- Joined
- Oct 25, 2004
- Messages
- 3,178
Back in '98 I bought a Glock 21C - .45 ACP and a "compensator" consisting of two slots milled in the top of the barrel with the slide opened up to let them vent. It was sturdy, reliable, and accurate. It also fed cheap ammo just as well as the good stuff and I put many thousands of such rounds through it over the years.
Today I participated in a postal match on another site. It had been a while since I'd shot the old Glock at anything other than the standard plinking targets and I was curious to see how it would do when group size counted.
It didn't do as well as I would've liked. Target was a piece of printer paper. Course of fire was eight rounds at five yards, twelve rounds at seven yards, fourteen rounds at fifteen yards, and sixteen rounds at twenty yards.
And that was the best out of three. Not bad, but I shot noticeably better with a year-old G34 and ammo that was just as cheap right afterwards, and the G34's trigger is nowhere nearly as light and smooth as the G21's is. There is a problem with the gun.
It had been behaving oddly for the last six months or so. It was fouling so badly around the throat area that nothing short of JB Bore Paste would remove it, and not without a lot of work. I chalked that up to cheap ammo until I ran a box of the good stuff through...same thing. It hiccups occasionally. It never used to do that. It cycles sluggishly sometimes. At first I thought that the cold weather was congealing the grease, but the sluggishness continued when the grease was replaced by oil.
Tonight I gave it the most thorough detail cleaning that it had ever seen, and bad things started to appear. Wear. Galling. Rattling. The recoil spring guide rod looks like a dog has been chewing on it. A close inspection of the bore revealed a surface that looked like the bad sections of I-5; the metal seemed to be almost peeling up in the grooves. There are several spots that look suspiciously like either very weird pits or very minor cracks around the vents.
I broke out the GI Muzzle Wear Gauge (a round of loaded ammo) and gauged the muzzle.
Yep, the mouth of the case is pretty much sitting on the muzzle. By comparison, my G30 (which has maybe 1000-2000 rounds through it) shows about a 2mm gap between the case mouth and the muzzle using the same round.
Well, that certainly would explain a loss of accuracy and stubborn fouling, wouldn't it?
I think that I wore my Glock out, and it only took me seven years. I lost track of the round count several years ago but I'd guess it (conservatively) to be at over 20,000 rounds. There was about a two year period where it saw 300+ rounds nearly every weekend, and had I known how to shoot back then, I might've gotten some benefit from all that shooting.
On the plus side, the trigger is broken in to the point where it doesn't even feel like a Glock anymore.
So, it looks like a new barrel at the bare minimum, and I'm thinking the recoil spring and guide rod need to go too. I'll take a close look at the internals later but they seem to check out so far. The frame and slide themselves are fine I think, although I have half a mind to just mail the whole thing to Smyrna to get their recommendations. I may have exceeded the pistol's designed lifespan at this point.
Now's your chance to weigh in:
Factory barrel or aftermarket? (I don't compete. I don't shoot unjacketed ammunition through it, nor do I plan on ever doing so.)
Ported or non? (Non's cheaper and I don't think that a .45 ACP really needs porting in the first place, but it may look a bit odd with a ported slide and nonported barrel.)
Recommended place for parts? My first choice is Glockmeister but there may be a better place that I don't know about.
Or should I just keep running it for a while longer? The pistol's not really keeping up with me anymore, but it's still more than adequate for nailing beer cans and clay pigeons.
I ought to put up some pics of the rest of that pistol sometime. Some people think that I just beat on khukuris.
Today I participated in a postal match on another site. It had been a while since I'd shot the old Glock at anything other than the standard plinking targets and I was curious to see how it would do when group size counted.
It didn't do as well as I would've liked. Target was a piece of printer paper. Course of fire was eight rounds at five yards, twelve rounds at seven yards, fourteen rounds at fifteen yards, and sixteen rounds at twenty yards.
And that was the best out of three. Not bad, but I shot noticeably better with a year-old G34 and ammo that was just as cheap right afterwards, and the G34's trigger is nowhere nearly as light and smooth as the G21's is. There is a problem with the gun.
It had been behaving oddly for the last six months or so. It was fouling so badly around the throat area that nothing short of JB Bore Paste would remove it, and not without a lot of work. I chalked that up to cheap ammo until I ran a box of the good stuff through...same thing. It hiccups occasionally. It never used to do that. It cycles sluggishly sometimes. At first I thought that the cold weather was congealing the grease, but the sluggishness continued when the grease was replaced by oil.
Tonight I gave it the most thorough detail cleaning that it had ever seen, and bad things started to appear. Wear. Galling. Rattling. The recoil spring guide rod looks like a dog has been chewing on it. A close inspection of the bore revealed a surface that looked like the bad sections of I-5; the metal seemed to be almost peeling up in the grooves. There are several spots that look suspiciously like either very weird pits or very minor cracks around the vents.
I broke out the GI Muzzle Wear Gauge (a round of loaded ammo) and gauged the muzzle.
Yep, the mouth of the case is pretty much sitting on the muzzle. By comparison, my G30 (which has maybe 1000-2000 rounds through it) shows about a 2mm gap between the case mouth and the muzzle using the same round.
Well, that certainly would explain a loss of accuracy and stubborn fouling, wouldn't it?
I think that I wore my Glock out, and it only took me seven years. I lost track of the round count several years ago but I'd guess it (conservatively) to be at over 20,000 rounds. There was about a two year period where it saw 300+ rounds nearly every weekend, and had I known how to shoot back then, I might've gotten some benefit from all that shooting.
On the plus side, the trigger is broken in to the point where it doesn't even feel like a Glock anymore. So, it looks like a new barrel at the bare minimum, and I'm thinking the recoil spring and guide rod need to go too. I'll take a close look at the internals later but they seem to check out so far. The frame and slide themselves are fine I think, although I have half a mind to just mail the whole thing to Smyrna to get their recommendations. I may have exceeded the pistol's designed lifespan at this point.
Now's your chance to weigh in:
Factory barrel or aftermarket? (I don't compete. I don't shoot unjacketed ammunition through it, nor do I plan on ever doing so.)
Ported or non? (Non's cheaper and I don't think that a .45 ACP really needs porting in the first place, but it may look a bit odd with a ported slide and nonported barrel.)
Recommended place for parts? My first choice is Glockmeister but there may be a better place that I don't know about.
Or should I just keep running it for a while longer? The pistol's not really keeping up with me anymore, but it's still more than adequate for nailing beer cans and clay pigeons.
I ought to put up some pics of the rest of that pistol sometime. Some people think that I just beat on khukuris.
Sorry bud, I can't help you out any in the Glock department. That's an impressive feat to wear out a pistol in seven years.
We're beyond a simple barrel and spring replacement as far as I'm concerned.
