Broken Glock, Again

So I broke my Glock…again.  I broke my Glock before (story Here), well kind of.  I more wore out the internal parts.  Even though the trigger parts and firing pin safety had worn visible grooves and the parts where grinding on each other, it still worked.  The trigger felt horrible, but I hadn’t noticed it until it was really bad.  I thought it was just part of switching from a custom 1911 to a Glock.  My custom 1911 had a great trigger, so an out of the box Glock stinks in comparison.

Finally, I couldn’t take the trigger anymore.  So I put the New York 1 return spring, a 3.5# connector, a new trigger and bar, and a new safety plunger and pin.  That seemed to work for about a month and then started getting worse again.  I borrowed a Glock 19 Gen 4 and worked with that for about two months.  I loved that trigger compared to mine.  So I took out the New York 1 spring and put the original back in (the wrong way).

The trigger felt better for a little while, but I had noticed that the gun was functioning slowly.  It seemed that the barrel was not unlocking smoothly from the slide during cycling.  Again, I just thought it was the Glock getting old and was wondering if I had outlived it.  I have an estimated 6 to 7 thousand rounds through it, and an estimated 3 or 4 times that in dry practice.  I’ve heard of these guns running in the hundreds of thousands, so I was kind of surprised that this one might be done.

Through it all, Glock reliability held true.  I have only one documented malfunction and I’m not sure if it was the gun or ammo that I was using.  A round with a rolled back case went into the chamber and locked up the gun.  It started a calamity of malfunctions caused by me.

I was shooting an IDPA match and was talking smack about the USPSA match I shot the day before.  Every one of the USPSA shooters in my squad had at least one malfunction with their race guns while they made fun of me for having a stock Glock 19.  Karma can get you sometimes.  Right before my first reload on the stage, the gun failed to go into battery.  I tried tap-rack-bang, but the slide failed to move.  I tried again with more force and couldn’t get the slide to move.  By then I had comments coming from the peanut gallery.  I held the gun by the slide in my left hand and used the heel of my right hand to beat it open.

I got the bad round to come out, but caused a double feed.  So I cleared that, got rid of that magazine and shoved a fresh (and my last) magazine in the gun.  As I pushed the slide release to chamber a round, I saw, to my complete shock, that the first round in the magazine had jumped out of the magazine and was pointing backwards.  I watched in horror as the gun tried to chamber a round with the bullet pointing at me.  Luckily nothing happened, except another malfunction (obviously operator error).  And no, I did not load the magazine that way, the round had popped out of the top of the magazine and the gun actually tried to feed the backwards round and a fresh one from the magazine.

I cleared that malfunction and shot the rest of the stage, only to find out I didn’t have enough rounds left for the last target.  I ran forward and grabbed one of the discarded magazines and finished off the last target.

When my Glock malfunctions, it malfunctions.  Anyways, last weekend I had enough (again) with my Glock when one of the ladies at the beginner’s class I was teaching couldn’t pull the slide back on my Glock but had no problems with another Glock.  I got a Glock armorer to look at the weapon.  The first thing he found was that I put in the trigger reset spring in wrong.

After fixing that, the trigger felt much better but suggested I replace the connector, too, because it had a groove in it.  I told him about the slide and he looked for a while and found that Glock, or someone in the store I bought the Glock from, had put the slide lock in upside down (it’s the part you push down on both sides of the frame to disassemble the pistol).  Who knew the Glock could continue to function with parts in backwards?

Before this, I am the only one that has touched my pistol and I didn’t take that part out, so some how, I got a pistol with the part in upside down.  Now the Glock feels much better to work the action and shoot, and we are a happy couple again.

Take it from me, if your pistol starts to run funny, take it to get repaired.  It would have saved me a ton of hassle, frustration, and embarrassment.

Stay Safe,

Ben