Catastrophic failure Glock 37

shilowar

Has anyone here heard about Winchester having ammunition problems with the new GAP 230 gr FMJ? An Officer from the Agency I work at had a Glock 37 blow apart in her hand yesterday. We have experienced an unsually high number of problems with the casings being to long, not going into battery with light primer strikes. This time the primer detonated while the slide was not in full battery causing the rear extractor side of the casing to explode out the trigger guard and magazine well. Split the frame at the trigger guard and magazine. I have pics of both the brass and damaged Glock if I can figure out how to attach them.

shilowar

perry shooter

Hello I know I will get flamed for this BUT the Glock IMHO has a poorly designed disconnector and poorly supported lower chamber area . I have seen more Glocks blow at my range 4 of them, then all other brands of semi autos combined. This plus the GAP is again IMHO trying too hard to get the same power out of a smaller case with the danger of higher pressures. Making the head / web area thicker was supposed to prevent what happen here but in your case it did NOT work. I would never take the chance to my health by owning one of these .

EDIT if the ammo was too long then a properly designed disconnector WOULD PREVENT the hammer from falling this is one of the purposes of a DISCONNECTOR. I would hate to say that it is NOT the pistols fault if because of dirt in chamber or long ammo the gun will fire without the slide and barrel being locked in battery[?][xx(][V][:(!][^]

Edit Take 2 Can I ask you if you have to use the 45GAP as a duty gun or just a Glock ? If just a glock I would pick anything but a 45Gap IMHO this cartridge is trouble waiting to happen it remines me of my early days and modifying cars you build up the top end of an engine and then the bottom end fails you fix that and then the Trans fails ETC ETC The gap can NOT be made out of trimmed 45ACP cases because the web head area has too much stress this translates into failure unless every thing else is perfect . I like a safety margin in my firearms.

shilowar

Well unfortuanately other than finding other employment this is what I have to carry!

Wehrmacht_45

Personally, I feel that Winchester ammo leave much to be desired. I have had a lot of ammo related issues with their ammo. In one box of 9mm I had three deformed rounds alone.

mrs102

If I read your post correctly, you described an ammunition problem. The Winchester case was too long. Can't blame that on Glock. Had this pistol been cleaned properly in the chamber area from prior use? Were these factory loads or perhaps improperly (re)sized reloads that didn't seat in the chamber? Has this happened with other manufacturers ammo? There are lots of questions to answer when there is a firearm failure such as this.

shilowar

This occurred 30 rounds into firing, the pistol was clean prior to firing, and this was agency issued ammunition, so no other manufacturuers ammunition has been tried as of yet. The Ranger SXT does not appear to suffer the same issues.Speer will be the next call. The issue is with the ammunition, established previously. You can take the suspect rounds and line them up with correctly manufactured rounds and see that the casing is too long, and that it flairs at the bullet end due to this excess length.

shilowar

I'm not blaming Glock. I have carried and own several Glocks in 9mm and .40 and have never had any problems. My favortie off duty carry is a model 19. I'm just searching the net for those that may have experienced similiar issus with the GAP.

shilowar

I gotta ya perry. I have 2.5 boxes of this ammo with light primer strikes because the slide was not fully into battery. Out of the first 5000 rounds shot when these were issued we probably had 300+ bad rounds.

shilowar

And I might add, too Winchester's credit they replaced the rest of the training ammo as soon as they were notified of the issue. But this is a new issue.

boxermachine

Wow, thanks for the pics!!!

dan55362

Now thats crazy[;)]