Honestly, most of the guns in our inventory would be fine with nothing more than a spring change.Originally Posted by OlongJohnson
Honestly, most of the guns in our inventory would be fine with nothing more than a spring change.
Same from what I've seen. I've seen a lot with finish so worn down that it almost looks like an INOX gun, but my only real beef with Army M9's are the huge numbers of should-have-been-destroyed gulf war era magazines still in use. Bad magazines seem to cause at least 9/10 mechanical failures I've seen running M9 fam fire/qual ranges.
Beyond that, get a fresh recoil spring, trigger return spring, drop a D mainspring in it, and make sure the locking block is un-cracked and start running some ammo through it.
I'm really curious to see if the M17's will survive the routine neglect and physical abuse (e.g. being used as a hammer) that M9's have been routinely subjected to for 30+ years.
Gulf War era mags were/are a problem? First I’ve heard of that in 20-plus years. At that time frame the magazine would have been made by Beretta in either Italy or the USA.
Are you thinking of the batch of Check-Mate mags that were heavily phosphated? That would have been the early to mid 2000s, IIRC for the time frame.
All magazines are ultimately disposable, and usually long before the end of weapon's lifespan. Pool-magazines of unknown life and use rapidly undermine confidence in a given weapon's system, and with my old place it's not hard to imagine original issue M9 magazines being issued contemporaneous to the most current\final iterations of the M9 FOW.
Jules
Runcible Works
Yes, I'm talking about the Check-Mate magazines that even Check-Mate said were a shit combination for what the Army was asking, but the Army insisted on them anyway.
You're the first person I've encountered saying they were later on - every other date reference for those mags I've seen indicated they were part of a ramp-up program because Beretta couldn't provide enough mags for the Gulf War effort, which led to those mags, which led to lots of issues re:sand, which led to 1911's being re-issued in some elements, but the contract was the contract so they kept making those same shitty magazines deep into the 90's if not later.
All I know is those magazines are all over the place to this day, and I can't remember a time when I saw an issued M9 malfunction and one of those crappy old Check-Mate magazines *wasn't* in the magwell. It wasn't *always* the cause of the malfunction, but it was a very common failure point.
A shitload of Mec-Gar 18's and new springs would completely turn around the existing M9's in circulation. But I suppose if I'm going to dream that big, may as well dream for Langdon TJIAB's for each along with Wilson G10 grips and Les Pepperoni rear sights, too.
@runcible really hit the nail on the head.
Regardless if that timeframe were the Checkmate mags or not, the MAIN problem is that the military (from my experience, as well as others) treats mags as if they don't have a lifespan and thus there are hundreds of thousands of M9 mags that are well beyond serviceable condition. Swelled? Baseplate cracked and flexible? Feed lips spread apart? Spring completely shot? Doesn't matter....they'll keep reissuing it.
So, you can argue that the Checkmate mags came later......but even if they did, it's irrelevant to the fact that the old busted ass mags are still a major problem.
One could argue that the entire M855A1 EPR program was just a big scam to finally make .mil buy new fucking mags.....
"Are you ready? Okay. Let's roll."- Last words of Todd Beamer
Yes, it was in the earlier days of OIF that the Checkmate mags came about. Nobody in our unit used them enough to have a problem with the pistols, but I remember the mags. I also have a fairly large stack of them. Was talking to a kid on another forum that had it suggested to him that their springs were weak from the word go, in addition to the garbage finish on them. I have stuck new Wolf +10% springs in all of them and don't generally have issues beyond my fat thumbs interfering with the slide stop, and that's not the gun's problem. All mine are marked late 04 to late 06, with 80-90% marked 09/05, which means we could have been using the same lots of them because we initially deployed in 10/05.
Supposedly if one gets ones from 2010 and later the issues were resolved. I can't speak for that.
Probably the biggest thing I've noticed about the US Army vs other militaries is the fact that they treat the sidearm like a complete afterthought, and not as a serious weapon in any fashion of the word. At least in the unit(s) I was in, they were only issued to rank, or those who never left the FOB. The smart units fed those guys M4's, and issued the ones who'd likely use a sidearm the M9. Plus, I don't think anyone ever really got any training on how to use them. I knew next to nothing about the Beretta, and I was no pistol shooter, but I knew more about it than my squad leader did, and could shoot it better than he could.
On pool magazines - yes, I've been living that struggle on shitty pool magazines for my entire Army career. The M16/M4 magazine bins at my old unit were maybe 20% tan follower newer mags, the rest were a 50/50 mix of green and black follower mags. I was threated with a statement of charges when I destroyed a clearly malfunctioning magazine that caused repeated stoppages on a qual range. That's just how the game works.
M9 magazines suffer the same, except there's absolutely no excess magazines so all I can do is mark the bad ones and tell guys to avoid using those mags for qualifications.
Having been the M9 instructor/qual range NCOIC for my previous unit for several years, I could speak for days on the lack of effective handgun instruction in the Army. Most Soldiers need additional instruction on proper grip, manipulation, holstering/reholstering, etc. Nevermind actually getting to the marksmanship part!
I've lost count of the moments during M9 instruction that could have been made a (screams internally) meme if I'd taken a picture. No shortage of old 11B's, 19D's, etc that I've had on a range that had massive training scars from simply never getting good handgun instruction. It took one grizzled, four-deployment SFC a chance to watch ME shoot to convince him that his cup-and-saucer grip needed to go.
The Army by and large treats pistols as a talismanic badge of being too important to be bothered with a weapon system. Which really bugs the hell out of me, but I'll never be in a position to change that.
That all said - my reading and learning on this forum improved both my own pistol skills and also my ability to teach proper pistol skills. There's at least a hundred Soldiers out there that shot a lot better on their M9 qual because of this forum, and left that range with much better and safer pistol handling skills too.
It's an irony, in a way. I turned 21 while I was deployed. Was never issued a sidearm. Started shooting striker fired pistols/DAO when I got home. Mostly Glock and XD. It never was a lot, namely because life took over and there were more important things to do. After a long hiatus from shooting at all, I finally had the chance to buy a Beretta this last spring. Wound up with a commercial M9. It wasn't a serious thing, just a blaster toy until I started catching some tidbits online. Like D springs, thin grips, and best of all the G conversion kit. Talk about getting hooked a dozen years later pretty hard. My M9 got a 92 compact stable mate shortly after. The full size is now my EDC (which is a whole thing of it's own because i had to lose a lot of weight to be able to do that, especially AIWB), with LTT grips, TJIB, and G kit After adding it up, since I bought the first one in April, they've consumed nearly 9000 rounds of 9mm. I just traded a subcompact XD to get a PX4 compact to add to the DA/SA madness.
Buying that pistol turned me into a student of pistol shooting. I don't know why, but I got real interested in getting good with DA/SA real fast. Plus that was a jump start into this insane thought of doing some instructing of my own considering my area is ultra rural and there's practically nothing available without driving a minimum of an hour and a half. And I'm so far off topic it's not even funny now.
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