I was shooting Rem 9mm 115 gr and getting stovepiping on a new M18 in the first 2 mags, about 1 every 4 rounds.

Switched to 124 gr Winchester and zero problems.

Searched and found posts saying it’s designed for 124 gr. Nothing in my owner manual about bullet weight but the problem vanished!

Remington is very underpowered. I will not shoot it in my semi autos

Yeah, before I blame the gun, I would try other 115 Gr quality brands and see.

Most weapons designed for military and to a lesser extend LEO use specifically are usually tight/heavily sprung out of the box since they are designed around hotter and or heavier ammo with a long and fairly abusive service life in mind.

-Out of the box clean and make sure gun is well lubricated.
-Run a box or three of hotter and or heavier ammo (In this case 124-147 grain, +P, NATO Spec or a combination of this)
-If you cannot do they above do a bunch of slide racking and dry fire and leave gun locked back for a couple days or so.

Generally speaking the guns will loosen up fairly quickly and you should be able to run powder puff 115 grain crappy target ammo without issue.

This is NOT a SIG specific issue or SIG specific advice just FYI.

Isn't the ammunition issued with the M17 and M18 supposed to be either 115 grain or 147 grain?

^^^
By definition, 9mm NATO is a 124 grain projectile.

I would presume the issued (and intended) ammo for any milspec 9mm gun is 9mm NATO spec. And to meet the spec that's normally 124g. Not exactly sure how that relates to the OP comment.

quote:

By definition, 9mm NATO is a 124 grain projectile

Not really relevant to the OP but I think the spec is bullet weight must be between 108gr and 128gr but I can't seem to find my copy of STANAG 4090 and in any case there may have been revisions...so take that with a grain of salt. But in practical terms I have never seen anything other than 124 M882 type.

“Stovepipes” or failures to eject are most commonly due to slow slide speed, and slide speed is largely a matter of projectile power and therefore momentum.

Winchester offers the M1152 cartridge which they bill as a military training load. It’s loaded with a 115 grain bullet with a claimed velocity of 1320 fps. I haven’t measured the velocity myself, but that’s the same velocity I have measured for the Winchester 115 grain +P+ Ranger SXT from a P229. The M1152 is obviously hot enough for military weapons, and that’s because momentum and therefore slide speed isn’t due only to bullet weight, but bullet weight and bullet velocity.

In general, though, most (relatively) cheaper 115 grain FMJ loads that many people use for training are also low powered:
low bullet weight × low bullet velocity = low slide speed.

And keep in mind that although heavier bullets often have greater momentum, there’s no guarantee of that. For example, a Federal American Eagle 124 grain FMJ load that I tested from a P229 had lower projectile momentum than a Winchester “white box” 115 grain load from the same gun.

This from Winchester 124gr says 1200 fps
And looks like a good one?

https://www.midwayusa.com/prod...023725010?pid=565447

quote:

Originally posted by tschiemer:
This from Winchester 124gr says 1200 fps
And looks like a good one?

Should be fine.

Thanks all.

I have been shooting the 115gr for years in Sig 239 and 226 as a target ammo and buy in case quantity usually.

I will get some of the nato spec 9mm for the M18.

quote:

Originally posted by hrcjon:

quote:

By definition, 9mm NATO is a 124 grain projectile

Not really relevant to the OP but I think the spec is bullet weight must be between 108gr and 128gr but I can't seem to find my copy of STANAG 4090 and in any case there may have been revisions...so take that with a grain of salt. But in practical terms I have never seen anything other than 124 M882 type.

I was responding to the post above mine. Take a look.

I was just trying to be educational about the NATO spec but the 'by definition' part of your statement is not correct. There can be NATO spec 9mm ammo that is not 124g. And in fact Winchester had at one point a 115g offering that they claimed was NATO spec that met the energy spec by being quite fast while still met the mean pressure spec. But as I said above I have never seen any.

quote:

Originally posted by hrcjon:
Not exactly sure how that relates to the OP comment.

cslinger had suggested using 124-147 grain ammo for a while to help solve the problem.

Somewhere along the way I seem to recall reading that both 115 grain and 147 grain ammo would be standard, which came as a surprise to me simply because I thought the standard would continue to be 124 grain ammo.

If I remembered that correctly, then I would've expected SIG to know the M18 would need to function with 115 grain ammo. That would lead me to expect the M18 to handle 115 grain ammo without a problem or something like a break-in procedure.

I confess I hadn't really stopped to think about the difference between faster and slower 115 grain ammo. I just remembered the bullet weight and expected it to work with any ammo loaded with 115 grain bullets.

Keep in mind most 115 grain ammo we actually buy and shoot is powder puff range fodder. There is defensive / hotter 115 grain but it’s not what most of us are buying to shoot at the range.

I also vaguely remember the M17/18 supposedly having a 115 grain round but my guess is it’s a far cry from “Blazer brass” for example.

I was just saying to use some ammo with some more “ass” behind it for a bit.