Failure To Fire!!! Arrgghh!

[PappyD]

Bought a new LCP a few weeks ago. Serial number 371-xxx. Did a pre-fire cleaning, etc.

Out of 150 rounds I had maybe 4-5 Failure to feeds. All FTF's were with WW white box, the ones with the flatter tip bullets. Remington FMJ ball and hollow points fed fine with no problems.

Then I loaded up some Hornady Critical Defense rounds. I had 3 failure to fire  in 3 magazines. I loaded 4 rounds in each magazine. In each magazine, I had one failure to fire! After the first I pulled the slide back about 1/2" and pulled the trigger. Bang... Round downrange... New magazine with 4 rounds. Bang, bang, click.. Pull slide back a little, pull trigger..Bang... 3rd magazine with 4 rounds. Bang, click. Do the slide routine and then bang, bang, bang.

Hmm. Run some more ball and HP's through it...No problem...Hmmm?

The only thing I think of is that I'm not allowing the trigger to fully recover forward when shooting the Hornady CD rounds. Maybe I'm expecting greater recoil and subconsciously  gripping the LCP too hard with the result being my trigger finger is holding back the trigger release somehow.

After I came back from the range today I did the "fluff and buff" with my Dremel and now have a shiny feed ramp, etc. I did notice some slight ripples on the ramp throat but the polishing seemed to solve that potential problem. I'll head back out tommorrow and try again with the Critical Defense rounds. If it happens again I'm going to see if I can "make" the LCP fail to fire with the other ammo.

The LCP is a backup and light summer carry for me. This baby has to be 100% reliable!  If I can run 100 rounds without a problem then I'll feel good about it.

Anyone else have this happen?

Pappy

[ceb]

I just yesterday had a failured to fire with Hornady Critical Defense ammo ( see elsies first malfunction in this section), it also fired on a second strike.

[cwl1862]

Are you sure your allowing the trigger to reset completly before pulling again?  In other words your not short sroking the trigger. this is something that will appear like a misfire with your lcp.

[bigweb2001]

check the spent case to see if your firing pin is off center....

[PappyD]

Cwl,

Yes, I could be keeping the trigger from re-setting. But at the same time, I need to be confident that the weapon will work when needed. I'll experiment to see if i can duplicate the event with other rounds.

And, I can work on my technique with this little pocket pistol. I do like it, however. It fits in my pocket and I can see myself taking it everywhere.

Thanks, Pappy

Note:  I did compare firing pin strikes. The Hornady rounds seem like they may have a harder primer. The strike indent doesn't appear to be as deep.
Deep or shallow...I don't care as long as the bullet gets launched!

[WYOLCP]

PappyD,
Just joined the forum after reading this post so I could share my experience.  I too had a very similar experience.  I purchased my LCP about 3 months ago (371-xxx).  Took a month to find any ammo and even longer to find some Hornady Critical Defense.  With a couple different brands of FMJ's I have had zero problems.  The first time out with the Critical Defense ammo, however, 1/3 to 1/2 the box failed to fire on the first primer strike.  Some took more than two strikes to fire.  There was no reall pattern to the failures:  sometimes first round in mag, but not always, happened when loading from the magazine and by dropping the round in the chamber, happened slow fire and with double taps. 

Here's what I have learned:
I emailed Ruger about the problem, and within a couple of hours I had a response.  The first thing they asked me was where was the firing pin impact?  They stated that Hornady uses harder primers than Winchester and some others and that off center primer hits could be the culprit.  They asked me for my mailing address and gave me the email address of Joe Cramer (customer service) and requested I contact him if my primer strikes were off center.  They gave me a customer service phone number to call if this wasn't the case.  I checked my casings and my primer strikes were definately off to the side; so I reported this back to Mr. Cramer.  Within an hour of my email, Mr. Cramer responded with an email stating that he believed my LCP had an improperly machined firing pin hole and that he would be sending me an entire new slide!  Three days later UPS delivered a brand new slide to my door.  I headed straight out to the range to test it out.  First with Winchester ammo, which functioned fine with perfectly centered primer strikes.  Next I tried some more Hornady Critical Defense--no problems at all!!  What a relief.

Get ahold of Ruger--they'll take care of you.  Their customer service was excellent for me--fast too!  Best reaffirming lesson for me was: always test your ammo/gun combo before carrying with it.  Good luck to you and I hope this all works out. 

[jocko]

WYOCLP.  undoubably one of the best constructive comments I have read on this forum in a long. Time, you had a problem, u did some homework, you did everything right. I read no negatives or verbal hammering of Ruger over this. u accepted it for what it was.  You also gave Ruger the right information to allow them to trouble shoot this issue over the air ways and not sending it back and forth. 

Your lite strikes was right o target to. If one short strokes a lcp it will lite strike but  ruger in ther recall  with their new hammer block designed the short stroke thing to "be" almost a thing of the past.  A weak hammerr spring can cause it but that is so so rare that I hve not read of it on the lcp forum. It was common on the kt forum but Rugers hammer spring is alot stouter to in design.

My compliments to you and how you solved the problem and to Ruger for getting on the ball fast and getting you going right. the above poster I would bet has the same issues to. Crititical defense ammo is good stuff, Ruger can call some rounds hard primers, if they want but if the gun is made right, it will igite all primers. these companies that make ammo certainly don't put in hard primers that will not work.  If you had 3 brands of primers, one would be definitely the hardest and one the softest but neither should actually mean a damn thing either,.

again, you helped alot more on this forujm than just yourself.  NICE JOB!!

[PappyD]

WYOLCP and Jocko,

Thanks for the information. After I read your posts I grabbed my box of brass from the range. Yep, they are not centered!

 Check out the pic- the top row is the Hornady Critical defense. Bottom row is Remington and WW. Amazing!

I will be calling Ruger tommorrow.  WYOLCP- What number did you call? The Prescott, AZ manufacturing number?

[ceb]

I definently have an off center firing pin strike, I had noticed it early on but had no problems till I was shooting the Hornady. After reading WYOLCP above (thank you by the way) I emailed Ruger this morning. Had a response today to send my mailing address, so I sure they will take care of it.

[WYOLCP]

PappyD,
I submitted my original questions to Ruger via their online support request form.  They responded back with contact info for one of their customer service reps.  I did all my correspondence with email, and since it was working so well I never bothered with the telephone.  It was all handled through Prescott, AZ.
Here's the link: http://www.ruger-firearms.com/Firearms/Contact.jsp?Group=FA#

[ceb]

I wanted to add that I also received a e-mail from Ruger and they are sending me a slide also. This just started yesterday, and they are sending the slide today. Very good customer service from Ruger. I been a fan of and user of Ruger products for over 30yrs. This is one of the reasons why.

[PappyD]

Here is an update for anyone following this thread. Last Thursday I started with an email to Ruger Customer Service. I had a response the same day with directions to send the pictures I had (seen in this thread) to Joe Cramer, LCP customer service guru with Ruger. I sent out the second email that night.

The next day, Friday, I got a phone call in the afternoon from Joe Cramer himself! During our chat he said a new slide would be on the way. It looks as if the pin strikes might be off about 1mm or less, but that was enough to cause a FTFire. I asked about aftermarket (Wolff) springs too. Joe said the Ruger OE springs were 9#, but that he knew people were having good success with the Wolff's with the 13# being the one he had heard about as being the favorite. At that point I probably blathered on about how much I like Ruger. Got off the phone and was simply impressed that someone actually called me. As my teens might say, Ruger Rocks!

Today the new slide came. A side by side comparison showed that they were not exactly alike in terms of the firing pin channel placement on the breech face.
I'm going to try out the new slide and then take some pictures of the breech faces on both slides. As a note, it's not like I have a whole lot of spare time. It's just that this issue has me curious.   Maybe the info will help someone else too.

Later,

PappyD

[vexvortex]

Ruger product service is outstanding to say the least! 

[Rondo1]

Like WYOLCP, I finally got my LCP a few months ago, and took a while to get my hands on some ammo.  Just a week ago, the dealer was nice enough to call me and say he had gotten some Hornady Critical Defense in stock, and would I like to have some.  I drove over and picked it up the same day.  Just today, I put a couple of mags through and no problems.  After reading the above posts, I got out what spent brass I have around, and sure enough - not one firing pin strike is anywhere near the center of the primer.  I have a good friend who took pity on me, and shared some of his reloads - (he shoots them through his LCP).  It was a "dukes mixture" of brass in the reloads - but none was struck near the center, though each primer was cleanly and deeply struck.  That said, I have now put about 300 rounds through, and NOT ONE FTF!  In fact, I have not had any malfunctions at all - no fail-to-feed, no fail-to-fire, and no fail-to-eject.

Am I just lucky for a change?  It doesn't appear to be broke, should I fix it, anyway?  Opinions and suggestions would be appreciated.
Rondo1

[PappyD]

Like WYOLCP, I finally got my LCP a few months ago, and took a while to get my hands on some ammo.  Just a week ago, the dealer was nice enough to call me and say he had gotten some Hornady Critical Defense in stock, and would I like to have some.  I drove over and picked it up the same day.  Just today, I put a couple of mags through and no problems.  After reading the above posts, I got out what spent brass I have around, and sure enough - not one firing pin strike is anywhere near the center of the primer.  I have a good friend who took pity on me, and shared some of his reloads - (he shoots them through his LCP).  It was a "dukes mixture" of brass in the reloads - but none was struck near the center, though each primer was cleanly and deeply struck.  That said, I have now put about 300 rounds through, and NOT ONE FTF!  In fact, I have not had any malfunctions at all - no fail-to-feed, no fail-to-fire, and no fail-to-eject.

Am I just lucky for a change?  It doesn't appear to be broke, should I fix it, anyway?  Opinions and suggestions would be appreciated.
Rondo1

You know, I had to think about this off center pin strike "trend". I think that if you didn't have a failure to fire, or any other malfunction, I wouldn't be too concerned. Had you not read this thread you probably wouldn't have noticed the pin strike.

 On my LCP I did the buff and fluff and since have had zero fail to feeds. Just the fail to fire. If I had the same result as you, with as many varieties as you said were fired successfully, then I would feel pretty good. With the new slide I'll start over with different varieties and plan on burning through a box of the Hornady CD's just to make sure. I'll do some fast double taps and weak side stuff and see if I can make the LCP fail. If all goes well, then I'd be confident about putting this little pistola in my pocket.