Thanks for the tag-in,
@HansGruber .
@Mr. Untactical , truthfully, most modern duty/service/defensive-grade auto pistols can very well tolerate thousands of rounds' worth of carbon-fouling in-between even just a cursory field-cleaning, if-only they were kept well-lubricated.
With my two range/training XDm9s - one a 4.5-inch and the other a 3.8 Compact - I routinely let them go thousands of rounds without cleaning...I just keep adding lube.
Even then, I only rarely see stoppages.
How often do you clean your guns...is it dependent on how many rounds you fire, after a trip to the range, or based on time since last time you cleaned it. I usually clean mine after I get back from the range, my brother does his after after a round count.
www.thearmorylife.com
^ ...this post should give you an idea of what I'm usually looking at, as I pack up my training guns for classes or range outings.
As for age/round-count of these beaters?
The 4.5-inch was purchased second-hand from a good friend of mine, Q4, 2010. It's now got well over 55,000 live-fire rounds on it (my friend put about 300 rounds through it before he sold it to me). I wrote about it briefly in the "
Strayer 40K 'Blue Flame'" thread -
https://www.thearmorylife.com/forum/threads/strayers-40k-blue-flame.204/#post-5192
The 3.8 Compact that's pictured in the cleaning thread was purchased new in Q3, 2011, and currently has around 25,000 live-fire rounds on it. Its EDC counterpart, which I purchased a half-year earlier has around 13,000 live-fire rounds on it.
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Usually, the primary suspects for a pistol that had until-that-point been consistent and reliable are (1) ammo and (2) magazine(s).
If on this particular range trip where you experienced the repeated stoppages you were using reloads, remanufactured ammo, or even just factory-new ammo which you've otherwise haven't tried in your gun before (and are known to produce reliable function in your specific firearm - i.e. the XD Mod2 SC that bears your gun's unique serial number), then the first thing to try would be ammo with which you'd already vetted and know, without a single doubt, that functions your gun reliably.
The reason for this is simple: tolerance stacking. Even with the exacting nature of modern manufacturing practices, tolerances can stack just right and produce a final system which suffers from otherwise unexpected glitches. And towards this, it's universally agreed that if an otherwise reliable weapon simply doesn't function well with just a few specific makes/models of ammo, it's not that the weapon is unreliable - it's just that the end-user should take care to avoid those specific ammo.
If on the other hand you *are* using known/proven/vetted-for-your-unique-gun ammo and you're still seeing extraction and/or ejection problems, the next branch in your troubleshooting tree should immediately be the gun's magazine, if that gun is magazine-fed.
Of all the areas of a modern autoloading pistol that's magazine-fed, the magazine is perhaps the single biggest weakness of the system. Here, anything from the feed-lips to the magazine's body to its follower to how it locks-up in the gun (i.e. whether the magazine catch/release is properly interfacing with that magazine) can potentially be points where we'll need to troubleshoot. However, oftentimes, it's just that the magazine spring has somehow reached the end of its durable lifespan - and a change to a new one (factory or aftermarket) will restore reliable function to not only that magazine, but also the weapon itself.
Early double-stack XD-platform magazines were noted to be problematic (feed-lips and body), but modern XD and XDm magazines have typically fared very well, even when exposed to the rigors of routine competition or training-class use/abuse. My latest thoughts on this topic can be seen on the XDTalk Forums:
https://www.xdtalk.com/threads/xd-magazine-feed-issue.453131/ - my screen-name there is the same as it is here, and my replies' in- and out-links should help provide you both an idea of the framework from which I've come to this conclusion, as well as hopefully give you an idea of how you may want to go about remediation for any magazine-related issues.
Before you start actual troubleshooting of the magazine(s), I would first ask that you be sure to (relatively) permanently number or otherwise uniquely identify -EACH- of your magazines. This way, any problems you may encounter can immediately be associated to - with relative certainty - (a) certain magazine(s).
And towards your specific problems noted, one item that caught my eye was that you mentioned you experienced several instances where the magazine failed to lock-back on-empty. While this certainly can be caused by a weak[ening] magazine spring, in order to have full accountability in the troubleshooting, we *_MUST_* take the shooter out of it as much as possible. Here, if you are a right handed shooter, I would like for you to first approach troubleshooting by using the same ammo and magazines that you'd used when you experienced problems, but to shoot the gun single-handed, using only your LEFT hand. The idea with this single, simple, step in troubleshooting is to eliminate the possibility that it is *somehow* either your dominant (right) hand's thumb overriding the slide catch/release or that your support hand (in a two-handed, "freestyle," grip) is somehow interfering with that control surface.
If your gun reliably locks-back on last-round when you're shooting left-hand-only but sees early lock-back of the slide when you're using either both hands or just your right hand, it is more than likely that the root-cause of the issue is simply you.
Should the gun successfully pass this troubleshooting and you're still seeing issues, it is possible that your magazine spring(s) were defective from-the-factory (likely either material issues or a failure of heat-treat or even coiling), causing it to experience a drastically truncated service-life (you can see from the post that I reference above just how many cycles - and for how long - that I'd used my magazines before their factory springs gave up the ghost
). Mechanical/physical reasons make the smaller "Subcompact" autopistols a bit more harsh on their wear components, and typically, mean-time-to-failure is shorter, versus their bigger counterparts. With the magazine spring - even though that same magazine (let's say here that you're using a full-capacity magazine, not the truncated magazines designed especially for the smaller pistol, to enhance concealment for the weapon) can consistently and reliably function in a full-sized version of that platform, that "leeway," if you will, is cut down when you're using that same magazine in the smaller pistol of the platform - where you'll see problems happen, sooner/faster.
^ Here, if you'll look at what I'd written in that old M4Carbine.net thread that I'd out-linked to in the thread cited above, you'll see that I'd written about this seemingly accelerated manifestation:
I hope this gives you enough to start your troubleshooting.
@Mr. Untactical !
If it is the magazine(s), I'd encourage you to
both purchase new replacements as-well-as pursue remediation for any that are problematic.
Provided that you live in a free state, currently, magazines can be had for very good prices. Since magazines are really the one "disposable" part of our autopistols -and is one of its greatest weaknesses- it really only makes sense that we have some backups readily available. If the pistol is used for or is intended for a serious purpose, this would doubly make sense. Larry Vickers himself recommends no less than five (5) vetted/proven magazines for each defensive/duty weapon.
And yes, I have put my money where my mouth is. where it comes to magazines for my XDms -
View attachment 25122
^ 13-rounders for my 3.8 compact.
View attachment 25123
^ 19-rounders for the full-size guns...yes. there's a row under that top 10.
....and remember that I've got another 15+ of the 19-rounders in active-use.
Even the new 35-rounders:
https://www.thearmorylife.com/forum/threads/xdm-9mm-35-rd-mag-initial-report.10081/#post-133759
Buy them cheap. Stack them deep.
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And absolutely keep a running tally of the mileage that your guns have seen.
It's just like the mileage on your car - how else would you know how much/hard it's been used?
Some folks go so far as to keep track of every single round fired - I don't (yet) have any guns that requires that much attention. but I do try to ballpark mine by every 500 rounds or so.
It's not only a great way to troubleshoot, but also gives you an idea of the type of preventative maintenance you might need to do.
