Long story, but here goes:
I’ve got 4 magazines, and rotate them. I didn’t see any pattern in the recent failures occurring with one specific mag (were that happening, I’d have already tossed it).
Doesn’t seem to matter how many rounds are in the magazine. It can happen early on, with a nearly-full magazine, or when it’s almost empty.
Ejector looks normal - no obvious shiny or broken spots that I can see.
Problem *initially* was noticed when Wolf ammo (which I’ve always used for practice, and which always worked great, so long as I didn’t let the gun get too dirty) started with the FTE failures in a spotlessly-clean gun. This was disappointing, but since brass-cased S&B ammo continued to function okay, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. The real shocker came when I was testing out some new, high-performance ammo (Federal 135gr hollowpoints, with nickel-plated cases). Those gave me FTE’s. No biggie, I’ll just go back to the Speer Gold Dots I’d been using earlier. I’d already tested them out, and they worked just fine. But - surprise - the Gold Dots that worked fine six months ago weren’t working reliably now, either!
Very distressing that I was betting my life on cartridges that (as I discovered) would no longer function reliably in my pistol. My bad, I suppose, for being cheap and not running Gold Dots through it regularly - but then, even Wolf ammo was working fine until a few weeks ago.
I did run a few more magazines of brass (non-nickel plated) S&B ammo through it yesterday, and that stuff still works fine. But, even though it works okay, I don’t want to trust my life to S&B because: 1. I’m not confident that the failures won’t begin happening with S&B someday, and 2. I don’t really care much for using hardball in a self-defense situation.
The extractor has nothing obviously broken on it, but I noticed that the extractor itself has a shiny, worn spot along the bottom edge of the extractor’s tip. It *may* just be normal (it looks cleanly machined, as if it was done that way deliberately) but I can’t say for sure if it’s factory original, or a result of wear from use (I wonder if my extensive use of steel-cased Wolf ammo has accelerated the wear at that spot).
Hard for me to get a good photo it close up, but here’s what I’ve got:
I was distressing a bit about getting a Wilson plunger spring - would I have to contact Wilson directly, and beg them for one of their springs? Foolish me, as it turns out that they’re a stock Midway catalog item, selling for a mere $3.69 each. Heck, at that price, I’m going to order two, and then just experiment a little.
