My Gen 5 G17 just clicked over 10 rounds on Sunday. I thought forum members might like to see pics of the internals and hear about reliability.
Time period: April 4, 2018 - July 28, 2019
Total rounds through the gun: 10:159
The vast majority of the ammo has been American Eagle 124g.
Stoppages:
- 2 Double feeds - I could never trace this down to one mag.
- 5X gun locked back with rounds still in the mag. These mostly happened during aggressive movement and inadvertently pushing up on slide release. Has not happened since I cleaned under the slide release lever.
- 4 X Light primer strikes - this has happened too many times over the last six months. I do a ton of dry practice so I worry I may have rounded the firing pin. I have a complete new firing pin assembly on order just to make sure.
- 1X failure to feed - I hit the slide lock lever too early during a reload and the slide road over the round just as the mag locked in. My fault really.
- Too numerous to mention - slide not locking back on an empty mag during aggressive movement.
I replaced three parts on the gun; I installed a 3.5lb connector, a set of Dawson Charger sights, and I installed a new firing pin spring after light strike number three (somewhere around 9000 rounds). I had a light strike soon after I installed it so it likely wasn’t the spring that caused the issue. Who knows, it could be a bad batch of ammo?
Here are some pics of the wear on the gun after 10K rounds:
Pic of the interior of the slide, not sure what is up with the pitting. Looks like it was there before the finish was applied.
Breach Face
Slide wear. I have thousands of draws on this thing. I think this level of wear is minimal and perfectly acceptable.
Barrel Wear
I notice some peening on the safety plunger. I have many times more dry fire trigger work than actual rounds on this gun, but I’m not sure what would be causing this. Trigger pull is just over 5lbs still.
Magwell is not too bad considering the amount of reloads it’s seen, somewhere in the thousands.
Trigger bar wear.
Dual slide release leaver. See that black piece just below it? That’s a piece of the finish flaking off. I’m not too impressed with the finish on this part and to be honest. I also suspect the dual lever causes more problems than it solves (see malfunction report above).
Locking block looks to be in good shape.
I quite like the Gen 5 in it’s role as Production Competition Gun. It’s grip texture is excellent, needing only a little grip tape at the top of both side panels to complete it. It’s accurate; I routinely shoot low 90’s B8’s at 25 yards freestyle, and have my personal best with the gun; a 97-3X. I’ve shot some of my best Bill Drills with the gun, routinely posting clean sub 2 second runs. I made master in IPSC with the gun, when using the factory plastic sights.
I plan to keep running this gun through the rest of the season and most likely through all of next season. Hopefully the new striker will sort out the light strikes.