Went out for a day at the range with the wife. I was shooting my little Kimber Micro 9. After 2 or 3 mags with no issues, the extractor failed to eject a spent shell. The next round came up and rammed that puppy tight.
Packed the gun up, brought it home and then field stripped it. I used a tiny screwdriver to push the extractor open and got the barrel out. Fortunately, the shell wasn’t in TOO tight but tighter than it should have been. Used one of the wife’s old knitting needles and a small hammer to tap it out. (Very gently!)
Will have to take it back out to the range later next week to see if there is any damage or if there is an issue with the extractor.
To be fair, the ammo I was using was Freedom Munitions’ American Steel. It copper coated but still a steel casing at the end of the day. Not sure if that was a contributing factor or not. Although, I have shot several hundred rounds of this stuff through various handguns without an issue before.
They are steel but Freedom Munitions puts a thin coating on them to make the bullets slide through the gun better.They really look copper in person but I’m not sure what the coating is.
I have 4 boxes of steel cased 45ACP, its trading stock.
Not one of them will ever find its way into the P220.
This the fine Ruski made Tula. Nuttin but ugly.
This isn’t even Ruski ammo. It’s USA made. I bought it mainly because it was cheaper when the ammo crisis was in full swing and regular 9mm was hard to come by. I still have a few hundred rounds left and never had a problem with it until yesterday. I wonder if the case was out of spec or if it was because the gun was getting dirty. That little Kimber has some pretty tight tolerances. Could have been a combination of factors. I just hope my ejector isn’t screwed now.
So it sounds like the extractor lost grip of the case and it stayed in the chamber. Aka failure to extract.
You should check extractor tension before going back out to the range. You should also check the claw of the extractor as mentioned above to make sure there is no damage. There are videos showing how to do both if you aren’t sure about the process.
You should definitely check the tension (and adjust if needed) of the extractor now that you pried it away from the case to field strip the gun.
When you take the extractor out clean the carbon built up on the extractor pad just below the claw to make sure it doesn’t prevent the extractor from being able to properly grab the case, and also clean the extractor channel in the slide. The build up can be hard to remove.
Also, the round that tried to feed behind a still chambered case could now have a bullet set back a bit. That round may not be great to shoot.
@Jeff300 and @Mosinvirus - I appreciate the input! I will double check the extractor for damage and overall cleanliness. I intend to take it to the range and only fire single rounds until I’m sure the cases are still ejecting properly. Then I will try a few in succession from a mag. If anything else goes awry I will dig into it deeper and attempt adjusting the tension.
Took the Kimber back out to the range this afternoon. Ran regular, brass case ammo through it and everything functioned normally. Glad this wasn’t more of a disaster than it was and no damage to the gun.
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