I picked my new M40 on Thursday night, degreased it thoroughly, lubricated with Militec, and started counting hours until Friday, which was the day I had planned to test the "wicked cool".
First, the bottom line: the new Steyr M40 is the best gun I've ever shot. More specifically, M40 shoots better than my absolutely beloved Sig for it has extremely low bore axis and thus, much less muzzle flip. Furthermore, its polymer frame absorbs recoil more efficiently, so it's very light. In fact, .40 S&W acquires a whole new attitude with this pistol and becomes a finely tamed beast.
It shoots better than Glock 23 which was the pistol I almost bought before giving a chance to Steyr. The reason? Much better grips give the shooter a fuller advantage of low axis (bore axis is also quite low on Glocks), and most importantly, the sights. Yes, those beautiful triangle/trapezoid sights... What I have found (and I remind you it's very objective) is that this particular shape in a way "disciplines" the shooter to be more accurate -- the sharp tip of triangular front sight is a much better pointer than any dot-shaped one. You see exactly where your shots go as well as any deviations from the perfect aim become more obvious.
A little complaint here right away: the sights are finely made overall, but the white bars on the rear one are very small and thin and can be hard to see in dim light. Easily correctable issue for the company, don't you think?
So, here you have a great combination of excellent grip, low position of the slide, good aiming sights, crisp and comfortable trigger, large recoil-absorbing polymer frame -- seemingly, what else one might need to be a happy camper? Well, I'll tell you exactly what -- an ability of such pistol to shoot every round it's fed. And that is where my Steyr M40 has failed miserably...
I fired about 150 rounds of CCI Blazer 180 gr and Speer Lawman 165 gr, a few Federal HydroShock rounds of 135 and 180 gr weight, and a couple of Winchester SXT 180 gr. All ammo was factory manufactured. CCI and Speer, of course, were FMJ.
Every 7th of 8th shot, the pistol clicked as if dry-firing (but lighter) and didn't shoot. Upon extracting a misfired round, I consistently saw a very light and most of the time off-centered indentation mark on its primer. It happened less frequently with CCI ammo probably because its primer had to be struck lighter to ignite due to a thinner wall.
My suspicion is (please do correct me if I'm wrong in any way!) it may not only be the problem with the firing pin but, possibly, with the positioning of each cartridge after it's been sent to the chamber. It's just that on all of the normally-fired cases, indentation marks were right in the center, whereas on the misfired cases, they were both in the center and off-center. Why would the pistol not have some of the normally-fired cases with the marks off center? Another reason I thought it might be the round-positioning problem was that although the pistol never "failed to feed", racking the slide gave me a very various feeling from a mag to mag — sometimes it was very smooth and sure, sometimes with grinding feeling and obstacles.
Well, this is a big one, and for this exact reason my M40 is currently possessed by FedEx to be on its way to GSI.
Now the smaller problems I encountered -- yes, misfiring was not all it did wrong!
1. The slide does get scratched with ejected brass — this one's famous. Honestly, I'm not surprised at all considering the serial number of the pistol starts with 00.
2. The magazine, when inserted into the pistol, stops on its way in and, unless twisted around its long axis, simply doesn't go in. I think it's the magazine catch itself inside the grip frame — it sticks out a bit too far inside the grip and, thus, has to be aligned with and pressed by a very small specific area on the top of the mag to give in and compress. When you twist the magazine around its long axis while continuing to press it into the pistol, you'll finally align this small area with the magazine catch and the magazine goes into the grip smoothly.
Well, folks, that's all. But to me, the most important decision related to this experience with a totally new product (and the one I may one day very well rely with my life on) is that I decided to...keep the gun. Yes, I'm willing to give it every chance there is. Once it's back from GSI, I'll shoot the hell out of it, and should I encounter any more problems, off it will go to their gunsmith again! And again! Until they fix every damn %&*#@!$ defect and make it a good reliable weapon. I must do it for as I'm typing this, I'm still experiencing the pleasant memories of how this gun shot (when it didn't misfire, that is
). It was simply that good...
Emin
P.S. Would I do the same favor to a Glock or any other pistol? Simply put, I would try hard to get rid of it any way I could, or it would be shoved into the deepest drawer in my house and never in its life feel my right hand on its grip.
[This message has been edited by Emin (edited January 08, 2000).]
First, the bottom line: the new Steyr M40 is the best gun I've ever shot. More specifically, M40 shoots better than my absolutely beloved Sig for it has extremely low bore axis and thus, much less muzzle flip. Furthermore, its polymer frame absorbs recoil more efficiently, so it's very light. In fact, .40 S&W acquires a whole new attitude with this pistol and becomes a finely tamed beast.
It shoots better than Glock 23 which was the pistol I almost bought before giving a chance to Steyr. The reason? Much better grips give the shooter a fuller advantage of low axis (bore axis is also quite low on Glocks), and most importantly, the sights. Yes, those beautiful triangle/trapezoid sights... What I have found (and I remind you it's very objective) is that this particular shape in a way "disciplines" the shooter to be more accurate -- the sharp tip of triangular front sight is a much better pointer than any dot-shaped one. You see exactly where your shots go as well as any deviations from the perfect aim become more obvious.
A little complaint here right away: the sights are finely made overall, but the white bars on the rear one are very small and thin and can be hard to see in dim light. Easily correctable issue for the company, don't you think?
So, here you have a great combination of excellent grip, low position of the slide, good aiming sights, crisp and comfortable trigger, large recoil-absorbing polymer frame -- seemingly, what else one might need to be a happy camper? Well, I'll tell you exactly what -- an ability of such pistol to shoot every round it's fed. And that is where my Steyr M40 has failed miserably...
I fired about 150 rounds of CCI Blazer 180 gr and Speer Lawman 165 gr, a few Federal HydroShock rounds of 135 and 180 gr weight, and a couple of Winchester SXT 180 gr. All ammo was factory manufactured. CCI and Speer, of course, were FMJ.
Every 7th of 8th shot, the pistol clicked as if dry-firing (but lighter) and didn't shoot. Upon extracting a misfired round, I consistently saw a very light and most of the time off-centered indentation mark on its primer. It happened less frequently with CCI ammo probably because its primer had to be struck lighter to ignite due to a thinner wall.
My suspicion is (please do correct me if I'm wrong in any way!) it may not only be the problem with the firing pin but, possibly, with the positioning of each cartridge after it's been sent to the chamber. It's just that on all of the normally-fired cases, indentation marks were right in the center, whereas on the misfired cases, they were both in the center and off-center. Why would the pistol not have some of the normally-fired cases with the marks off center? Another reason I thought it might be the round-positioning problem was that although the pistol never "failed to feed", racking the slide gave me a very various feeling from a mag to mag — sometimes it was very smooth and sure, sometimes with grinding feeling and obstacles.
Well, this is a big one, and for this exact reason my M40 is currently possessed by FedEx to be on its way to GSI.
Now the smaller problems I encountered -- yes, misfiring was not all it did wrong!
1. The slide does get scratched with ejected brass — this one's famous. Honestly, I'm not surprised at all considering the serial number of the pistol starts with 00.
2. The magazine, when inserted into the pistol, stops on its way in and, unless twisted around its long axis, simply doesn't go in. I think it's the magazine catch itself inside the grip frame — it sticks out a bit too far inside the grip and, thus, has to be aligned with and pressed by a very small specific area on the top of the mag to give in and compress. When you twist the magazine around its long axis while continuing to press it into the pistol, you'll finally align this small area with the magazine catch and the magazine goes into the grip smoothly.
Well, folks, that's all. But to me, the most important decision related to this experience with a totally new product (and the one I may one day very well rely with my life on) is that I decided to...keep the gun. Yes, I'm willing to give it every chance there is. Once it's back from GSI, I'll shoot the hell out of it, and should I encounter any more problems, off it will go to their gunsmith again! And again! Until they fix every damn %&*#@!$ defect and make it a good reliable weapon. I must do it for as I'm typing this, I'm still experiencing the pleasant memories of how this gun shot (when it didn't misfire, that is
). It was simply that good...Emin
P.S. Would I do the same favor to a Glock or any other pistol? Simply put, I would try hard to get rid of it any way I could, or it would be shoved into the deepest drawer in my house and never in its life feel my right hand on its grip.
[This message has been edited by Emin (edited January 08, 2000).]