Help me feed my 45.

[OkieCruffler]

I recently bought a Taurus PT145 and the thing is just incredible. Very accurate, quite controlable, and flawlessly reliable with everything I've fed it except my 185gr SWC reloads. Problem is, they practically give those bullets away and I really want to use them for practice rounds. I've polished the feed ramp like I do everything, but that hasn't helped. The rounds chamber, so they're not catching on the lip, but they don't quite make it into battery. Any ideas?

 

[Unclenick]

Seating depth may be the issue. A shorter bullet will tip up further before the magazine lips let go of it, creating a greater angle of entry into the chamber and of the rim into the extractor claw.

Polish the bottom edge of the extractor claw. Drop a round into the chamber and see that it doesn't seat deeper than the breech of the barrel. If it does, start seating out until it just lands there. This is headspacing on the bullet. It improves accuracy as a side benefit.

Nick

 

[OkieCruffler]

I've thought about seating depth, may have to give that a try. Interesting thing is that if I'm just hand cycling the rounds thru the gun they feed just slicker than snot. I'm starting to think the load might not be hot enough to cycle the slide all the way to the rear and then the spring doesn't have enough momentum to get the slide fully into battery. It's the same charge I use in my 185gr JHP's and they work fine, but the combination of that and bullet shape may be causing the problem.

 

[Unclenick]

Good thought. That can, indeed, cause the problem. There are two ways to tell that I know. One is just by the feel of the recoil. When you have a load too light to cycle the slide 100%, the gun feels spongy in recoil because the slide doesn't slam abruptly to a stop in counter battery. It also tends to be less consistent feeling, because as the stack in the magazine gets shorter, the upward drag decreases and you feel the resulting change in the slide motion.

The second test is related to the fact light loads that barely push the slide back need all the frame support they can get. Shoot your gun from a Weaver stance or by pressing it firmly down into a carpet scrap on a shooting bench. If the problem decreases noticeably with the firmer frame support, the round pressure is your likely culprit.

I don't know if lighter recoil springs are available for the Taurus as they are for 1911's set up to fire lighter loads, but if not, you could buy a spare for full-house loads, then get one lf those cute little 8" compound bolt cutters from Sears and start cutting turns off one end, one coil at a time until it functions.

Also, I don't know if the Taurus uses a recoil buffer of some kind? If so, and it is one of the secondary recoil spring types, then it could be foiling your light loads and should be defeated for shooting them.

Nick