Tuesday morning I raided some boxes of .45ACP defensive loads around the house and set out for the range with my trusty chronograph to see what was what. In more conventional loadings, I had some Speer Gold Dot 230gr and Federal HST 230gr +P. I also had a couple of more exotic loads as well as one of the classic JHP designs of the
fin de last
siecle...
The three exotic loads, seen from left to right in this photo, were Hornady's 220gr +P Critical Duty, Cor-Bon's 165gr +P Pow'RBall, and the classic Federal 230gr Hydra-Shok.
If you look at the pictures, the "cartridge overall length", or COAL as we shall call it, of the Hornady 220gr is a little longer than the others. This, combined with the bullet profile, may have contributed to the failure-to-feed on round #27 of the day, #927 of the test.
,,,and on round #30, the round fired normally, but the spent case didn't eject. Given the dimensions and shape of the round, and the fact that a 220gr bullet at 1,016fps was likely generating slide velocities in excess of what the 16# IMSI recoil spring could handle, I'm not surprised. The simplest way to reduce this malfunction would be to
not use the +P Critical Duty ammo in this gun.
Thanks to Cor-Bon, a number I'm not used to seeing on the chrono screen while shooting .45ACP. I'll post all the chrono data in a subsequent post.
Other than the Hornady Critical Duty, the gun ran fine.
This brings the total rounds fired to 1,000 since the weapon was last
cleaned or lubricated, with one failure to go into battery on round #
356 and a failure to feed on round #
513, a failure to feed a round of Hornady Critical Duty +P on round #
927, and a failure to eject one on round #
930. 1,000 rounds to go.
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