Had an interesting experience while out shooting with a buddy. I was shooting my 226 MK25 and had a round blow the casing, shooting gases out the ejection port and blowing the extractor nearly out of the slide. Was shooting some older (but not ancient) ammo I had laying around. Case was stuck in the chamber; packed it up to address the issue when I got home.

I used a cleaning rod to probe the barrel -- no projectile stuck in the barrel. Stuck case was easily removed with a light tap to the cleaning rod. I used a hard nylon bike tire "iron" to gently push the extractor forward and it popped off the slide. I pulled the extractor pin and spring which appear undamaged; similarly the extractor looks to be fine. Looked down the barrel which also appears to be fine.

I reinstalled the extractor spring, pin, and extractor. I cycled the pistol with dummy rounds and then live rounds and everything functions as expected.

I was not paying very close attention when this happened, so unclear as to the cause. Thoughts? Should I have a gunsmith examine this before firing?

Appreciate any input.

Reloads or factory or the dreaded “unknown”?
I’d probably have the pistol gone over it for only my piece of mind.

Weak brass??
Too many reloads?
Just a bad round from the factory???
Fired out of battery???

Could be lots of things.

In 9mm my first guess is reloaded ammunition. Although every factory loaded ammunition can miss QC.

My buddy had the same thing happen with a West German P226, except it slightly bulged the slide out at the ejection port.

The round was from a plastic bag of sketchy reloads from a gun show.

quote:

Originally posted by CAR:
My buddy had the same thing happen with a West German P226, except it slightly bulged the slide out at the ejection port.

The round was from a plastic bag of sketchy reloads from a gun show.

Many years ago my friend blew up and destroyed his custom built Colt 1911 bullseye gun with a gun show bag of reloads .

I would contact the ammo manufacturer. Save the box, the lot number, etc. Take these pictures and link them to the event. Bring the problem to the ammo manufacturer.

quote:

some older (but not ancient) ammo I had laying around

We need more info about the ammo. A bad reload is the easy answer, but it the ammo wasn't reloads...

Personally, my vote is that the purple grips were the cause. 100%

That case looks old, maybe weakened by corrosion?

I had to do a bit of 'ammo archeology' to determine when/where I acquired this ammo. Gun show acquisition, IIRC I bought this during one of the ammo shortages which occurred related to Obama election fear driven buying. Not sure if this was during the first or second term.

While it's easy to blame the purple grips, I'll blame BHO. :-)

The box labeling is pretty hilarious - 'police ammo'. Ok, sure. As you can see, is consists of mixed brass. I opened a new box, which is also mixed cases.

Looks like shitty gunshow ammo is the culprit.

How many of those rounds do you have? i would be putting them in the garbage!

quote:

Originally posted by dom68:
Gun show acquisition

Good grief! That is amazing. Not only is it mixed brass, but it appears that the bullets aren’t even seated to the same depth in all of the rounds. That’s one of the most basic handloading operations and I can only wonder why—different presses/dies used by different operators who didn’t care in the slightest to produce acceptable results? If they couldn’t get as simple as that correct, what else was wrong?

With your permission I’ll use a screen shot of the photo in my firearms safety classes.

I'm going to assume that is not really HSM ammunition, but rather someone made questionable reloads and put them in that box. HSM that I've shot in rifles is quality. What you show is NOT consistent with what I'd expect from them.

As far as the extractor. I've had that happen to me, same exact thing. It was my fault. I reloaded questionable brass in my younger days when money was tighter and my time was cheaper.

The parts are pretty simple, highly unlikely you have some sort of latent failure induced. If everything went back together fine, I'd just keep shooting it. That's what I did with mine (till I eventually swapped out that slide with an optic slide with the apparently unpopular long extractor that seems to work just fine). Worst that can happen is you have a FTE, but again likelihood is very low.

Throw that ammo away - totally not worth the risk.

Thanks for everyone's input. Fully agreed the ammo needs to be disposed of. Serious question: how does one dispose of live ammo? Obviously, I can't just dump it in the garbage, so where?

quote:

Originally posted by RobLew:
I'm going to assume that is not really HSM ammunition, but rather someone made questionable reloads and put them in that box. HSM that I've shot in rifles is quality. What you show is NOT consistent with what I'd expect from them.

As far as the extractor. I've had that happen to me, same exact thing. It was my fault. I reloaded questionable brass in my younger days when money was tighter and my time was cheaper.

The parts are pretty simple, highly unlikely you have some sort of latent failure induced. If everything went back together fine, I'd just keep shooting it. That's what I did with mine (till I eventually swapped out that slide with an optic slide with the apparently unpopular long extractor that seems to work just fine). Worst that can happen is you have a FTE, but again likelihood is very low.

Throw that ammo away - totally not worth the risk.

Agreed that the ammo is not actually HSM.

After input from this forum and my own research, I will go ahead and shoot the P226 -- I don't believe anything has been damaged. Will report back if I find any issues.

quote:

Originally posted by dom68:
Obviously, I can't just dump it in the garbage...

Sure you can

Being a reloader I have disassembled loaded rounds, with either the RCBS impact hammer or the Hornady collet puller. Doing this allows one to reload the bullets, the rest may not be salvageable.

It may not be worth it to many.

I have bought ammo at a gunshow that was reloads in an older factory box. At the time I erroneously ‘assumed’ it was factory ammo.

I recently went through some old ammo I was given. I wiped many with a lightly oiled cloth. There were a handful that were to far gone to be salvaged, into the garbage they went. This was only 10 or fewer, I don’t see much of a risk in doing so.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:

quote:

Originally posted by dom68:
Obviously, I can't just dump it in the garbage...

Sure you can

that was my first thought lol

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Sure you can

I agree. Ammunition like that is not dangerous, but because of common ignorant perceptions, it would be best to keep it from being discovered in your trash.

If, however, you want total peace of mind independent of Internet opinions, pull the bullets, dump the powder on your lawn, and put the cases in a pot* of boiling water for half an hour or so to deactivate the primers. Then put it all in the trash.

Pulling the bullets can be done with anything from a couple of pairs of large pliers to specific dies designed for use in a handloading press (the easiest). Hammer-type impact pullers in the middle work much better than pliers, and are less expensive than using a press if you don’t already have one.

* Not one you use for food. A metal coffee can would work—if such things still exist.

99% or better your gun is fine. I've had that happen before, but you were luckier than me and got to keep your extractor. Mine got launched to kingdom come, and I had to buy a new one. Once installed, the gun worked fine. Check it over for obvious cracks or damaged small parts, and function test, but I'd be very surprised if there's any damage apart from your extractor. It sounds like the case wasn't even really stuck in the chamber, just failed to extract for obvious reasons (no extractor engagement).

That looks like commercial reload ammo marketed to police departments for training. There was some real crappy stuff out there back in the day, and just looking at those pictures it's obvious that quality control wasn't a priority on that stuff. I had a buddy who started at the PD back in the early 90s and they were shooting commercial .38 special reloads at the time for training. They shot out to 50 yards for the basic qual back then, and he said that stuff was so inconsistent you could hear and feel the difference between shots, and the point of impact variance at 50 yards could be measured in feet. They also got quite a few squibs. Dump yours and buy better ammo...it's not worth the risk to keep shooting it.

Gun store owner gave me a couple 100rnd boxes of .40 from a reputable commercial reloader. Large scale operation like black hills or midwest. Told me there was a recall, since I reload, here you might be able to reload them.
Figured the recall was probably just being cautious & maybe just on the warm side, should be fine in the P229. Nope. Extractor disappeared into the never regions of the indoor range.

I was warned. New extractor & spring, was there a pin too? maybe found that. Anyway, replaced missing parts and good to go. Did not feel like a significant overload, but tossed everything but the jacketed 180 bullets.