Yesterday I brought a young lady to the range to try her new P238. She shot the WWB ammo fine but when we tried her Corbon HPs they just hung up on the loading ramp every time.

I've experienced the same problem with my P238 trying to load Speer Gold Dot HP ammo, although my gun did shoot Federal Hydra-Shocks ok. I just load ball ammo as a defensive round because I do not trust that HP ammo will feed properly every time.

Has anyone found a definitive fix for this problem? I did polish my ramp a bit but I think it's just that the ramp is too steep to ever be reliable to load some HP ammo because of the edge on the front of the bullet catching on the ramp as it feeds.

Some time ago, I worked up a load for my P238 using Hornady 95 grain XTP slugs. I'm not at home and I won't quote load specs from memory, but several hundred of these have cycled through the pistol without a single problem. I do seem to recall that the recommended COAL was a bit less than what I used for range FMJ loads.

As someone who was an original beta tester here with the P238.
I put over 12K rounds through mine in about a year.
I should add I do however carry a P938 daily. It feeds and fires everything.
One must try various loads till you find one that does fire reliably. For me that's a minimum of 150 to 200 rounds of a given load.
I would buy a 20 or 50 round box of whatever and see how they had worked
My gun with 3 different barrels never would fire any load that used an XTP bullet..
I did however find Corbon Power Ball and Winchester Ranger worked well. Federal HST short barrel to fire the most reliable of the newest rounds Ive tried.
Nothing worked 100% of the time.
As my gun has sat now for 4 years in my safe.
I haven't tried many of the newer loads. Just the HST short barrel So there are a lot of new rounds I have no experience with.

My P238 had a few early-on cycling issues. The last of those was about round #200, and I now have 1K rounds through it. It feeds Hornady Critical Defence, Federal HydraShok, and Federal HST reliably. I've selected HST as my defense round.

The feed ramp and chamber of my P238, purchased early 2015, were impressively well polished out of the box. OTOH, the pistol had absolutely no lube out of the box. I fixed that immediately with Slip2000 EWG.

None of this sounds too promising. I guess I and the young lady will resign ourselves to using ball ammo as SD loads.

quote:

Originally posted by yanici:
None of this sounds too promising. I guess I and the young lady will resign ourselves to using ball ammo as SD loads.

You have to shoot it to find out what works.
Ball will just punch a hole in whatever it hits. And keep on going till it hits something solid or 30ish inches.

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
My P238 had a few early-on cycling issues. The last of those was about round #200, and I now have 1K rounds through it. It feeds Hornady Critical Defence, Federal HydraShok, and Federal HST reliably. I've selected HST as my defense round.

The feed ramp and chamber of my P238, purchased early 2015, were impressively well polished out of the box. OTOH, the pistol had absolutely no lube out of the box. I fixed that immediately with Slip2000 EWG.

My gun is from 2009.
They have had more then enough time to get it right by now.
Mine I wont trade or sell. I don't want anyone stuck with such an unreliable POS.
My travails were well documented here back then.

Find your self a competent 1911 gun smith and he should be able to correct the the feed issue.

Federal HST has been reliable in my P238.

I alternately load Corbon Powerball and Ball ammo. I have no feed issues.

I stay away from Corbon. It has been the only .380 ammo that hasn't worked in my G42

My wife's P238 has always reliably fired Hornady Critical Defense and Precision One 90gr HP/XTP's.

Both Hornady Custom XTPs and Critical Defense FTXs have run without incident throughout my sevenish year old history with my 238. Between the two types I've put somewhere around 600-700rds. I remember some wide cavity bullets gave the feed ramp problems early on so as a group I tended to stay clear of them, which at the time included Gold Dots.