Tanfoglio BTA90 (CZ clone) Failure to Eject

[ricko]

I picked up this pistol a few weeks ago, it seems to be a very nice gun. The first box of ammunition was Remington, 115gr FMJ, and everything worked flawlessly. 9mm ammunition supply being what it is, Remington isn't available at the moment so I bought a few boxes of "Blazer Brass", also 115gr FMJ.

With the Blazer ammunition, the first spent case hung in the eject port, and 2 more in the same 10-round clip did the same. I loaded the next clip from a different box of Blazer, and it went OK until the last round which stayed inside the gun after the slide locked open.

On inspection of the spent cases, I notice that they are rough and scratched on the outer surface (both the Remington and Blazer brands), and looking inside the barrel I can see that although the barrel itself looks fine, there are very visible machining marks inside the chamber.

Is the rough chamber causing or contributing to the FTE problem? And if so, how do I go about polishing that out? Space is pretty tight inside a 9mm chamber, I'm not going to be able to reach in with my fingers.....

Thanks!

 

[6.8]

Hey Ricko, Unfortunately, Tanfoglio and failure go together like Obama and Communism. In the immortal words of John Belushi, my advise to you is "Start drinking Heavily"

 

[Skans]

I'd do two things:

1. Sounds like your gun doesn't like Blazer - try other makes, especially since you weren't having any problems with Remington.

2. Make sure the gun/chamber is clean and lightly oiled.

3. I have a hard time believing that your barrel is scratching up your ammo casings. If that's the case, I'd have a gunsmith take a look at it to see if there is a burr inside the chamber (would be very unusual). I would not take a dremmel to it and polishing the chamber.

 

[g.willikers]

It's possible that the Blazer is a little hotter, and the brass in clinging to the chamber more than the Remington.
But machining marks aren't going to just polish out easily, if they are the cause.
You can check by making sure everything is really clean and lubed and using a very thin and small amount of lube on some of the Blazer rounds, to see if they work better that way.
If you are sure that polishing the chamber is needed, use a wooden dowel, a cotton patch and a very mild abrasive, like one of the paste type of barrel cleaners, or even soft scrub, toothpaste or the like.
The idea is to clean and smooth, but not change any dimensions.
And machining marks won't be affected, only surface stuff.

 

[ricko]

Thanks guys! Much appreciated. I noticed that a friend's Glock was not scuffing the cases like my Tanfoglio was, and I was surprised to see how rough the chamber looked when I inspected it. Not sure how smooth they're supposed to be in there, but I can't think of any particular benefit to roughness. I'll try a bit of lubrication and see how it goes.

 

[Dakotared]

Tanfoglio and failure IS NOT COMMON. As a disclaimer I am a huge tanfo fan. Do as the others have said and see if that helps. You could call EAA and see if they could get you a new barrel but be warned that this is where the tanfo gets their bad name as EAA is not easy to deal with. I recently had a problem with a witness and I had to send it back to them 2 times to get it fixed.

 

[ricko]

I don't know if this is an excuse or not, but the rim on this Blazer shell is pretty inconsistent from one side to the other - I can imagine this making ejection a little bit of a crap shoot. I'll try to stick with better ammunition once it becomes available, and I'll see if I can slick up the chamber in the meantime (the chamber does not feel tight on the spent shell at all, though it is not as smooth as I would like)

 

[Skans]

That's interesting - I'm assuming that's a spent case? I might expect a little deformity in a spent case. However, if that's an unfired round - it is visibly out of sec.

 

[Walt Sherrill]

Some years back, a number of CZ-pattern guns had problems with Winchester White Box. A number of us found the problem -- which was a oddly shaped extraction groove on the base of the case. It was more of a "<" shaped indentation than a sharp "/".

I don't know that this is still the case, but more than one CZ and Witness user has complained about the problem over the years. Check the rims of the cases that give you problems -- and try other "cheap" fodder.

I like Georgia Arm's "Canned Heat" in bulk for playing at the range.

 

[ricko]

This is a spent case, but this is the machined end - it's a solid slug of brass back there, these irregularities weren't caused by firing it.

I also cleaned and polished the chamber a bit last night - looking forward to trying it out again.

 

[9mm]

blazer is cheap ammo and dirty, I have had problems with it before in other calibers.

 

[Walt Sherrill]

I have been using Blazer aluminum-cased ammo for years, without problems, in a wide variety of guns (from CZs and clones in 9mm, to Glocks in .40, .45 GAP, and SIGs in 9mm, .40, and .45). Since I don't reload, having brass cases is not as important to me as it might be to others.

As noted above, only WWB has consistently given me problems, and that was a number of years ago -- I've not tried it recently, so the "issue" described earlier may no longer be a factor.

(I neglected to mention AAA brand (American Ammunition ?) which had such poor quality control that I found OAL varying within a single box of different calibers, and some were so long they wouldn't even feed or chamber in some guns, and so short that I was worried about pressure. I gave up on them a long time ago.)

 

[Skans]

I have been using Blazer aluminum-cased ammo for years, without problems,

While my Desert Eagle .44 will shoot just about any kind of .44 magnum, it HATES Blazer aluminum cased ammo! I bought 3 boxes. It took forever for me to get through 1/2 of one box - jammed on every 3rd shot or so. So, I tried some from one of the other boxes - same thing. I concluded the stuff was just too underpowered to cycle the action. The rounds felt weak when I was shooting them too.

I have shot Blazer aluminum in 9mm without problems.

 

[hemiram]

I've never had, and I've had a half dozen of them, or even seen a bad Tanfoglio gun, whatever name was on it, Baby Eagle, Tanfoglio, FIE, Witness, etc. The three I have right now are rock solid, all 9mm, two "fullsized", an early Witness and a "Mossad", and a compact "Mossad". All are satin nickel and were bought used.

 

[ricko]

followup....

I spent some time polishing the chamber in my BTA90 (Rolled a strip of heavy drawing paper up into a tight cylinder to just fit in the chamber, applied a bit of Simichrome polish to the outside and rotated it in the chamber to smooth out the rough machining marks) over the past couple of weeks, and this morning managed to get back to the range with a box of Blazer ammunition to check it out.

Where it had been hanging a shell in the eject port every 5 or 10 shots before, today with the same ammunition it went through the box with no problems. The ejected shells are now smooth on the outside, without the scuff marks I'd observed on them before.

This issue with Blazer is the only problem I'd had with it, so now I'm a very happy camper... the gun is very comfortable to shoot, it's now reliable with discount ammunition, and when I do a proper job (which unfortunately is not on every shot) it's accurate. And I enjoy tinkering with machines, so I didn't mind doing a little tuneup on the barrel.

AND, the shop had a box of REMINGTON 9mm available to replace the Blazer I shot up... best of all worlds!

Thanks everybody for your suggestions and information.

 

[Liberty's Teeth]

I really hate to bash guns but this is one of them that I have to say something about. My bro-in-law had one with the same problem you describe except it wasn't just with blazer. Just about every other manufacturer of ammo we tried would hang up. He sent it back to them and when it returned two months later there was no difference. He also had the .22 conversion, same issues. I don't know if he just had a bad example but he got rid of it.