mag springs

range

how long could I keep a magazine loaded before springs go soft a ruger lcp380 many thanks

Ray B

I don't have any data on the resilience of springs, but in the military we loaded magazines to 90% (18 rounds in a 20 rnd mag)capacity as a means of extending the spring life and magazine reliability.

montanajoe

This has been debated many times.
Here's a couple older threads on the subject,but I feel the info is still valid today.
Interesting points and info. Hope this helps;

http://forums.GunBroker.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=409372&SearchTerms=loaded,magazines


http://forums.GunBroker.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=549049&SearchTerms=loaded,magazines


http://forums.GunBroker.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=202963&SearchTerms=magazine,springs

beantownshootah

This generic question gets asked all the time: "Is it OK to leave magazines loaded for long periods of time"?

You can read quite a bit about elastic limits and "set" so forth if you do a search on this topic, but I think the quick answer is that empirically, most magazines do seem to function perfectly fine if left loaded for extended periods of time. Biggest causes of magazine spring failure are defective manufacture/design and cycling (ie use).

Perhaps the better answer is "it doesn't matter". Certainly a few months of loading at a time isn't an issue, at all.

Assuming you're using this gun for concealed carry, you will need to practice with it from time to time, and assuming you do that 1-2x year, you'll notice if there are any problems with the magazines.

Also, at under $30 each, these magazines are relatively inexpensive (eg compare to boxes of 25 .380 defensive rounds at $15-20/box). So if you just buy 1-2 extra magazines and either rotate them, or keep them as unused spares, you'll never have to worry about this issue.

nunn

In my experience, over 30 years is OK.

charliemeyer007

I have at least 5 magazines for every one of my firearms that use them. Springs can an do fail though not very often with modern spring steel. Loss, dents, or being dropped on the feed lips will likely be an issue before spring failure. A few spare factory or good name replacement springs would not be expensive or a bad idea.

KAMsales

Cycling springs is the main cause of fatigue. Loading and unloading mags to "save the spring" ironically is doing more to wear out the spring than just leaving it loaded. You're not going to wear out the mag springs anytime soon, just load the mag, use the gun, and worry about bigger problems in life [:I]

machine gun moran

The Brits found that most feed problems weren't related to magazine spring fatigue. But they did find that max-cramming a magazine, whether it was new or ancient, would often cause feeding problems with the first couple of rounds. They implemented a rule against loading more than 11 rounds in a Hi-Power magazine or more than 28 in a Sten.

I've had a theory that pistols with a lot of slide over-travel (of the magazine) on the rearward stoke of the slide, are more accomodating to a 'slow' magazine spring than guns in which the slide is arrested at a point which barely allows clearance for the next cartridge to pop up.

beantownshootah

quote:Originally posted by machine gun moran
The Brits found that most feed problems weren't related to magazine spring fatigue. But they did find that max-cramming a magazine, whether it was new or ancient, would often cause feeding problems with the first couple of rounds. They implemented a rule against loading more than 11 rounds in a Hi-Power magazine or more than 28 in a Sten.

I fully agree with this, though it is getting off topic a bit. I think how much "cramming" a magazine full degrades its reliability really depends on the magazine design.

EG, many of the current platform mags really are designed properly so they'll run reliably with their nominal maximum number of rounds. In other words, you probably *DO NOT* need to underload EVERY semi-auto gun magazine to get max reliability, only certain ones.

Realistically, if you "only" put say 28 rounds in a 30-round AR-15 magazine, or 15 in a 16-round CZ-75 mag, you've still got plenty of rounds on tap, and I think you'll probably be OK, especially if you have extra mags handy.

Underloading mags becomes much more of an issue with something like a Ruger LCP, where the mag only holds 6 total, and each of the 6 is a fairly marginal .380. Lots of people who carry these don't carry extra mags, and even if you have one, swapping it in quickly may not be possible. So for something like this, I think you'll want every single round you can get!

Again, without beating this to death, I think the Ruger mags are designed correctly, and you should be able to load them to nominal max capacity. Assuming normal storage, I also think you should be able to keep the mags loaded for at *LEAST* a year with zero issues, and most likely MANY years.

If you really are going to leave the gun unused for long periods of time, the thing to worry about is probably just ordinary corrosion (ie of the gun itself, and/or magazine), not degradation of the magazine springs.