Kimber not feeding

Most high cap 45's, Para or Kimber, are more sensitive to overall length than a single stack. To get the most reliable feeding you should load around 1.250. It depends on the bullet style.

The problem that the kimber has, that para sort of worked around is that the feedramp on the frame is shallow and short. If you use a blunter type of bullet it will stop dead against the frame or with a longer length, the round cannot roll over into the chamber. It binds up on the edge of the barrel throat. Easy way to check this is when the gun jams, look at the case and see if you see a crease or bend in the case about 1/8" or a little shorter. This is where the round caught on the shoulder. Para cured this by using a ramped barrel to get around it. On most of the Kimber polymers that I see that puke, a little reworking of the feedramp on the frame a little touch up on the barrel throat will cure this. If your chamber is tight, and sometimes the Kimbers are, then it will need to be reamed to cure it. Another thing to watch, and this goes with Kimber, Para, SV/STI is to watch the mag springs, especially if you are using a high cap mag. Factory ones tend to take a set early and then the gun misfeeds because the slide cycles faster than the round can be fed up. Replace with Wolff extra power springs.

This ain't Kimber bashing, it's experience. Two local gunshops are Kimber master dealers and have a 5-10% repair rate. Mainly tight chambers, bad slide stops and loose plunger tubes.

Brian
 
Listen to Brian folks. He worked on my Kimber. It WAS a problem, it's not now. It runs flawlessly and it looks good too.

Check it out!

View


PS: Another hunded tonight (12-7-1999), no problem!

Johnboy


[This message has been edited by johnboy (edited December 07, 1999).]

[This message has been edited by johnboy (edited December 07, 1999).]
 
I don't own a Kimber, but have recently experienced some of the described problems with an Accu-Match .400 Cor-bon barrel for my 70 Series G.C. Chamber is fine for factory loads, but is just a little too tight for all but the most nearly perfect reloads. Don't have as much freebore as I do in an Accu-Match .400 barrel for my Glock 21. Glock 21 chamber is also not quite as tight. Rounds that won't chamber in the 1911 fit the Glock fine. (Both with the same brand barrel.) I'm having the chamber reamed on the 1911 barrel. Maybe accuracy will suffer a little, but I don't have much use for a gun for which I can't reload.

I've shot a few Kimbers. They seem to be really fine pistols. Very accurate, and the ones that I shot didn't jam.
 
Walter,

Reaming the chamber will not affect the accuracy. If anything it will improve it slightly. In a higher pressure cartridge like the 400, 10mm or others, if the leade into the rifling isn't right you get the chambering problems you are having, but you also get a quicker pressure peak with the round that throws off the accuracy. By adding a little leade, it cuts down the pressure and makes the accuracy a little better. IPSC shooters who use 40's have found this to be true.

Brian
 
Gale,

I think Brian answered your questions.

First, mags.

Second, OAL on cartridges.

Third, chamber.

Johnboy
 
THIS IS WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT!

We keep seeing threads on this forum, one right after another, about people having problems with Kimbers.
I posted on here a month ago asking why there were so many people with Kimber problems, and everybody jumped down my throat. The Kimber lovers here are as fanatical as any in not wanting to believe that Kimbers are going downhill in quality. I NEVER heard of any one single problem a year or two ago. When they were not putting out such high volume, Kimbers were "perfect out of the box" every time. Nowadays, I am CONSTANTLY hearing from people that are having problems with their Kimbers. It seems that they have grown too fast and can't keep up their quality with the quantity. I don't see how Kimbers are any better than Colts ever were. Even Colt gets it right most of the time. It seems to me that there are way too many Kimber problems I am hearing about lately.


As far as mags go...people that know about these things like metallurgists and engineers tell me that springs only wear from constant flexing and unflexing. In other words, loading and unloading your mag is what wears the spring. Constant tension does not weaken a spring.
I do know of one magazine that was loaded in WW2, and just shot recently, many decades later. Apparently it fed reliably and all was well.
There are many different opinions I hear about this topic, but the people that seem to know what they are talking about say that keeping a mag loaded does not weaken the spring.

[This message has been edited by Red Bull (edited December 07, 1999).]
 
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