The .40 Glocks would get pretty beat up over their service life. 1000 rounds is a drop in the bucket. Typically the addition of a weapon mounted light would result in increased slide velocity, which combined with the already high pressure .40 round, would lead to malfunctions and small part breakages. The GEN4 is an improvement over the GEN3 due to the double recoil spring, but the increased slide mass is really what is required to tame the .40.
For what it's worth, nearly all of my GEN3/4 holsters work with GEN5 guns.
Last edited by JSGlock34; 07-04-2020 at 10:11 AM.
"When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man."
Gun fleas.
The Gen3 .40's would work fine in some places and would be absolute dogshit in others. Sometimes they worked fine unless you mounted a Surefire. In general, they were guns that had a significantly higher chance of show-stopping issues.
The Gen4 guns tried to resolve that, but ultimately didn't. There again, some batches did OK. Others sucked out loud. Some were good for a couple of thousand rounds and then all of a sudden weren't so good anymore. One of the reasons why the FBI went to 9mm Glocks again (and have been actually encouraging local police departments to go 9mm) is a result of the reliability issues they experienced with their Gen4 guns. IIRC they have something close to 15,000 sworn personnel.
3/15/2016
Reliability issues not not necessarily mean WML issues. The .40 cal Glocks have generally been more problematic than 9mm. Much of this traces back to decisions by Glock to simply bore out the G17/19 to make the first G22/23s rather than adding mass like every other gunmaker and to try and use one RSA for both 9mm and.40 cal.
The issues with G22s and WMLs were identified with Gen 3 guns, not Gen 4. One of the less heralded changes between Gen 3 and Gen4 was reinforcing the dustcover to mitigate WML issues.
Another is Glock went through a dozen or more updates to .40 cal magazine springs and followers to try and improve reliability.
I’ve personally seen .40 Glocks with failures to extract, eject, broken /blown out extractor and seen the locking lugs beak off the bottom of the barrel.
Finally, as noted, 1k rounds is a drop in the bucket.
Hopefully Glock won't put the 9 in the new frame/slide for ease of manufacturing. The .40 has ruined the 9 enough already.
I do like the extra leaver on the Brazilian ones though.
I like the .40. I think I’ll stick with glock 9mms and M&P .40s.
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Excellent info, The only malfunctions or breakage's I've witnessed have been slide lock springs and those have been rare. Our guns are armoured yearly and we shoot 10 out of 12 months, with IES or retention training in the off range months. I think, all considered, our firearms program is excellent and I have no issues with the issued gun. But I'll continue to watch it like a hawk! Again, thanks for the info!
-All views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect those of the author's employer-
Thanks! My Gen2 22 has been shot and dryfired enough to have a lot of slide and grip wear and has never had a malfunction. I probably only have 5k through my personal Gen4 22 but that's been gtg as well. My personal interest has been in the 1911 area and more recently in the Wilson EDC X9 which will likely be my primary after I retire again. Appreciate you response!
-All views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect those of the author's employer-
I know this is what caused my brother's agency to switch. When he started they were a diehard .40 agency with zero people entertaining even the idea of switching. Then about 5 years into Gen 3 G22s they started getting the weapon light failures. They basically treated them as anomalies until another year passed and it was too big a problem to ignore and even some of the non-gun-guy officers getting irate about having unreliable kit. So they switched to Gen 4 G22s, which fixed the problem for..about 6 months, then they went right back to not running. Agency finally said screw it, Gen 4 17s, and hasn't had issues since. Even with the Gen 4s being discontinued I'd imagine they'll still use them a long time what with Glock continuing to service agency orders.
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