G31 Locked up tighter than a drum.

[farronwolf]

Yesterday during the range portion of a private CHL class, one of the guys G31 locked up tighter than a drum. Before anyone gets their shorts in knots over this, I am not blaming this on the Glock.

The gun had a LoneWolf 9mm barrel in it along with what I think was a Lasermax guiderod laser. I think he was also using reloaded ammo.

When I was checking guns before we headed to the range, I looked at this guys gun and ammo. The gun said .357. the barrel didn't have a caliber stamped into it. So I took the gun apart, pulled out the barrel, took one of his 9mm rounds and dropped it in the chamber. It was a pretty snug fit. The round didn't simply drop out of the barrel when I turned it up. I had to pull the round out of the chamber. It wasn't tough, but didn't drop out like it should.

Looking through his bag I found the .357 barrel and that eased my mind a bit. So I put the gun back together with the LoneWolf barrel, (BTW, Note to LoneWolf, stamp your darn barrel with the caliber) and we headed to the range.

Well this gun didn't run for crap. FTF, FTE whatever every round. We didn't make it through 10 rounds before the gun locked up tight. I could not get the slide back no matter how hard I tried. After about a minute I simply told the wife to go put the gun on the bench behind us, with the barrel pointed to the berm at 90 degrees from where were were shooting, and get me one of my guns out of the bag for the fellow to use.

After we finished qualification, I tried everything I could the get the slide back and eject what I believe is a live round in the chamber. No such luck. I got the slide into battery and walked by myself to the corner of the range, and pulled the trigger, all I got was a click and then tried to work the slide again with no luck. I at least felt a bit better sending him to a gunsmith with the gun which didn't have the trigger set.

Anyone had any similar experience with LoneWolf barrels, or Lasermax lasers causing the gun to lock up like that.

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[Texag]

My guess would be there's an issue with the guiderod.

[pirate]

Bubba at work.

[bmcgilvray]

I'm no Glock fan but sure wouldn't blame Glock for this episode. Sounds like the G31 is perhaps an early Glock victim of a disease that has afflicted the 1911 for some years now: Chronic Tweak-tis. The disease originally infected 1911s by the mid 1960s, got really bad by the early 1970s, and now is endemic among 1911s everywhere to the point where a proper unmodified 1911 design is scarcely seen. Was originally transmitted from monkeys to pistols when owners and/or gunsmiths and yea, even manufacturers begin to think they can monkey around with and "improve" a basically sound design through various diabolical modifications and additions, ill thought out but deemed so "necessary" for personal gratification or else in an effort to buy one's way to handgun proficiency.

As the Glock matures and ages on the handgun market we'll likely see more and more outbreaks of this dread disease. There is already a cottage industry formed around extracting money from Glock owners for "necessary" modifications, parts, accessories, and changes from original designs just has there has been to afflict the poor 1911 for so many years.

Just leave it alone and shoot it!

[gasmitty]

I have to wonder if the shooter somehow mixed up his ammo, or double-charged a reload.

Different but related - here's a .40 which got mixed in with .45 ammo in a 1911 in a training course. The extractor held the round snug enough to fire it, but then the extruded brass practically welded itself to the chamber. It took the armorer some serious effort to get it out.

[Mike1956]

What prompted you to keep running malfunctions until you arrived at FUBAR?

[farronwolf]

It ain't my gun and I wasnt running it. Did u read that post.

[Mike1956]

It ain't my gun and I wasnt running it. Did u read that post.

I read that you checked the firearms, and then allowed a pistol of an unknown caliber to fire questionable, ill-fitting rounds until it seized up entirely. Was there more to it than that?

[VBVAGUY]

The only other incident that I have read /seen that is similar to this is one of the forum members on the Sig forum had a P229 with a Lasermax and used it on the Sig Caliber change .22LR slide kit on his P229 and it too locked up the slide. He found out later that the Lasermax could not be used with the Sig Caliber change .22LR slide kit and sent it in to Lasermax for them to fix. From what I remember, they sent it back to him with the slide removed , etc, etc. I do not know or remember if they charged him for it. I hope this helps. Happy New Year and God Bless

[C hawk Glock]

Yesterday during the range portion of a private CHL class, one of the guys G31 locked up tighter than a drum. Before anyone gets their shorts in knots over this, I am not blaming this on the Glock. The gun had a LoneWolf 9mm barrel in it along with what I think was a Lasermax guiderod laser. I think he was also using reloaded ammo.

You forgot that he had to be limp wristing as well.

[barstoolguru]

you all keep fighting I will send you to bed with no pudding........

[gunthorp]

I'e seen oversize reloads seize an auto up. I removed the mag, hard palmed the gun into battery, and fired it free. This sounds like any number of problems from ammo, bbl, laser.

[Thanis]

I own a lone wolf .40 S&W barrel I use in my G31. Works great. I also own a .22 LR advantage arms upper for my G31. Works good. Have always considered the 40 to 9 conversion barrel. Just something about it is not for me. I don't know enough to say this right, but my concern is extraction.

[mr surveyor]

I don't own a Glock, or a LW barrel, but I don't think either are the culprit...unless the LW barrel chamber is out of spec. If the ammo was reloads, I would suspect the cases weren't properly resized, or were improperly crimped (roll crimp instead of light taper crimp), or "pickup brass" shot from in unsupported case rim handgun and the bulge wasn't properly smoothed out. Been there, done that, and had the same experience thinking I had forced the slide to full battery...but no bang. While at the range bench (a range that is not overly anal) I turned the pistol upside and caught the top edge of the muzzle end of the slide on the edge of the wood bench ..... pointed at 45° angle away.... and with a firm grip on the handle with one hand I gave in a firm whack (on the back of the grip hand) and managed to pop the bad round out.

That was the unpleasant event that convinced me to stay away from reloading the tapered cased 9mm and stick to the .357 mag that I'm competent with, at least until I have all the right reloading equipment and proper experience.

My guess is a "gunsmith" is going to do about the same thing.

surv

[farronwolf]

You forgot that he had to be limp wristing as well.

This was probably an issue as well.

A bit more info. The guy was 70+ years of age and didn't have a good grip or shooting stance, ect. We have limited time in our class for what we have to get accomplished and trying to break decades old shooting habits require too much time.

As far as the ammo goes. It was all in bag that was heat shrunk closed, probably a couple of hundred rounds of it. It was a tight fit in the lonewolf barrel but no so much that it would not come back out by simply pulling it out with the fingertips.

The same ammo from the same bag was fired in three of my guns during the class, a G19, a 24/7 and when I had to switch guns with the guy after the failure a PT111. None of these guns had any problems with the ammo, no failures of any kind. So the initial thoughts that the ammo was out of spec or whatever should be dispelled being that three other guns ran fine with it for a total of about 140 rds.

So, we should be able to skip past the ammo, the gun being a Glock, and really should concentrate of the barrel or the lasermax laser, or the combination of the three.

The guy said he has had that gun for quite some time, and apparently used it for his CHL testing 5 or 6 years ago. He said it was a 9mm, which after looking at the gun and the slide being stamped .357 is why I broke it down and checked for a stamping on the barrel and then the ammo in the barrel. Apparently he has shot quite a bit of 9mm from it.

I don't remember if the laser was something new or not, but it appears that with the combination of the barrel/laser/gun something definately needs to be eliminated or put back to what Glock intented for the gun to work properly.

As far as my checking the gun and then allowing it to be run on the range until it FUBARed. If every time someone in our classes had a failure or two during proficiency, I think I would have to make sure everyone used my guns and not their own. Not really but, some of you might be surprised. Again, if the ammo was out of spec it would not have run in my guns. Barrel being an unknown caliber, well LoneWolf isn't some guy who with a lathe who is tesing his own stuff, they have been around for a while and the barrel looked fine except that it didn't have the caliber stamped on it. The 9mm round fit the chamber albeit without any play like some barrels have. When I got done looking at it, I was confident that it was in fact a 9mm barrel.