TargetTalk

I bought a Benelli 95 in 32 for my wife from Larry's Guns maybe 15 years ago. She shot it very little and for only a short time. It has sat for a long time. I got it out for my buddy. It runs well but consistently fails to feed the 5th round from all 4 magazines. I thought he might me limp wristing it so I tried it. I was able to get the 5th round to load sometimes but it failed more often.

The gun is clean and well lubed. My loads with 98gr Speer WC function fine in all positions except the 5th round.

Any tips on how to get functionality to be reliable?

Mike

What exactly is happening? Does it fail to pick up the round, does the round jam entering the chamber, etc? Can you get a photo, it it's a jam?

It is not a jam. It simply and consistently fails to pick up the last round. The 4th round fires, extracts, and ejects but does not load the last round,

Mike

My first guess would be the charge is loaded too lightly, at least, because you say it happens on all four mags.

My second guess would be to inspect the buffer, is the spring tube boring into it, or has the rubber hardened or softened over the years of non-use?

Greetings,

How does the pistol function with Fiocchi Commercial or Lapua Commercial?

Cheers,

Dave

TT, I shot several magazines through it yesterday and the hand loads seemed plenty snappy. I am having my buddy bring the pistol over tonight and I will check the buffer. If needed, I can fashion one using the key fob technique.

fc60, I have never tried commercial ammo in the pistol. I am in Fairbanks, Alaska and getting specialty ammo has always been a challenge. If the buffer doesn't sort it, I will pull out the Dillon and make the load a tad hotter. The problem with that is that I previously did extension testing with powder/loads and increase powder loads were not as accurate. But I will trade reliability for a slight accuracy degradation.

Mike

The old buffer was pretty hard. It was difficult to remove, but I did replace it with an OEM buffer; I bought several from Larry long ago. We won't be able to shoot the pistol until tomorrow night. Hopefully that is the fix.

Mike

Your reloads are a little too fat for your magazines?

J, the reloads may be chubby, but they chamber fine and the first 4 rounds feed properly. I will check dimensions more closely once we shoot it tomorrow night and see if the buffer replacement worked. Thanks for the tip.

Mike

If the pistol feeds four rounds well and hangs on the last, the first thing I would look at is the magazine spring.

Good news. We shot an indoor 900 match last night. The Benelli worked fine and did not have a problem picking up the last round on any magazine. I was thinking rcma was on the right track about magazine springs, but, operating under the law of parsimony, I did a thorough chamber cleaning and changed the buffer first. It worked.

Frankly, I can't see why either action improved the pick up of the last round of a magazine, but the pistol is running fine now. Whether it is causation, or just correlation, isn't important now. It is working.

Thanks to all who took the time to reply. My friend is a new shooter and not having to struggle with equipment issues is one less thing on his plate. He shot very well and is happy. Now I guess I have to load more of those pesky little .32 WCs.

Regards and thanks.

Mike

Excellent. Cleaning the chamber never hurts, but my bet is on the buffer being the fix. Issues with the buffer affect the timing, and that last round is tricky due to the mag spring being at maximum extension. Good to hear it's cycling again.