Recently bought a 320 second hand post upgrade. If you slingshotted it or loaded from slide lock the slide would go into battery. If you cycled it by hand, no ammo involved, it would "catch" about an inch out of battery and felt like gravel was in the slide and you could stop and it would stay a quarter inch out of battery. You can do this every time. Like clockwork. Gravel feeling towards the end and out of battery by hand cycling.

I shot it this way and never had a malfunction. I also thought it would smooth out. It didn't. I dry fired and hand cycled even more thinking it would eventually smooth out. I stopped when a very small flake of silver colored steel dropped out of the magwell. I said enough was enough. Called Sig and sent it in.

Mind you I own 5 of the 320's and have handled and shot others. Never encountered this peculiarity.

Sig sent it back with a note saying they replaced the striker. Ok. Pulled it out and cycled it. Felt like every other 320 I have ever handled. Yay. Except that as I kept dry firing and cycling by hand the exact same gravel and catch resumed. Like 100% of the time. So basically no change.

Well, I shot another 100 rounds through this one thinking the same thing, maybe it will fix itself. Nope.

Called Sig and sent it back in. They called today. They were very pleasant but the gist was that while it displays the exact behavior I am describing, Sig considers that normal. Not within spec but actually normal. I did actually tell the man that that was a load of bullshit. I asked him if that extremely rough, gravel feeling and out of battery seemed ok to him, if it was his gun? He kept telling me that him and three of his best gun guys all thought it was normal.

I told him that he had two options. Tell me to pound sand and send it back with a letter saying it was normal and I would sell it for a loss and badmouth Sig the whole way or sell me a new slide at cost and keep their "normal" one. I was at work and had to go so I said figure it out and tell me what my options were.

I got an email later which on one hand I can't complain because they are going to swap out my slide for a new one. On the other hand the guy writes it up kinda smarmy about this being a one time deal. I'm kinda like, well no shit. Send me a slide that operates/feels like every other 320 out there and we don't have a problem.

I know there are those of you who will say that between the two trips to Exeter I ran a couple hundred rounds of ammo with no malfunctions so whats the problem. I guess I don't like their definition of normal and other than tight slide to barrel guns, which this isn't (no pretension here), this gun felt like it was full of sand. Not normal in my book.

Comments, questions, written shotgun blasts to the face, go.

(And yes while I hate the word fanboy, I am a 320 fanboy, love this platform and at worst would have traded off this balky one and pressed on)

Sorry to hear of the troubles and Sig's lackluster response. Hopefully the new slide take care of the issue. FWIW, I have two P320's (post upgrade) and neither feel rough or gravel-y.

That is the thing, I also have 4 other 320's post upgrade and this one is clearly the outlier. I have separated upper and lowers and this one slide feels exactly the same on all 5 fcu's. Conversely any upper on the in question fcu gun has zero issues. It is the slide.

You can feel and hear it catching on some rough spot.

What dismayed me the most was that it was clearly an attempt to browbeat me into accepting that this was normal. No one, no one would pick up that gun in a gun store and buy it if they noticed this peculiarity. No one. I wouldn't. If I hadn't bought it sight unseen I wouldn't have bought it in the first place. Sig could have done better.

On the other hand, the younger generation isn't always great with the written word so maybe their response didn't come off the way they intended.

In the end they are doing the right thing though.

I'm conflicted about SIG Arms' response. On the one hand you bought a second hand gun which typically isn't covered by the warranty and they are going to replace the slide. On the other hand it sounds like they treated you rudely, but the email about the one-time thing is completely normal. Years ago I had an issue with a P226 that SIG Arms eventually replaced, but they were adamant that it was a one-time thing. Maybe it's just lawyer talk to keep people from complaining.

I'm glad the issue was resolved, but maybe the rep you spoke to needs to work on his people skills.

Nope you are right. My wife kind of said the same thing, ie I was overreacting about the one time thing.

I don't actually know what the warranty on a gun that is barely a year old, second hand or not. Never read Sig's policy and they never asked.

On the other hand I had a second hand, well used by me Beretta Cougar that cracked and Beretta inspected it and replaced it with a brand new 92 FS at no cost to me. I think having defective guns out there second owner or not might be bad business for a manufacturer.

They are fixing my issue and I look forward to getting this one back, its a TACOPS and I really like it other than this issue.

I concede I could be more upset than the situation deserves.

By "hand cycle," you mean you're riding the slide back and forth?

The only guns I do this with, are ones where they really want a bullet when the action closes, like a Luger or 1911. Otherwise I'm not concerned about the slide slamming home on an empty chamber.

I just tried it with my P320c, and no gravel.

I'd say that neither Sig, or you, handled it great. They should understand that making people happy is key. Maybe they're trying to be the new HK?

Any way it's sliced, it doesn't make sense for a rep to tell someone that a "gravely" travel of a slide is normal. Over many different brands of guns across years of shooting, I would not consider that "normal" in any weapon.

I usually get the best out of whatever poor soul I'm talking to in a CS situation by saying something to the effect of "I'm not mad at you, but this is exceptionally frustrating. If you can't help me, send me to someone who can."

Sometimes they aren't allowed to go "off script" of what they're supposed to offer. OK fine, send me up the chain.

Even though your gun is important to you, the giant company you're calling turns like an aircraft carrier, and the first level peon at CS is unlikely to have all the answers. Patience, and letting the guy know it's not his personal fault, goes a long way towards making him an ally in solving your problem.

Probably correct Arc. The guy I was dealing with was always nice. He caught me at the end of a long workday and the normal thing pissed me off.

And yes, I mean riding the slide. I wasn’t doing it for any specific reason other than I could feel the grittiness of travel and noticed it hanging up at the same spot each time. I don’t baby my 320’s in the slightest. I only did this on this one because the gravel road feel made me investigate. Of course then I pulled out every polymer gun I owned to see if I was imagining things. No other gun exhibits this behavior.

I could have been nicer. No excuses.

I'm honestly super surprised that you got as much response as you did from Sig. Did you actually tell Sig that you bought it used?

My best friend picked up an pre-owned but unfired 229 Elite Dark a couple fo years back. Within 500rds it started self destructing. The slide was chewing through the frame rails.

Called Sig and they said that since it was bought used it carries no warranty and they would not cover any repairs, but if he wanted, he could send the gun in at $55 shipping and $85/hr labor time to look it over and determine what would be needed for repairs.

Contacted Bruce who had it sent to him for inspection. Bruce analyzed it and determined the slide was milled out of spec and causing the damage, that it was clearly a factory defect and Sig should replace the gun under warranty, because this was clearly not a user induced issue. Bruce went so far as to take the gun to HQ to show it to them and explain...

Int he end, Sig refused to do anything and my friend was left with a $900 paperweight. Really left a bitter taste.

Glad that they agreed to replace the slide for you. Hopefully the new one works as expected. I'd say you lucked out! Seems like their CS on original owner warranty issues are usually resolved quickly and fairly painlessly.

Both of mine do this. One more than the other, but both are pretty bad.

I haven't had them apart to look for what the cause might be, thinking they were fouled and just needed lube or a light pass on a burr that was missed. I was going to clean and fire them and see if it fixed the issue or made apparent wear marks so I could track it down.

To hear this is "normal" if I were to contact Sig is... troubling.

Well, I thought cycling by hand and hundreds of rounds of live fire would fix it. It didn't. I am glad they are replacing the slide. I don't think it is anywhere near "normal". I think there is a burr or rough spot in the striker channel that the striker assembly catches on on every cycle. Spring tension is enough to overcome the drag but I fear that after many cycles something has to give. The striker assembly would fail prematurely because its getting this extra drag every single time. At which point SIG would just chalk it up to normal wear and tear albeit earlier than it should be.

I was wrong to vent to the CS, they were professional and I wasn't. I still think to call this normal and try to convince someone that a gun that isn't even been out in the world for a year this is absolutely normal is wrong.

They would never sell this gun if they all felt this way. You would buy the other one in the cabinet that didn't feel like it was full of gravel. My opinion.

I went through both pistols and all 3 slides that I've got. All are post-upgrade.

I have a FS slide, a FS cut for an RMR, and a compact. The fullsize slides are not bad, they have a touch of hangup but it doesn't feel like the slide is pushing itself through gravel. The compact is the only one bad enough I'd pursue fixing.

I pulled the striker, took a look inside the slide. It looks like there are some tool marks on the portion of the channel where the striker spring rides. It feels like the striker spring is dragging on these ridges as it decompresses, but I'm not familiar enough with the workings of the gun to know how/when that spring sees movement to know for sure, so I'm moving forward with the assumption that's correct.

A 9mm bore mop fits perfectly, I used that to clean out the channel and add a minor amount of oil, but that doesn't seem to have made any improvement. This won't smooth out with use as the spring isn't hard enough to wear the slide and the spring probably has enough freedom to chatter along and not suffer too much from the slide.

When I get back into it I'm going to see if I can't feel around for the biggest offender and knock it down with a round file. If there's any change I know I've found the issue, if I'm wrong there shouldn't be any ill-effect. THe other option is to add some grease and see what that does (obviously I'd clean it out before using the slide for live fire).

I have had something similar with a couple of P320's.

In one case involving a FCU in a subcompact frame, I found that the problem disappeared when moving the FCU to a compact frame, and did not occur with a different FCU in the same frame. I couldn't explain it or find any obvious reason.

I swapped the FCU's back to their original positions and took both pistols to the range; in several hundred rounds, they functioned 100%.

I'd read reports from others about hesitation or settling out of battery when the slide was hand cycled or eased forward; common counsel was shoot the pistols and the problem wouldn't be evident. I did shoot them, common counsel was correct; the problems didn't reoccur.

Yes I’ve stated that multiple times. I have ran hundreds of rounds with zero malfunctions. Sling shot or release from slide lock it isn’t evident. However if you hand cycle it you can feel and hear when something starts to grab inside the slide. I have interchanged this slide with every format I own, sc, compact, fs, and every fcu I own, 5 to be exact. The fcu in question doesn’t exhibit any odd characteristics when coupled with any other slide configuration. Conversely the slide exhibits this no matter what you place it on.

Just because the recoil spring will overcome this rough patch doesn’t mean there isn’t an issue. Hell that means SIG could install a heavier spring in extreme cases to solve this.

My point is and always has been that slide operation should be without obvious hesitation. No rough spots. That isn’t “normal”. Any catching on this rough spot by definition is most likely accelerating wear on the impacted parts. Which when they break early won’t be covered under any warranty.

As for the second owner concerns. SIG entered unusual territory with the voluntary upgrade. Lots of brand new guns were sold immediately. I don’t have the born on date because the box is in Exeter right now but this gun is probably barely a year old. From a legal standpoint their warranty might be invalid with a second owner but from a practical standpoint this friggin gun is brand new. You either make quality or you don’t.

I would buy any of you a steak dinner if I’m wrong on this. Not one of you would have bought this gun if you felt that and heard it. You would buy the gun next to it that didn’t exhibit this “feature”. This is my fault though I bought it sight unseen. Danger of buying off a gun forum. In person I wouldn’t have, nor would you, have bought this gun. Unless you are one of those bubbas who don’t inspect a gun before you buy. Lol

You did great, they gave you what you asked for. Hopefully its a good slide.

I’m sure SIG is probably pinching pennies left and right after the recall.

This is exactly why I wont buy a 365 even though I really want one, or any sig. Sig has gone to hell in a handbasket. If it wasnt for the three letter agencies and the mhs contract they would go under. They've lied their way through 320 problems and upgrades, have crappy cs reps. It's a shame really.

Well.... in the end they are doing the right thing. I didn’t like the process and I think they are fudging using the idea of “normal”. That being said the 320 is a great gun. My favorite plastic striker style.

I just checked the four I have and none of them have this problem. Gould you tell where the metal fleck came from?

Buy a nice West German 228 or 226-problem solved.

quote:

Originally posted by black1970:
Buy a nice West German 228 or 226-problem solved.

The gravelly feel you experience is the sand that Sig wants YOU to pound.

Ha ha. Oh, I’ve got 226’s and 228’s and an old West German 220 I bought new almost 30 years ago.

As for the flake I have no idea. I was cycling it by hand thinking that would help smooth out the roughness when it just kind of fluttered out of the magwell. I have no idea where it came from but me no likey.