1911 A1 stubborn magazine!!!!

R

Romulus

New member
I detailed stripped my 1911 A1, finally got that plunger back in the tube - a previous post, thanks for the advice.

Reassembly was trouble free for the most part, everything is clean ad sparkly on the inside, nicely lubed, etc...

But now I can't insert a loaded mag, :mad: it gets hung up somewhere...I can jiggle it free and insert, but it takes a couple of minutes, and needless to say that's unacceptable.

Where does the problem lie? I removed again the mag catch, everything seems fine, the mag lips are ok, but I thing the mag refuses to slip past the catch...

Any ideas?:confused: :confused:
 
Romulus, somehow you aren't getting the mag catch in correctly. Insert it, depress from the left until the screw turns moving the arm into it's recess and then it should pop in flush with the right side of the frame. Check the movement of the release to make sure it's working properly before inserting a mag. George
 
You may find that there are not vertical scratches on one or both sides of your magazine. If so, or maybe if you haven't worked your mag in and out enough to produce scratches, you may have replaced your grips after dissassembly and now you have tightened the grip screws tighter than they were. The grip screws will pinch the mag and cause it to not fall freely. Depending on your situation, you may want to loosen the screws slightly and use loctite to keep them in place or you may need to slightly shorten the offending screws by sanding/grinding them. Be careful not to damage the threads.
 
Thank you both, gentlemen...

The gun hasn't been shot much, but I never had a problem with the mags in four years. Retracing my steps, here's what I think I did: to clean the mag catch (this was a detail strip, remember) I undid the catch assembly, separating arm, spring, and housing. I then cleaned the spring (gunked up with some sort of factory grease and crap) using a q-tip. The shaft of the q-tip got stuck inside the spring, I had to turn the spring like a screw to remove it from the shaft of the q-tip. In so doing, I spread the spring, and it now rubs against the walls of the mag catch housing, causing the latter to protrude ever so slightly inside the mag well, and voila, the magazine bumps against it....

I think I'll need a new spring, and I'll be less zealous in cleaning every nook and cranny henceforth...

Does this sound like a reasonable analysis of the problem?
 
Sorry for the trouble...

...but I figured it out. I bent the lips of the magazine!!!! In pressing down the follower to remove the spring, I bunged up the lips ever so slightly, albeit visibly. My old Norinco mags actually work fine...
 
Hi, Romulus,

I don't know how hard you pushed, but if the mag lips can be bent that easily, they probably are not heat treated, which means they could fail at some time. I would put that mag (and any like it) in a far corner.

Jim
 
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