I have two p239s in 9mm, one is about 25 years old and works perfectly (made in Germany) and the other is about 8 years old and won’t reliably feed hollow points (SAS version made in USA).

When it fails to feed, the nose of the round stops between the frame feed ramp and the bottom of the barrel feed ramp. This failure to feed is very hard to clear and if I can’t resolve this problem, the gun has to go.

I get about 1 failure to feed every 16 rounds, the gun is clean and well lubed

I have used 5 different SIG magazines and 4 different rounds and the problem won’t go away:

- 124gr Federal punch
- 115gr HST
- 124gr Winchester Defender +p
- 115gr Hornady Critical Defense

I have Googled this issue and have only found one other person with this problem. He also had a recently manufactured p239 SAS, but only had the problem with 115gr Hornady Critical Defense.

I guess this is not a common problem? has anyone heard of this before?

Since you have 2, troubleshoot by swapping parts.

Take the recoil spring from the known good and use it in the suspect one. If the problem stops, you have the culprit. If it persists, switch back and try something else, like swapping barrels. It is possible it’s a compound issue (both recoil spring and barrel) but not likely.

Perhaps there’s a “step” between the frame feed ramp and the bottom of the barrel feed ramp that needs some smoothing.

I agree with BuddyChryst. I would start by swapping uppers and see if you can get the problem to move from one pistol to the other.

Swapping parts is a good idea, not sure why I did not think of that.
I can swap barrels, locking block and recoil spring, but not slides as the SAS slide won’t fit on the German frame (interesting).

I am cringing over the ammo cost to get this figured out, I already burned about $150.00 in SD ammo this week to confirm that it’s not an ammo brand issue. Maybe I should just trade it for a revolver (ha).

quote:

Originally posted by sigmon:
I can swap barrels, locking block and recoil spring, but not slides as the SAS slide won’t fit on the German frame (interesting).

That might be a clue.

Is the problem the width of the rails or something else?

I vaguely remember having a problem assembling a Sig. The slide would stop about half-way on. I think the barrel lug was getting caught on the locking block. Putting grease on the front edge of the locking block during re-assembly fixed the problem.

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
Perhaps there’s a “step” between the frame feed ramp and the bottom of the barrel feed ramp that needs some smoothing.

^This^ would be the first thing I try unless you know a good smith.

See my post about the same thing kind of ... my problem is hand feeding one of my P239s.... I finally have narrowed it down to the feed ramp on the barrel but for the life of me I can't figure out what is different.

quote:

Originally posted by sigmon:
I have two p239s in 9mm, one is about 25 years old and works perfectly (made in Germany) and the other is about 8 years old and won’t reliably feed hollow points (SAS version made in USA).

When it fails to feed, the nose of the round stops between the frame feed ramp and the bottom of the barrel feed ramp. This failure to feed is very hard to clear and if I can’t resolve this problem, the gun has to go.

I get about 1 failure to feed every 16 rounds, the gun is clean and well lubed

I have used 5 different SIG magazines and 4 different rounds and the problem won’t go away:

- 124gr Federal punch
- 115gr HST
- 124gr Winchester Defender +p
- 115gr Hornady Critical Defense

I have Googled this issue and have only found one other person with this problem. He also had a recently manufactured p239 SAS, but only had the problem with 115gr Hornady Critical Defense.

I guess this is not a common problem? has anyone heard of this before?

Hi Sigmon, Austin here, I also have had a P239 SAS, is yours a SIG Custom Shop one with a stainless slide?

If so we may be able to compare....

Photo?

Update and response to questions:

Austin: Sorry no pictures, its just a regular Nitron SAS from 2016.

Blume: I think you may be correct about the feed ramp issues on some P239’s, see my update below. I am not sure about the top round in the magazine, but all others seem to hit both ramps based on the marks they leave.

I did some more searching and found a post about a P239 in .40 that a was doing the same thing as my 9mm. The owner sent it back to Sig and they polished the locking insert feed ramp and sent it back to him and everything worked fine. So I took my locking insert out and polished it with my dremmel (small felt wheel and some red compound) until I got a mirror finish. It was easy and took about 5 minutes. Trying to polish the barrel feed ramp was a different story, I m not sure if its the Nitron finish that’s so hard, but I was not able to get below it, so I did what I could. I then swapped the parts into my 2nd P239 and shot both of them with all sorts of HP and RN ammo. Everything worked fine. Now I have to swap all of the parts back to the original frames and if everything works I am good to go.

I'm fixing to do the same thing and actually asked in my thread directions on how to actually polish the two ramps... my problem in addition to the one pistol that fires all ammo fine but does not like to chamber a round by hand is now that I have swapped so many different items I've kind of lost what goes where with the original problem... and I only had three of my P239's out to mess with.