rounds of Speers personal protection HP 45 ACP. for my carry ammo but found that just trying to chamber a round causes a jam. Does anyone have any suggestions? Maybe someone could suggest another manufacturer or another possible solution.
Thanks
Are you allowing the slide to properly slingshot forward from its rearmost position? If you are following it forward with your hand you are likely causing the jam. Let the spring do the work, and that will most likely alleviate your problem.
Chooie,
Thanks for the tip. I will try that as I would prefer to use the HP for my everyday carry ammo.
I use the Speer Gold Dots in my UC II and have never had a jam. I shot a couple hundred rounds of ball ammo through it when it was brand new before trying them. I've got 1500 rounds or so of various ammo types through it now with the factory Kimber mags - never a FTF or FTE ever. You might try a different mag if Chooie's idea doesn't help.
Lib,
The gun was shipped to me with only one mag so I did purchase a additional one. I will try Chooie's idea with both mags. Thanks for the help.
Your feedramp may be a little short, steep or rough also. Are you getting "smiley faces" on your HP's when it jams?
How do you know that you would like to use the Speer HP .45 ACP as the ammo for this gun, if it has not yet proved itself reliable in this gun? You see what I'm getting at. IMO, reliability and ammo selection must be a result of proven reliability in a given gun, not forced onto the given gun as if the gun's own "preferences" didn't matter.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vested
Every gun can have minor differences in tolerances that end up flat refusing to work with some rounds, yet cycling superlatively well with others. Your task: go find that specific ammo that feeds perfectly and that you're happy with. Either that, or adjust the gun accordingly.
At 126 rounds, the gun won't truly be broken in for another 1000-2000 rounds. The Kimber UC and other modern .45's are built to reasonably tight tolerances. There's not much room for error. Downside is exactly this sort of problem, with many examples of guns built so tightly.
My suggestion: Doubt every ammo until it proves itself in your specific gun. Experiences from other folks with the same type of gun are fine, but your specific gun will be slightly different and it's hard to tell whether it will like the same ammo as others. So, try picking a half-dozen different brands of boxed, factory ammo. Cycle through them, keeping notes as you go. Pick up another half-dozen boxes, then try those. Eventually, you'll find patterns in the reliability. As you go, occasionally cycle in a couple boxes of what appears to be the most-reliable to-date. Keep going until you've found the ammo that will cycle 1000 rds perfectly.
That's a time-consuming way to find that perfect ammo, but IMO the only reliable way short of blind luck. Your choices in ammo are the wrong ones, so far. Though, it's hard to know what the right one is, until you try it. If you ultimately intend to carry this unit, the nice thing with this regimen is that you'll have had a full battery of tests performed by your own hand, and 1000 rds of your selected carry ammo run through it, flawlessly. That ought to be enough to trust it with your life.
In the end, though, it might well not be the ammo. It might be the gun. Minor flaws and stacked tolerances can lead to abject failure with certain ammo or certain magazines, or ... I've got a KelTec P3AT like that. It simply won't feed MagTech rounds of any sort. And a couple of the shorter Corbon rounds (JHP, PowRball) won't feed at all in my CZ P01, yet the P01 works flawlessly well with (by comparison) the longest rounds I could find, Federal's Hydrashok Tactical JHP +P+ and DoubleTap's JHP +P. Why? Dunno, particularly as others have run various Corbons through their own P01's without trouble. Go figure. My point is, that's par for the course. You never know.
At least a couple times a year, you'll find one of the big handgun magazines running a "comparative ammo text" for .45 ACP. Occasionally, you can find references to those articles online on the forums (Pistolsmith, 1911 forum, forum.M1911, TheHighRoad, TheFiringLine and a few others).
Here's an example forum thread from TheFiringLine, back in 2005, where the discussion is carry ammo in .45 ACP: clickie.
Well, looking on the bright side there is no inherent reason why your pistol will not feed that brand of ammo since other Kimber UltraCarry pistols will and do feed it.
So...you'll need to figure out why yours does not.
Usually, a very simple and fairly inexpensive gun-smith tuning will do it.
The more threads I read about this or that semi-automatic having one malfunction problem or another, be it the fault of the gun, ammo, or magazine, the more I am being tempted to start using my revolver as my main carry gun, notwithstnding that my P99c has, so far, been flawless in operation. Not that revolvers can't malfunction, but I believe that they are much less likely to do so.
Ron
Kimber firearms are built to much tighter tolerances for accuracy purposes. My feeling is in a self defense situation you want a weapon that eats anything.
For this exact purpose I took to Iraq an XD9 service. I carried hollowpoints but never once was concerned that if I had to pick ammo up from someone else that my weapon would not function.
I agree with RON revolvers are simple and effective. Choose your self defense weapon wisely the more expensive or more curb appeal it has is not always better.
M4 or AK-47 when the SHTF which do you want to be holding.
We all need to remember that, in this case, the gun in question only has 126 rounds through it. That isn't hardly broken in, by any standard. While some semi-auto pistols do fare better than this right out of the box, for some folks, it's also equally true that most individual semi-auto pistols show a notable preference for certain ammo. Even moreso with guns made to tight tolerances.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ron
Yup. It's why I started out carrying with a revolver, until I could prove to myself that my pistols had anywhere near the same reliability. Only then will I ever carry a semi-auto pistol.Quote:
... the more I am being tempted to start using my revolver as my main carry gun ...
Over 15yrs of shooting everything I could get my hands on, I have found two semi-auto pistols that have exhibited this level of reliability. Two, ever: a Browning BDM 9mm, and a CZ P01 9mm.
Both have shown a clear dislike of one or more specific ammo choices. Certainly, that's part of the vetting process, to ensure that I'll be able to take any sort of ammo right off the shelf (ie, in a neighboring town) and know it will fire. I have yet to find any specific gun that will function with 100% of all off-the-shelf factory ammo. To my mind, they don't exist. Though, that BDM and my daily-carry P01 are as close as I've ever seen. It's why I run a very hard break-in regimen on my pistols, to reach a level of reliability I'm willing to bet my life on.
Not surprisingly, rifles show the same type of preferences. That's clear when a handful of various cartridges won't do a 2" spread reliably at 100yds, but a couple specific choices will do < 1" groupings all day long on the same gun under the same conditions. That's a gun's "preference" for you. It's very real, IMO. In a daily-carried defensive carry weapon, of course, that can be deadly unless it's found out and eliminated as a variable, through testing, gunsmithing, or getting another and going through the same process.
That was my take too, but then I reread the OP and he did say he bought it USED. Of course it's possible that the original owner didn't fire many rounds either.Quote:
Originally Posted by ccw9mm
I'm not a 1911 expert, but from the little I know:
- if you can't make assumptions about the pre-existing round count, then fire 500 rds to ensure the gun is broken in. Then test HPs.
- you can either decide you will MAKE this gun feed this brand of HP, or try HPs until you find one that does work. IOW, fix the problem or sidestep it. Either is valid. There are probably good HPs that don't have an aggressive HP profile. In the 9mm world, Federal Hi-Shok was always the safe standby for hard-to-feed guns. I'm sure there's an equivelant "easy-feeding" HP in the .45 ACp arena.
- Find a good 1911 smith in the area and have hime do the usual feedramp polish and all the other magic 1911 smiths do.
- for 1911s, magazines really matter. Get good ones (Wilson?).
You may want to try some hollowpoint ammo that has a sharper ogive/smaller meplat than the Speer's. One such type is the Hornady TAP-FPD series, which is usually pretty darn good for some finicky autoloaders. Just a suggestion.:smile:
Good point about ogive and shape.
In my Browning BDM 9mm, the Remington Golden Saber JHP worked extremely well. Of all rounds I fed through my first BDM (shouldn't have sold the thing!!!), the Golden Saber was, by far, the most reliable. I am convinced several factors contributed: the shape of the ogive; the diameter and "fit" of the bullet in the chamber; and the overall length of the cartridge. There is a short list of three or four commonly-available bullets that cycle reliably well in this gun. In my previous BDM (with nearly 40K rds through it), it ate everything equally well over the final 10K rds, so ammo selection ultimately became a non-issue. Interestingly, the gun just kept getting more accurate, as well.
In my CZ P01 9mm, I spent a long time working through various types of ammo until I realized how finicky shorter rounds were, in this gun. If I line up the dozen types of cartridges I have tried in this gun, the shorter half were finicky, with the worst (read: the shortest) of them failing to cycle at all. By comparison, the two longest rounds in that selection were the previously mentioned FHT JHP and DT JHP. While I have certainly found that sharper versus rounder seems to feed and cycle a bit better, I have found that longer rather than shorter is a better guide of whether a given round will feed reliably well. At least, in this gun it is. There are three or four commonly-available bullets I can purchase anywhere, which will cycle perfectly well. The list is similar to the BDM's.
i carry spears in my kimber ultra aegis and kind of have the same problem. when loaded up every once in a while the first round will jam a little. this doesnt happen very often, but when it does, its often at a bad time (aka quickly loading up in the car in the parking lot after leaving the range at school where i cant have it loaded).
I do let the slide come fwd quickly as it should and all.
Also, this does not concern me at all.
It has NEVER had a problem when i was firing the ammo.
I have put as many boxes of it through my gun as i can afford and there has never ever been anything close to a problem- even when it wasnt broken in yet and was jamming every normal round- had zero malfunctions with this stuff.
I think its simply a lack of energy on the manual loading it in.