Beretta Locking Block Breakage Poll

[JohnKSa]

This is an attempt to get a feel for how long locking blocks last in civilian usage Beretta 92/96 pistols.

PLEASE RESPOND BASED ONLY ON GUNS THAT YOU BOUGHT AND PURCHASED YOURSELF ON THE CIVILIAN MARKET, NOT BASED ON GUNS YOU USED IN THE MILITARY.

You can answer for more than one gun if you have owned more than one Beretta 92/96:

Note that you can only choose a SINGLE poll option for a single gun unless you have replaced the locking block in the pistol.

Examples
Assume that you shot a total of 1900 rounds through Gun A with no locking block breakage.
Appropriate poll choice: Locking block still good after 1,000 rounds

Assume that you shot a total of 3100 rounds through Gun B with no locking block breakage.
Appropriate poll choice: Locking block still good after 3,000 rounds

Assume that you shot a total of 700 rounds through Gun C and had a locking block fail and then sold the gun after fixing it.
Appropriate poll choice: Locking block broke in under 1,000 rounds

Assume that you shot a total of 6100 rounds through Gun D and had a locking block fail, replaced it and it's still going strong after 4500 rounds since the replacement.
Appropriate poll choices: Locking block broke in 5,000-7,500 rounds (For the Failure)
Locking block still good after 4,000 rounds (For the second block)

Assume that you shot a total of 20,000 rounds through Gun E and never had a block fail.
Appropriate poll choice: Locking block still good after 20,000 rounds

 

[BerettaBuckeye]

I had to guess at the round count but I've had a bunch of Berettas and never had a lb failure. Or any other failure for that matter. I also had an old school Taurus 99 from the 80's that I absolutely beat on and never broke....and that gun belongs to a friend and he's still on the original locking block. I have passed more than a few well used Berettas on to friends/coworkers and all that I know of are still running strong. I know lb failures do happen and I carry a spare lb in my shooting bag but so far so good.

Edit: I just noticed that I vote 5,000 rounds when I meant to 7,500 rounds if you care to fix that John

 

[Brian48]

My Beretta is too new for me take part in the poll, but my friends Taurus PT99 has passed the 7000+ mark or so and the LB looks perfectly fine the last time we inspected it.

 

[Beentown71]

Oh Geez!!! All of this LB talk has me worried about mine!

Beentown

 

[OldShooter]

berretta

The latest NRA magazine has a good article about the M9 and it's military history. I've not heard of a failure in civilian use but I'm not knowledgeable on this issue.

 

[VHinch]

Of the several 92 variants I've had over the years, the only locking block issue I've had was on one of my competition guns, a 92 Elite II. It cracked between 25 and 30 thousand rounds. I noticed it while cleaning, so it may have been that way a while.

 

[JohnKSa]

I find it surprising that there are only 20 something Beretta 92/96/M9 owners on this forum...

 

[Adventurer 2]

I didn't vote because I am not sure how many rounds I have shot through my civilian 92FS, but I haven't had anything break on it (and I never had a problem with my military issue M9 either).

 

[Satanic Toaster]

I currently have a 92G and I sold a buddy of mine my 96fs I had... both are still going strong and I have put at least 2,000 rounds through each gun.

Both were used when I got them.

 

[G-man 26]

I sold my 92fs some where between 2000 and 2500 rounds. No problems whatsoever.

I miss that gun.

 

[Mike Irwin]

I sold my 92, but before doing so I put a ton of ammo through it. No problems with the block.

 

[Sam06]

Mine is doing fine at 2K rounds. I don't shoot mine too much anymore and I did not shoot it much when I got it. The Army issued me one with free ammo so I guess I got enough pratice with the Handgun free. The M9/92fs is a good gun, accurate and reliable. I got mine a few years after the Army went to them.
I think the unit I was in at that time got them around 1987 or so. I have seen 2 break in my 25 yrs of active service in the Army. Most of it spent in tier 1 or 2 units. The biggest problems we had in OEF and OIF were with the Magazines. They have very little room between the front of the bullet and the magazine wall. Any sand/dust/dirt that gets in there hangs up the mag and does not allow the rounds to move up into position to be loaded into the chamber. No real fix for that but to keep your mags clean.

I read the thread a few days ago about the M9 and the 18Z was correct about what he was saying. The thing is the Army has a LOT of M9's, They shoot them a LOT now. CQB and the requirements of a side arm have evolved since the Army tested the M9. Is the M9 perfect? No but its not that bad and Life is about compromise especially in the Army. I have shot just about every type of 9MM made and if I had to select a Pistol for the Army in 9MM, the M92 would be in my top 10.

I will be intrested to see how this poll goes,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Sam

 

[Don P]

The wifes Italian made, 10,000+ so far all is well.
My U.S.A. made 10,000+ so far all is well
Both are 92FS

 

[JohnKSa]

I was hoping for more responses, but here's what we have so far--some very interesting results.

Out of forty-five pistols represented, 6 of them have broken a locking block. That's about a 13% breakage rate overall.

Out of the twenty-two pistols with LESS than 5000 rounds through them, 4 of them have broken locking blocks. That's about an 18% breakage rate.

Out of twenty-three 92/96 pistol with MORE than 5000 rounds through them two of them have broken locking blocks. That's about a 7% breakage rate.

It would seem that based on this poll the initial failure rate (breakage in under 5000 rounds) is actually higher--more than double the failure rate after 5000 rounds. A most unexpected result.

I also posted a poll on the Beretta forum.

Out of 66 pistols represented in the poll, 3 of them have broken a locking block. About a 5% breakage rate--less than half the breakage rate that is reported on the TFL poll.

In spite of the fact that there were 47% more responses on the Beretta forum no one reported having a locking block break in under 5000 rounds--all three of the reported breakages happened with 5000 rounds or more through the pistol.

I said they were interesting results but I don't know precisely what to make of them. The results from the two different polls provide very different pictures--so different that I have no way to reconcile them. It seems clear that either this poll or the one on the Beretta forum (or both) must have provided inaccurate results.

My best guess is that we got 2 or more "sabotage" votes in the "broke under 5K" category on the TFL poll. If you throw out 2 votes for the "broke in the under 5K" that eliminates the very odd result that seems to indicate that new blocks fail twice as often as old blocks and also brings the overall breakage results into somewhat better agreement with the results from the Beretta forum poll.

Oh well, it was an interesting idea--too bad the results are nonsensical...

 

[Chindo18Z]

JohnKSa: I think that your Beretta 92/96 poll is a good idea. To date, it's the only one I've ever seen on the internet.

One of the less than 5000 round breakages votes was mine.

I would suggest that if you are inclined to believe in "sabotage" votes, that you might consider disregarding at least an equivalent number of votes on the opposite end of the spectrum ("still good after 30K, 70K, etc."). This would paint a truer picture of the median.

Human nature being what it is, results from a forum completely dedicated to the brand might also generate results that are slightly (or even greatly) skewed. Just sayin'...

I too had thought that there would be more 92 owners weighing in by now. Unfortunately, 45 pistols aren't a huge sample to base conclusions on. Except that a significant percentage of Berettas DO fail. Even a 13% fail rate is way too high to inspire confidence.

For comparison, over a one year period , my company sized element experienced over 50% locking block failures across 83 military M9 weapons assigned. In that case, these weapons had seen hard use/high round count of roughly equal proportions for most pistols for that year. Not a figure to inspire confidence in non-recreational shooters.

Hence, my dissatisfaction with the weapon. M9 failures actually drove me to search the internet for anyone else's similiar experience and thereby led to my finding and joining TFL back in 1999.

Leave the poll up for a while. I'm curious (and would love to find a solution to the breakage problem).

 

[Don P]

Just to add a thought, would it possible that the environment would have any effect on the breakages as far as the military were concerned. Also maybe round counts were exaggerated a bit by our members
After reviewing my previous post my round count for both pistols has 1 too many zeros. My apologies for the error

 

[eagleninezero]

Ok, here's my $0.02 on the M9 based on annual qualifications for seven years in the Air Force. While I loved the way the gun fit in my hand and ease of field stripping and cleaning, I found that the feed / ejection characteristics of the gun were disconcerting and didn't inspire confidence. Most of the M9s that I shot were fine - however, I witnessed and experienced a number of 'reliability' issues, most in the hands of experienced shooters.

The worst experience I had was on my last range qualification before leaving the AF - I experienced three (!) jams during a timed tactical fire exercise. My experience with the gun allowed me to clear the jams, reload, shoot under time and hit 40/40 on the exercise. My inspection before and after confirmed some asymmetric wear patterns that probably contributed / caused the ejection and feed failures. Needless to say, this last experience didn't inspire confidence.

Like I said, this in my $0.02 and your mileage may vary. I am sure that there are very happy 92FS owners out there and their experience has been very good. My experience (with the M9) has been less than impressive.

NOTE: I did not participate in the poll as it was directed to non-military 92FS owners.

 

[LUPUS]

The barrel below is an Italian made commercial Beretta 92 Inox barrel manufactured in 2002 just after 25.000 rounds of NATO 124 gr ammo. The locking block of that pistol has been broken four times, two of them were just under 5000 rounds, the slide catch lever has been broken twice, the trigger spring has been broken once, the safety / decocking lever came of the slide once...The slide and the frame are still going strong.

 

[gb_in_ga]

Ok, so it isn't a Beretta 92, but close enough. Taurus PT-92, which shares a common design. The reason I include it is that it is such a very close sibling, so close that people assume that if the one fails in that manner, then other one will as well. That, and IIRC those parts are interchangeable.

I forget exactly how many rounds are through it now, but I know for a fact that it is well over 2000. The locking block looks fine to me, and that's the way I voted.

 

[JohnKSa]

I would suggest that if you are inclined to believe in "sabotage" votes, that you might consider disregarding at least an equivalent number of votes on the opposite end of the spectrum ("still good after 30K, 70K, etc."). This would paint a truer picture of the median.

I'm not suggesting that the poll results should be modified--if that were my intent I could edit them so that they came out the way I wanted them to. I'm not at all inclined to throw out ANY data points unless there is some way to conclusively prove that they're invalid and I don't really see any way to do that.

I'm just pointing out two discrepancies and offering a possible explanation for the discrepancies.

Discrepancy 1: The poll here and the poll at the Beretta forum provided VERY different results. The Beretta forum results, even with many more responses, indicate no failures at all under 5K rounds and a much lower overall failure rate.

Discrepancy 2: The TFL poll results indicate that new locking blocks break at more than double the rate of locking blocks that have been subjected to a lot of use. It's not often that metal fatigue shows up more in new parts than it does in much-used parts.

Both of those discrepancies indicate that something is wrong somewhere and the simplest explanation for what could be wrong is that the TFL poll got some invalid votes in the "broke in under 5K" rounds categories.

There are many other possible explanations, some more likely than others--here are just a few possibilities:

1. Neither poll contains enough responses to provide statistically valid results.
2. There are one or more unknown reasons why Beretta forum members and TFL members experience significantly different breakage rates in their locking blocks.
3. A moderator at one or both forums edited the poll results.
4. Some pistols may be much more likely to break locking blocks and that may create the appearance of a lot of early locking block failures throughout the population when it's really a lot of early locking block failures in a relatively small number of pistols.
5. There is something causing "infant failures" in new blocks and once you get past a certain point in a locking block's life without a failure it tends to last much longer than the average locking block.

Human nature being what it is, results from a forum completely dedicated to the brand might also generate results that are slightly (or even greatly) skewed. Just sayin'...

That could explain discrepancy 1 but not discrepancy 2.