Molecular Advantage Gun Oil Review

In March, I was sent a kit of Molecular Advantage Gun Oil to review. I’ve reviewed a bunch of gun oils now (Rand CLP Review, Frog Lube Review, and FireClean Review) and started doing 1,000 round test while carrying the gun everyday.

The oil worked great, is the short answer. It’s expensive is the other answer. But here is what I did to test the gun.

I always start by abusing my pistol in the name of science. I have a can of Gun Scrubber for just this thing. Gun Scrubber smells like Break Cleaner to me and seems to work about the same way. It will suck the moisture, oil, dirt, and everything out of the metal and leave it totally dry. We used it in the Marine Corps on machine guns (against policy) to get them clean after firing a lot of ammo. Then drench them with oil after they were clean. We put them into the armory dripping wet. They would come out the next day almost dry. Metal has pores that the oil drips into. When you use Gun Scrubber, you pull all that stuff out. Not really good for your gun, but good for an oil test. So, in the name of science, I abused my carry gun.

After getting all the oil and dirt off the gun, I put a couple drops of oil on it. One inside of each slide rail at the top, one around the sear, and one on the barrel.   This is the normal way I oil all my guns. Too much oil attracts dirt and no oil will work well when it’s full of dirt. I also took a drop on a patch and then rubbed it all over the metal parts of the gun.

I put the gun together and headed to the range. The first day I fired 250 rounds even (because that’s all I brought). I did a hard training session of moving and shooting in the drizzling 40 degree rain. It was a miserable day to be on the range but a great time to test a gun oil. The gun ran without fail.

My initial reaction was favorable on the oil. It seems to run just enough to go where I wanted it to but didn’t drip away. It also showed taking abuse well after that first range trip. I clearly missed a spot when I oiled the outside of the gun. After the rain and cold it looked a different color than the rest of the gun.

The kit came with some “applicators”. They look like huge cotton swabs. I love using wooden 6” non-sterile cotton swabs to clean my guns. They get gunk out where I can’t get my finger and I can wipe stuff off with them. The Marine Corps uses them to clean and test for cleanliness in rifles. If you thought your rifle was clean enough you took it to the armorer and he would run a white cotton swab all over it. If the swab came back anything but white, your rifle isn’t clean enough. Yes, that’s why I don’t like cleaning guns. Ten years of that will drive you crazy.

These cotton swabs had plastic sticks and were too big to fit everywhere and the sticks bent to the point of making the swab unusable. There were only a couple and I used them because they were there. I won’t be buying more.

I do like that the oil comes in a lot of different applicators. One of the pains of using BreakFree CLP (my go to for years) was that they only come in drip bottles. And those stupid drip bottles drip everywhere. You can’t get the drip where you want it, and they never quite close all the way. I always have oil in the bottom of my cleaning kit.

The Molecular Advantage came in syringes that solved that problem. The syringe let me put a drop of oil where I wanted it and then they actually stayed closed in my bag. I’ve learned over the years to put oil in Zip-Lock bags.  When I pulled one of the syringes out of the bag, no oil. I was impressed.

Fast-forward 15 days and I’m teaching a class in Houston where they got about 5 inches of rain the night before. We were lucky to get on the range. One of the students needed his car pulled out of the mud it was so bad.

As part of my class, I normally drop my gun as a demonstration. I got to that point in the class and let go of the gun. I almost reached out to grab it so it wouldn’t end up in the mud, but pulled my hand back knowing better. Trying to grab at a falling gun is a good way to shoot yourself. Don’t do it.

So my gun landed in the mud sticking almost straight up. I pulled it out and tried to use the grass to wipe it off (Picture above). It didn’t work. I disassembled the gun to knock the mud out of the barrel, wiped off the outside with napkins, so I didn’t get a face full of mud, and then fired it. No problems at all. I didn’t wipe anything inside down. Just left the mud that was there.

The gun ran just fine. I continued to carry it and shoot it for another couple months. By the end of April (half way through a course) I cleaned it.

Total round count: 967
Steel (Wolf, Tula, or Monarch): 612
Brass (Win or Fed): 355
Total Time: 56 Days of Carrying everyday Including 3 different Courses

I had one malfunction on the last day. I did shoot 355 rounds in one day and it was around number 300 of that day. But I think it was me, not the pistol. I was taking a course by Tom Givens and he teaches over hand tug when reloading. I normally use my slide release or just hit the magazine hard enough for the slide to go home on it’s own.

During a slide-lock emergency reload, I ejected my spent magazine, and slapped a new one in. I hit it hard enough to make the slide go home but was already reaching over the top to run the slide to chamber the first round. My mind didn’t work fast enough and I still ran the slide. I saw a live round fly out of the gun but didn’t care. Just put my sights on the target and pressed the trigger. The gun went “click!” I stepped to the side, slapped the magazine, turned the gun to the right, and ran the slide again. I didn’t see anything come out and couldn’t find a live or dented primer round after the drill.

All I can surmise is that somehow I pulled the slide back far enough to get that new round out of the chamber but not another round in. Really weird malfunction. But I also didn’t run the slide really hard like I should because my mind was trying to catch up to what my eyes were seeing even though I was already doing things. In other words, I got confused and didn’t run the reload properly. Confusion causes more malfunctions then I care to count. And I think it got me that round.

At the end of the day, I pulled the gun apart and it was pretty nasty. So I cleaned it that night before going back the next day. I haven’t had an issue since and it’s been another month and another class done.

Cleaning the gun was easy. I never really have trouble with handguns, so I’m not sure if the oil helped or not. It wasn’t noticeably different.

Overall the oil worked great. There is no mess and it looks like it will last forever. So I’ll probably keep using it because I like the syringe style bottle. Time will tell if it will cut down the rust this summer. I’ll let you know.

Stay Safe,

Ben