Speedbump...

So, I'm sitting on two semi-snakebit pistol tests right now.

First is the Steyr C9-A1. Okay, there's a known extractor issue with the pistols, and Steyr has released an upgraded extractor to solve it. But I don't know if my pistol already has this parts fix or not. I'll contact them for the part, but... The fact that I talked to one of their service guys in Louisville in May and got told the "Well, now, it's a precision European pistol and you don't want to feed it junk ammo," was disheartening. Especially since the weaksauce Blazer Brass 115gr stuff that gave the Steyr such fits was devoured happily by a certain other Austrian pistol that's every bit as European.

Euro-manufactured ammo is less likely to suffer from being underpowered, but tends to have harder milspec primers, which give the Steyr's striker-fired ignition setup fits. (And at a much higher rate than noticed with the similarly striker-fired Glock 19 or Sig P320.) If I'm going to try and gallop this thing across the finish line, I'm going to need to source myself a case of Fiocchi 124gr or similar and cross my fingers.

Meanwhile, you might have noticed that you haven't heard much about my Glock 32 lately...

Well, Tuesday last week I took it and a hundred rounds of ammo to Indy Arms Co. for the typical morning range session. Fired the hundred rounds without any malfunctions. At the end of the trip, I decided to pull the gun apart and LocTite the guide rod. The slide needed to be beaten off the pistol with a rubber mallet again, and the guide rod turned out to be bent like a banana.

100rds at 10yds. Yes, I know the sights are off.

On the advice of a couple of pretty Glock-savvy friends, I went ahead and ordered a White Sound Defense non-captive guide rod to avoid this problem in the future. I would have dropped the factory recoil spring assembly back in there to keep shooting the gun in the meantime, but it seems to have gone air-soluble. (Note To Self: Order a small handful of factory Gen 3 19/23/32/38 RSAs.)

This makes it 1629 total rounds fired since the firearm was last cleaned or lubricated, with five failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126, #748, #1,503*), five failures to feed (#221, #224, #282, #734, #1,529*), and one failure to eject (#1,033). 371 rounds left to go.
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