-TT- wrote:Rather than mess with uploading pictures someplace I can link to,
BTW, the forum accepts picture uploads, and once uploaded you can use the "Place inline" button to show them. That's how I posted the ones I took earlier anyway! But I'm not going to discourage you from creating the excellent pdf's. ;-)
Thanks! I've always FTP'd images to my web site (which is almost full) and linked to them. I hadn't realized (obviously) that the file upload worked for images as well as documents. I shall have to experiment...
Back to the topic at hand: I really don't think your "gap" is the issue. It sounds like a little careful tuning of the extractor nose will solve the problem. It's also possible the hole in your bolt is a little extra deep, and you don't have quite as much tension as is ideal. If you find that the Lyman gauge is giving you low readings, you can put a tiny plug in the bottom of the hole. Just make sure you can still compress the pin far enough to get the extractor in & out easily.
One thing I've never quite figured out is how the magazines get into the act. I
know there is an interaction, because failures to extract are frequently "round-specific". For example, the most common time for an extraction failure is the first round, because that is when the upward force of the remaining rounds is maximum. That actually points to a slide drag/lubrication problem. The Pardini I'm working on always fails to eject on the
4th round, which is really weird... It's a good idea to mark your magazines, and keep track of which ones are involved when you have problems. It may be random, but maybe not.
When I first started working with the team, there were some pistols that would ONLY work with a specific magazine. We had about 20 spares which included a few notes about this one or that one not working in so-and-so's pistol. I took them all home one summer and rebuilt them. Unfortunately, I didn't think to test them in my Benelli first, so I'm not sure how many were actually "bad". In any event, by the time I was done, all 20 worked flawlessly in my pistol. Other than varying amounts of grime, I didn't find much that I would consider "wrong" with any of them. There were a few instances where the spring took a funny set, and in some cases, a loop would try to pop out of the magazine catch slot:
The springs don't have a well defined "top" or :"bottom", and often flipping them end for end will fix the way they compress inside the body. There can also be burrs in the slot the button rides in. New Pardini magazines are really awful in this regard, and manually cycling them up & down 20 times will usually smooth them up considerably.
I eventually found that the problem with the Benellis was usually with the pistols, and I've been trying hard to find and fix the subtle issues (like the extractor nose shapes), but some of them still prefer some magazines over others. Given that the "ejector" is part of the magazine, there's always a possibility something is amiss there.
I also had to deal with several different vintages of magazines, included both 5 & 6 round mags, which have dramatically different feed lip designs:
The one on the right is (I believe) the newer design, and the extra metal in the middle helps to guide the rim of the round up at the right time in the cycle.
I have found that some feeding issues are magazine related, but I also found that is usually still the pistol that is at fault. I had one where the firing pin tip broke, and the broken part raised a
tiny burr on the slide face where the round slides up. That was enough to cause jams...
You say your slide cycles smoothly. Doing this with an empty pistol is often misleading. If you have some dummy rounds, try it with 4 rounds in the magazine, just to be sure. There are often machining marks on the rib the hammer rubs on, and the rim of the next round also slides there. A little smoothing there can help:
When all else fails, try a drop of thin oil on the top round of every magazine. I've never found this necessary, but the folks at Pardini USA swear by it.