Two weeks ago, I purchased a brand new gun, Beretta 3032 Tomcat, and I wanted to share with the members of this forum my experience with one particular flaw of the gun – its failure to feed, and how I went about fixing the problem. But, let me start from the beginning.
BACKGROUND:
Up until about two weeks ago, my go-to carry concealed gun was Walther PPS, equipped with the 7-round magazine. Excellent carry-concealed gun, chambered in 9mm, Made in Germany, and the quality of the gun is second to none. When I bought it brand new, I put roughly 100 rounds thru it to get the feel for how the gun shoots. I used only factory new ammo, half of the rounds were hollow points, the other half were FMJs. Not one failure to feed, eject, or any other issues. After the initial trial, I simply loaded the magazine with 7 rounds, and began carrying it. I did notice, though, that some of my pants vaguely showed an outline of the gun when I had it in my pocket. After some time, this prompted me to consider buying something that would be smaller and wouldn’t give off any hints that it is in my pocket.
This brought me to Beretta’s web site, where I found all the info regarding the Tomcat 3032, chambered in 32 Auto. I did, of course, do the due diligence, and found out about the cracking frames, which I was convinced Beretta solved. I also read about the failure to feed, but none of the articles touching on this subject went deep enough to describe exactly what was happening and how, plus there were indications that this issue is not impacting large percentage of the guns. Thus, when I found out that Beretta offers a $150 mail-in rebate on the Tomcats, I decided to pull the trigger. My nearest Cabella’s had a few of them in stock, so I took a leisurely Sunday drive to the store to check one out, and possibly buy it if I should like what I see. I put on one of those pants that have tighter fit, and which do show an outline of the Walther when I carry it, and I hit the road. You can see the size comparison between the two guns in the first image.
When I arrived at the store, the sales clerk handed me one of the guns, and I was pleasantly surprised how well it fit in my hand, despite its small size. The workmanship looked nice, too, so I slipped it into my pocked to see if it shows up. It didn’t, and that sealed the deal. The store had zero stock of any 32 ACP ammo, which meant I would not be able to test the gun on the same day after arriving home. That happened three days later, when an order of PMC Bronze 60 grain JHPs arrived from AE Ammo. I went to the woods behind the house to do some shooting. Following is a description of what happened next.
PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:
I loaded the magazine with 7 rounds of the aforementioned ammo, and loaded one more round into the chamber. To avoid any confusion, I will call the extra round in the chamber round #8, the top round in the magazine round #7, the one below #7 will be #6, etc., etc., until the round that is at the bottom of the magazine, which will be round #1. I pulled the trigger, and the gun fired, as expected. The empty case of #8 was ejected, but the slide failed to chamber round #7. Instead, the slide pushed round #7 only about 3-4 mm forward, and then it stopped. I engaged the safety, opened the barrel, removed the magazine, removed round #7 from the magazine and slipped it into the barrel, closed the barrel, placed another round on top of round #6, placed the magazine in the gun, released the safety, and fired the gun. The gun did exactly the same thing as with the first shot – it fired the round that was in the chamber, but failed again to chamber round #7 from the magazine. Once again, the slide pushed #7 only about 4 mm forward, and then stopped.
I repeated this test a total of 10 times, and every time the gun fired #8, it failed to chamber round #7 from the magazine, moving it forward only a few millimeters. I then tried to fire the gun with only 6 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. The failure to feed now dropped from 100% to about 70%. At this point, I felt like I am beginning to understand what is going on. Next, I tried to load the magazine with only 5 rounds plus one into the chamber. As expected, the failure to feed the top round from the magazine (#5) dropped even further, to about 25%. Then, when I loaded the magazine with 4 rounds or fewer, plus one in the chamber, the slide was able to feed properly the top round from the magazine every time without a glitch. At that point, I concluded this part of my test, and went home. I ordered a few boxes of different type of ammunition, Norma Range & Training 73 grain FMJ from AE Ammo, to see if this type of ammo would fare any better than the hollow points (I had doubts it would, considering how the gun behaved). Three days later, the ammo arrived, and I was able to complete the second half of my test by running exactly the same scenarios as I did with the hollow points, only this time around, I would be using FMJ bullets. It came to me as no surprise that the results were exactly the same for the FMJs as were for the hollow points – 100% failure rate to feed round #7 after firing round #8, with the failure rates decreasing as fewer and fewer rounds were loaded in the magazine.
ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS:
So, what is the root cause of this failure to feed? Clearly, the failure to feed the top rounds from the magazine into the chamber is a function of how many rounds are in the magazine. With the magazine fully loaded, the failure rate is 100%, dropping to 0% with only 4 or fewer rounds loaded. So, what is different between two identical magazines, one fully loaded, and another one holding only 4 rounds? Obviously, it is the force exerted by the magazine spring upon the rounds. The fewer rounds are present in the magazine, the more relaxed the spring is, and the lower the force is that pushes the rounds against the two lips on top of the magazine. Conversely, the more rounds are loaded, the higher the force gets. It is obvious that in this particular gun, the force that pushes the rounds against the two lips on top of the magazine is too large, and the slide return spring is then unable to overcome the friction between the top round and the magazine body. As rounds are being fired, the magazine spring extends, resulting in lower friction between the top round and the magazine, and the failure to feed is less and less likely as more rounds are removed from the magazine. When I fired the gun, I also noticed that the spent cases have fairly deep scratch marks both on the body and the ejection rim at the bottom of the case. Upon closer examination of the magazine, I found sharp burrs on the two lips that hold the top round in place, which certainly further exacerbated the feeding problem.
CORRECTIVE ACTIONS:
After analyzing the problem, it became clear that, 1. The force exerted by the magazine spring on the cartridges must be reduced, and, 2. The sharp burrs must be removed from the magazine lips. Reducing the force with which the spring pushes the rounds upwards is easily accomplished by reducing the length of the spring. This was, of course, guesswork, and I used the spring from the Walther PPS magazine to estimate how much to shorten the spring. In the end, I clipped off 3 full turns of the spring, and then I straightened the end of the spring so that the entire last turn of the spring is in one plane. The attached image shows the Walther PPS spring on top, the shortened Beretta spring in the middle, and the section I removed to the right of the modified spring. To remove the burrs from the two lips, I attempted to use a small needle file, but the steel that is used on the magazine body is so hard that the file won’t touch it. So, I had to use a sandpaper to smooth out the edges. When I was done with these two modifications, I washed the body of the magazine to remove any abrasive dust, coated everything with a thin layer of oil, and reassembled the magazine.
TESTING THE MODIFICATIONS:
With these two simple modifications in place, I loaded the magazine with 7 rounds. I then attempted to push the top round out with my thumb. It took some effort, but it went smoothly. Before I implemented the changes, performing this same task was almost impossible. It was now time to do some shooting, and I repeated the tests I ran before – seven rounds in the magazine, one more in the chamber, FMJs went first. Round #8 went off, and much to my delight, the gun successfully chambered round #7 from the magazine. I then engaged the safety, removed the magazine, placed one more round into the magazine, replaced the magazine, released the safety and fired the next round. Again, the gun fired and chambered round #7. I ran this test 10 times in a row with the FMJs and then 10 more times with the hollow points, and I am pleased to report that the gun properly chambered every one of the 20 test rounds. I then proceeded to fire all remaining rounds left in the magazine, once again, with zero failures to feed.
CONCLUSION:
It appears that performing these two simple modifications fixed the issue I was experiencing. I saw articles that suggested replacing the slide return springs as a fix since they may wear out and weaken over time. I didn’t consider that to be a solution to my situation because this is a brand new gun that has never been fired before, and thus, these springs have seen no stress so far. Other articles mentioned misadjusted slide lock lever (whatever that may be), but after firing only a few first shots, when it became clear that this issue depends on the number of rounds in the magazine, I focused my attention in that direction. Granted, to make statistically valid conclusion, I probably should have fired more than just 10 hollow points and 10 FMJs. However, going from 100% failure rate before the fix to 0% afterwards, even if it is only with 20 rounds spent, is such a profound change that I decided not to waste any more ammunition and call it the correct solution to the issue I was experiencing. So, if you are experiencing the same problem as I did, I encourage you to run these two modifications and see if your feeding problems go away. The best part about this fix is that you aren’t messing with the gun itself, only the magazine, the fix only takes a few minutes, and if you mess it up, you can always buy a new magazine from Beretta for about $25.
GENERAL COMMENTS ABOUT THE GUN:
When I brought the gun home, I went thru all the papers that were included in the box with the gun. Much to my surprise, Beretta included a notice to the owners regarding ammunition. Essentially, Beretta warns owners that using ammunition with muzzle energy exceeding 130 ft.lbs will increase wear and tear on the gun. It sounds like a thinly veiled admission that the frame-cracking issue hasn’t been solved, after all. Most of the ammunition on the market today is at or above 70 grains with muzzle velocity around 1000 fps, giving the bullets about 160 or so ft.lbs of energy. Ammunition that meets the 130 ft.lbs limit is more of an exception, rather than the rule. What, then, is the rationale behind producing a gun that is not intended for majority of commercially available ammunition? If the aluminum alloy used for the frame cannot handle the stresses produced by regular ammo, then why not consider stronger material? Just a thought – titanium costs about $ 10,000 per metric ton (1,000 kg). That means $ 10 per kilo, that means about $ 3 for the 300 grams of metal that would be needed to make the frame for this gun. Would I be willing to pay extra $ 3 for the same gun with titanium frame that would, quite possibly, have no limitation on the type of ammo that could be used? Yes, yes, and yes, again! $ 3 is literally peanuts considering this gun’s MSRP is $ 650! The frame on my gun hasn’t cracked yet, but that notice from Beretta makes me feel like it may happen at some point.
And then, there is the issue with the failure to feed, which I did experience. I spent more than 25 years of my professional career as a Quality Engineer, and I claim to know a thing or two about quality. In my dictionary, every product that doesn’t work as intended straight from the box is a piece of junk. No ifs, buts or maybes about it. This gun, straight from the box, failed in its design intent to feed ammunition form a fully loaded magazine. Thus, I cannot but conclude that this gun is a piece of junk. Never mind that I fixed the feeding problem. I am the end user, and I should not be responsible for fixing defects caused by the manufacturer. I should have spent my money on looser-fitting pants to accommodate better the Walther PPS. These are my two cents.
BACKGROUND:
Up until about two weeks ago, my go-to carry concealed gun was Walther PPS, equipped with the 7-round magazine. Excellent carry-concealed gun, chambered in 9mm, Made in Germany, and the quality of the gun is second to none. When I bought it brand new, I put roughly 100 rounds thru it to get the feel for how the gun shoots. I used only factory new ammo, half of the rounds were hollow points, the other half were FMJs. Not one failure to feed, eject, or any other issues. After the initial trial, I simply loaded the magazine with 7 rounds, and began carrying it. I did notice, though, that some of my pants vaguely showed an outline of the gun when I had it in my pocket. After some time, this prompted me to consider buying something that would be smaller and wouldn’t give off any hints that it is in my pocket.
This brought me to Beretta’s web site, where I found all the info regarding the Tomcat 3032, chambered in 32 Auto. I did, of course, do the due diligence, and found out about the cracking frames, which I was convinced Beretta solved. I also read about the failure to feed, but none of the articles touching on this subject went deep enough to describe exactly what was happening and how, plus there were indications that this issue is not impacting large percentage of the guns. Thus, when I found out that Beretta offers a $150 mail-in rebate on the Tomcats, I decided to pull the trigger. My nearest Cabella’s had a few of them in stock, so I took a leisurely Sunday drive to the store to check one out, and possibly buy it if I should like what I see. I put on one of those pants that have tighter fit, and which do show an outline of the Walther when I carry it, and I hit the road. You can see the size comparison between the two guns in the first image.
When I arrived at the store, the sales clerk handed me one of the guns, and I was pleasantly surprised how well it fit in my hand, despite its small size. The workmanship looked nice, too, so I slipped it into my pocked to see if it shows up. It didn’t, and that sealed the deal. The store had zero stock of any 32 ACP ammo, which meant I would not be able to test the gun on the same day after arriving home. That happened three days later, when an order of PMC Bronze 60 grain JHPs arrived from AE Ammo. I went to the woods behind the house to do some shooting. Following is a description of what happened next.
PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:
I loaded the magazine with 7 rounds of the aforementioned ammo, and loaded one more round into the chamber. To avoid any confusion, I will call the extra round in the chamber round #8, the top round in the magazine round #7, the one below #7 will be #6, etc., etc., until the round that is at the bottom of the magazine, which will be round #1. I pulled the trigger, and the gun fired, as expected. The empty case of #8 was ejected, but the slide failed to chamber round #7. Instead, the slide pushed round #7 only about 3-4 mm forward, and then it stopped. I engaged the safety, opened the barrel, removed the magazine, removed round #7 from the magazine and slipped it into the barrel, closed the barrel, placed another round on top of round #6, placed the magazine in the gun, released the safety, and fired the gun. The gun did exactly the same thing as with the first shot – it fired the round that was in the chamber, but failed again to chamber round #7 from the magazine. Once again, the slide pushed #7 only about 4 mm forward, and then stopped.
I repeated this test a total of 10 times, and every time the gun fired #8, it failed to chamber round #7 from the magazine, moving it forward only a few millimeters. I then tried to fire the gun with only 6 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. The failure to feed now dropped from 100% to about 70%. At this point, I felt like I am beginning to understand what is going on. Next, I tried to load the magazine with only 5 rounds plus one into the chamber. As expected, the failure to feed the top round from the magazine (#5) dropped even further, to about 25%. Then, when I loaded the magazine with 4 rounds or fewer, plus one in the chamber, the slide was able to feed properly the top round from the magazine every time without a glitch. At that point, I concluded this part of my test, and went home. I ordered a few boxes of different type of ammunition, Norma Range & Training 73 grain FMJ from AE Ammo, to see if this type of ammo would fare any better than the hollow points (I had doubts it would, considering how the gun behaved). Three days later, the ammo arrived, and I was able to complete the second half of my test by running exactly the same scenarios as I did with the hollow points, only this time around, I would be using FMJ bullets. It came to me as no surprise that the results were exactly the same for the FMJs as were for the hollow points – 100% failure rate to feed round #7 after firing round #8, with the failure rates decreasing as fewer and fewer rounds were loaded in the magazine.
ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS:
So, what is the root cause of this failure to feed? Clearly, the failure to feed the top rounds from the magazine into the chamber is a function of how many rounds are in the magazine. With the magazine fully loaded, the failure rate is 100%, dropping to 0% with only 4 or fewer rounds loaded. So, what is different between two identical magazines, one fully loaded, and another one holding only 4 rounds? Obviously, it is the force exerted by the magazine spring upon the rounds. The fewer rounds are present in the magazine, the more relaxed the spring is, and the lower the force is that pushes the rounds against the two lips on top of the magazine. Conversely, the more rounds are loaded, the higher the force gets. It is obvious that in this particular gun, the force that pushes the rounds against the two lips on top of the magazine is too large, and the slide return spring is then unable to overcome the friction between the top round and the magazine body. As rounds are being fired, the magazine spring extends, resulting in lower friction between the top round and the magazine, and the failure to feed is less and less likely as more rounds are removed from the magazine. When I fired the gun, I also noticed that the spent cases have fairly deep scratch marks both on the body and the ejection rim at the bottom of the case. Upon closer examination of the magazine, I found sharp burrs on the two lips that hold the top round in place, which certainly further exacerbated the feeding problem.
CORRECTIVE ACTIONS:
After analyzing the problem, it became clear that, 1. The force exerted by the magazine spring on the cartridges must be reduced, and, 2. The sharp burrs must be removed from the magazine lips. Reducing the force with which the spring pushes the rounds upwards is easily accomplished by reducing the length of the spring. This was, of course, guesswork, and I used the spring from the Walther PPS magazine to estimate how much to shorten the spring. In the end, I clipped off 3 full turns of the spring, and then I straightened the end of the spring so that the entire last turn of the spring is in one plane. The attached image shows the Walther PPS spring on top, the shortened Beretta spring in the middle, and the section I removed to the right of the modified spring. To remove the burrs from the two lips, I attempted to use a small needle file, but the steel that is used on the magazine body is so hard that the file won’t touch it. So, I had to use a sandpaper to smooth out the edges. When I was done with these two modifications, I washed the body of the magazine to remove any abrasive dust, coated everything with a thin layer of oil, and reassembled the magazine.
TESTING THE MODIFICATIONS:
With these two simple modifications in place, I loaded the magazine with 7 rounds. I then attempted to push the top round out with my thumb. It took some effort, but it went smoothly. Before I implemented the changes, performing this same task was almost impossible. It was now time to do some shooting, and I repeated the tests I ran before – seven rounds in the magazine, one more in the chamber, FMJs went first. Round #8 went off, and much to my delight, the gun successfully chambered round #7 from the magazine. I then engaged the safety, removed the magazine, placed one more round into the magazine, replaced the magazine, released the safety and fired the next round. Again, the gun fired and chambered round #7. I ran this test 10 times in a row with the FMJs and then 10 more times with the hollow points, and I am pleased to report that the gun properly chambered every one of the 20 test rounds. I then proceeded to fire all remaining rounds left in the magazine, once again, with zero failures to feed.
CONCLUSION:
It appears that performing these two simple modifications fixed the issue I was experiencing. I saw articles that suggested replacing the slide return springs as a fix since they may wear out and weaken over time. I didn’t consider that to be a solution to my situation because this is a brand new gun that has never been fired before, and thus, these springs have seen no stress so far. Other articles mentioned misadjusted slide lock lever (whatever that may be), but after firing only a few first shots, when it became clear that this issue depends on the number of rounds in the magazine, I focused my attention in that direction. Granted, to make statistically valid conclusion, I probably should have fired more than just 10 hollow points and 10 FMJs. However, going from 100% failure rate before the fix to 0% afterwards, even if it is only with 20 rounds spent, is such a profound change that I decided not to waste any more ammunition and call it the correct solution to the issue I was experiencing. So, if you are experiencing the same problem as I did, I encourage you to run these two modifications and see if your feeding problems go away. The best part about this fix is that you aren’t messing with the gun itself, only the magazine, the fix only takes a few minutes, and if you mess it up, you can always buy a new magazine from Beretta for about $25.
GENERAL COMMENTS ABOUT THE GUN:
When I brought the gun home, I went thru all the papers that were included in the box with the gun. Much to my surprise, Beretta included a notice to the owners regarding ammunition. Essentially, Beretta warns owners that using ammunition with muzzle energy exceeding 130 ft.lbs will increase wear and tear on the gun. It sounds like a thinly veiled admission that the frame-cracking issue hasn’t been solved, after all. Most of the ammunition on the market today is at or above 70 grains with muzzle velocity around 1000 fps, giving the bullets about 160 or so ft.lbs of energy. Ammunition that meets the 130 ft.lbs limit is more of an exception, rather than the rule. What, then, is the rationale behind producing a gun that is not intended for majority of commercially available ammunition? If the aluminum alloy used for the frame cannot handle the stresses produced by regular ammo, then why not consider stronger material? Just a thought – titanium costs about $ 10,000 per metric ton (1,000 kg). That means $ 10 per kilo, that means about $ 3 for the 300 grams of metal that would be needed to make the frame for this gun. Would I be willing to pay extra $ 3 for the same gun with titanium frame that would, quite possibly, have no limitation on the type of ammo that could be used? Yes, yes, and yes, again! $ 3 is literally peanuts considering this gun’s MSRP is $ 650! The frame on my gun hasn’t cracked yet, but that notice from Beretta makes me feel like it may happen at some point.
And then, there is the issue with the failure to feed, which I did experience. I spent more than 25 years of my professional career as a Quality Engineer, and I claim to know a thing or two about quality. In my dictionary, every product that doesn’t work as intended straight from the box is a piece of junk. No ifs, buts or maybes about it. This gun, straight from the box, failed in its design intent to feed ammunition form a fully loaded magazine. Thus, I cannot but conclude that this gun is a piece of junk. Never mind that I fixed the feeding problem. I am the end user, and I should not be responsible for fixing defects caused by the manufacturer. I should have spent my money on looser-fitting pants to accommodate better the Walther PPS. These are my two cents.