Feed Issues with my Baby Eagle .45

[SpaceFrank]

After a few long months of not shooting my .45 BE, I picked up a 250-rd Mega Pack of Remington UMC 230-grain FMJ and went to the range with some friends, where I proceeded to exhaust the entire box. After a hundred or so rounds, I started to notice that occasionally the slide would not close all the way when feeding. All it would take was a light touch on the back of the slide to get it to close, but it's still a problem.

Here are my observations:
1. This problem doesn't show up until the gun gets a little dirty, and gets worse with more rounds fired.
2. It is probably partially caused by limp-wristing. I noticed that if I took extra care to control the recoil when firing, it didn't happen. It happened a lot more when a less-experienced friend of mine shot the gun. However, I generally keep a pretty good handle on the gun anyway and it still happened occasionally with me. I wouldn't expect a quality weapon to require mounting in a vise when shooting.

Any ideas on how to prevent this in the future? I had considered polishing the feed ramp/chamber several months ago, but the more serious feed problems I had been having attenuated as the gun was broken in. I also thought that a stiffer recoil spring might solve the current problem. I don't think the problem lies in the magazines, as the bullets manage to make it up the ramp but just don't slide into the chamber all the way.

 

[spf159753]

A knowledgeable gun-smith or send it back to factory for a check up could help,maybe???
Get it checked out especially if it's used for protection.

 

[Scarecrow]

I have heard of people doing both. polishing the feed ramp and/or buying a stronger recoil spring. if it keeps happening you might want to try the polishing... but first I would try getting a stronger recoil spring and see if that fixes the problem.. it sounds like it would if the rounds are going up the ramp ok. once you take metal off you can't get it back which is why I would try the spring first and leave the feed ramp polishing for last resort.

 

[MagnumMark]

The same thing happened to my friend he bought a 18 lb. spring and I took the gun out to the range shoot 100 rounds thru it with no feeding problems I also cleaned his gun before shooting it.

 

[SpaceFrank]

I was doing some Googling to try to find a place to buy recoil springs and came across this. The article itself was nothing special, but check out the second comment, by Robert003.

Magnum Research Baby Desert Eagle | Rifles n Guns

I hadn't even thought about this; I need to check and see if the extractor is what's getting hung up. The problem he described, with the slide stopping a fraction of an inch before closing and getting royally jammed, is exactly what was happening with me when I first bought the gun. Now it's doing the same thing, but isn't getting jammed up and closes with only slight pressure. Like the extractor spring is getting broken in or the tip of the extractor itself is wearing down.

 

[SpaceFrank]

I took another look at the gun and the extractor doesn't appear to be the problem. It feeds rounds just fine by hand and the extractor always ends up on the correct side of the cartridge rim. To test further I put a round in the chamber by hand and allowed the slide to close slowly on it, and it then took far more force to get the extractor to jump over the rim than what I as having to do at the range. I think this is definitely a ramp issue. I will probably buy a stiffer spring before I do any polishing, though, per Scarecrow's suggestion.

 

[ji long]

i had the same problem with my .45 baby eagle when i first got it. After I polished the feed ramp and the hammer interface it started happening less but still happened. My opinion is that the slide to frame fit is so tight until it gets broken in that after 100 or so rounds it has problems returning to battery. Try some grease instead of oil on the slide rails and see if that helps after switching to grease the problem has dissappeared for me and this is now my favorite gun.

 

[SpaceFrank]

Thanks for the info. How exactly did you do the polishing? On the feed ramp, did you mainly work on the edge where the ramp meets the chamber bore? That's what someone else suggested. Also, what do you mean by the hammer interface?

 

[ji long]

For the polishing i used a dremel just on the tip not the chamber itself just the ramp, if you dont have dremel you could use 600 grit sandpaper. Hammer interface might have been the wrong term but i mean the part of the hammer that touches the slide when chambering a round. Definately try some good grease like tetra gun first since that might help and save you some time. just google fluff and buff P32. its a smaller gun but the principles are the same