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9mm +P ammo
arkbacks
Member Posts: 54 ✭✭
Is it safe to fire 9mm 147 grain +P ammo in my Taurus PT908 and my Ruger P95?
Comments
What the lady at Ruger meant was your recoil springer on a steady diet of +P is going to wear, the rest of the gun will be fine.
Understood. It was the "once in a while" part that I was leaving up to him, as to just how often that was.
Wondering what makes a recoil spring wear more with +P than ordinary. Does the compressed spring limit the slide travel and take heavier compression loadings or what? Just curious. Thanks
Its not that the recoil spring itself will wear faster with +P ammo, its that the higher velocity of the +P load causes the slide to recoil faster.
The faster speed of the recoiling slide potentially increases battering between the slide and the gun's frame.
So *IF* the recoil spring is already worn (through ordinary use) the gun may be exposed to significantly more wear and tear from repeated slide/frame impact.
The solution to this problem is to make sure you swap your springs ever so often so that they don't get too badly worn. If you intend to fire MAINLY or entirely +P ammo, I'd suggest using a higher-than-normal resistance spring. Unfortunately, this may reduce reliability with ordinary loads. . .its a tradeoff.
To answer the original question, all Ruger 9mm pistols are rated for +P ammo.
In general with only one or two exceptions, *ALL* current manufacture 9mm guns from major manufacturers (*ALL* Smith and Wesson, All Glock, All Beretta, All Ruger, All Sig, all CZ, etc) are rated for 9mm+P ammo.
I believe all late manufacture Taurus guns are as well, though you might want to contact Taurus to confirm this with respect to your pistol (customer service # is 305-624-1115).
That said, I'd be careful about feeding guns with aluminum or aluminum-alloy frames exclusively +P ammo, as I think they are more prone to damage than comparable all steel guns.
While I would be surprised to hear that your Taurus gun could NOT handle +P ammo, I can think of another reasonably good reason to avoid it. Some guns won't reliably feed the longer flat-profile 147 grain bullets, and it wouldn't entirely surprise me if your Taurus is one of them.
On the topic of 147 grain bullets, the point of them is that they are subsonic, and are intended mainly for use in suppressed (ie "silenced") weapons. So unless you are running a suppressor on your gun, are issued this ammo and have no choice but to use it, or can get it cheaper than usual, I see no good reason to pick it over more conventional 115 or 124 grain 9mm rounds.
When the recoil spring starts to weaken a little (which they all do with use) it allows the slide to recoil faster and harder which beats the pistol frame more than if the spring was fresh.
Yep, that's what the Ruger lady said.
Select the maximum spring weight that gives reliable feeding to use with the +Ps.
Check the Wolf website for their offerings on slide spring weights
for your pistols.