SCCY CPX1 Failure to feed

[CWCJR]

Hey guys,
New to the trader, anyways I owned a SCCY CPX2 about a year ago, I sold it to make up the difference on a Glock 22. A brand new never fired Gen 4 for $500. The only issue I had with the CPX2 was a broken ejector pin. It was a 10 day turn around mailing it to SCCY, I'm pretty sure it was steel cased ammo that did it. Lesson learned. I decided to buy a CPX 1 I ran across in a pawn shop. $250 out the door. Looked brand new, not a scratch on it. I should've cleaned it first, but, new toy, I stopped by the in laws and fired a few magazines out of it. One failure to eject. So after that, I rapid fired a couple of magazines with no problem. I went home and cleaned it, oiled it, magizines and all, the first round I tried to chamber hung up. I had to bump the slide to chamber the round. So I tried racking the rounds out, every round hung up, I had to bump the slide to get it to chamber the next round every time. I tried the other magazine and it only hung up once. After some research I found that folks are thinking it's the magazines. From my experience this made sense. So I tried something. The lips at the top of the magazine seemed a little sharp. If you pressed the back of the round with your thumb it seemed to drag on those lips. So I took apart the magazine and polished the sharp edges with a scotch Brite pad. It seems to have solved the failure to feed issue. I can rack jacketed hollow points, smooth as can be magazine after magazine with no hang ups. Thought I would share in case someone else encountered this issue.

 

[mojo]

Good info to have. I saw a cpx-1 on another forum I was thinking of trying out. The only thing it is pink with a laser. Lol.
Welcome to the trader btw!

 

[CWCJR]

Thanks! They are great guns for the money, the warranty is insane, Gables in Douglasville told me if it were lost or stolen to get a police report and SCCY would mail me a replacement. I have not read the fine print on that one, but if it's true, that's crazy...

 

[RamRoddoc]

In my experience, inexpensive guns are inexpensive due to minimum machining work as well as other factors but bottom line is externally it may look fine but when it's detailed stripped a distinct pattern arises.

Rough friction creating mating, rubbing parts beginning with the magazine and ending with extraction of a fired shell casing will often be noticeable.

So what can a manufacture do?

One quick fix is to add a bit of slop in tolerances where slop is good for function at a sacrifice of accuracy.

What can the shooter do?

Just what you did. Identify frictional areas that with a simple bit of elbow grease, without breaking out the Dremel tool and ruining a gun/part and smoothing that area out.


Deployed to Camp New York, readying to assault Iraq, I was attached to a support unit, uuuuuugh! and the unit was issued "New" M9 9mm magazines. But only a partial issue and had to turn in the "old" bad magazines. The magazines being replaced were excellent Italian made pieces that functioned beautifully.

The new "good" magazines were milspec brown paper wrapper and had a heavy rough parkerized finish. As I loaded magazines the follower locked up and had to be manipulated on the 3 issued me, that I exchanged the worst of my Italian magazines basic load for.

I reported this to the First Sergeant who personally issued the magazines. He just shrugged his shoulders, "I just do what they tell me to do" and went back to playing dominos with the unit's NCO brother mafia. I warned him these magazines would not function well and worse in a combat environment. I spoke to the commander and she was indifferent. These weren't "soldiers" who really thought about firing shots in anger.

So I warned those close to me and we traded our "new" magazines out with other unit soldiers for their old bad magazines, selecting the better looking ones.

Prior to the Iraq invasion, commanders were notified to select soldiers for weapons qualification/refresher training. Shortly afterwards, the command directed units to return their "new" magazines as now they were bad. My guys had nothing to turn in and the magazines returned were not exchanged out. Most of that particular unit did not have a basic load crossing the berm into Iraq.

The same unit as they were preparing 3:30 am to move their convoy to attack Iraq didn't have enough trained/licensed drivers to move their vehicles... I ended up driving a duce and half. I could go on...

Back to inexpensive guns. Polishing-Not removing any significant metal, machine marks lightly will reduce friction and friction is a show stopper for a semi-auto.

Much of this can be accomplished by simply dry fire, cycling the action and shooting it. The sharp burs and high points will break in. I would never trust a new gun until its had a couple of boxes of ammo ran through it.

If you know what you're doing lightly polishing the rails of the frame and slide will slick it up. Polishing the feed ramp-don't remove metal will do wonders and a light polish of the extractor face where it contacts the rim will smooth it some more.

Further, polishing the firing pin and the firing pin channel will help if they are rough. I don't always check extractor tension but making sure it's not to excessive nor too light will help function too.

All of these little steps, done correctly, add up to a more reliable firearm. A new Glock, S&W, Sig etc. won't need anything but shot but buy a $225 new pistol and expect a rougher gun that benefits from the above.



Here is a issue with a Kahr-typically a tight, reliable weapon once broken in. Older guns can have more issues like a worn recoil spring.

My Kahr won't run or do I need reamed, thread: https://www.theoutdoorstrader.com/threads/my-kahr-wont-run-or-do-i-need-reamed.212794/#post-1377612

 

[CWCJR]

Good info to have, I have industrial mechanical experience of about 15 yrs, we deal with a lot of precision tolerances, +/- .001", however with guns I'm new, so I would need some training before I'd dig too deep. Thank you for your service!