Bad Beretta

[aray]

You may recall that I had posted some time ago that one of my two Beretta 92s had a 40% malfunction rate the first time I shot it (http://kahrtalk.com/general-discussion/2243-goldilocks-9mm-one-just-right.html#post24498) and several of you had offered suggestions to try.

I'm happy to report back that the problem has been resolved.

The first thing I did when I got it home was to give it a good cleaning. Then I applied a modified version of Jocko's Proper Prep of a New Kahr (http://kahrtalk.com/kahr-tech/1521-proper-prep-new-kahr.html#post14512) to the Beretta. Specifically, I got 5 snap caps and in groups of 5 ran them through the magazine, barrel, trigger, and ejector 300 times. At that point the snap caps started to fall apart & leave metal filings behind so I took them out and just racked the slide an additional 200 times to bring me up to 500 cycles total. I then gave it another good cleaning and lubing, and then headed out to the range last night for a test.

I took my known-good Beretta 92F with me as a "control" gun as well as my "problem" Beretta 92FS. Most parts are interchangeable, and I counted on that fact to slowly swap out parts one at a time to diagnose the source of the problems. (Last time recall the type of failures were all over the board so it was sorta tough to pin down a single cause.)

So, armed with lots of ammo and with two guns, I went with the following plan of diagnosis:

1. Shoot the known-good 92F with three types of ammo to establish reliability of the parts,
2. Shoot the suspect 92FS, swapping out the different ammo,
3. Shoot the 92FS, swapping out the magazine,
4. 92FS swapping out the recoil spring and guide,
5. 92FS swapping out the barrel,
6. 92F reassembled but with the 92FS slide. (The 92FS slide will fit on the 92F frame but the 92F slide will not fit on the 92FS frame.)

I never had to go past step 2. As soon as I started shooting the 92FS, it performed flawlessly. I shot 200 rounds through the gun before I was done, all with no problems. (Specifically I shot 120 rounds of Winchester 115 gr. FMJ, 50 rounds of Federal 115 gr. FMJ, and 30 rounds of Federal 124 gr. JHP Hydra-Shok standard pressure.)

So either the problem was some rough metal parts from the factory which just needed to be smoothed down (which I did by cycling the parts 500 times before I went to the range following Jocko's recommendations) or letting it sit idle for 12 years made it bind up.

Never again will I let a gun sit for that long without firing and without cleaning. Dummy me. :blushing:

Thanks for all of your help and encouragement. Ya'll were spot on.

Quick follow-up question. Even though I plan to cycle through all of my guns periodically and fire them all more frequently (not just some of them) in addition I think I'm going to move away from just oil on the slide to instead use grease on the rails. Grease is likely to evaporate or gum up at a slower rate and hence I hope will last longer than oil. So here's the naive question: Is it the case that "grease is grease", or should I get a particular type of grease?

Again, thanks much for all your help!

[Bawanna]

I think the big key is to just do a thorough cleaning before you shoot a gun that's been sitting for years. We used to issue Berettas and we had a mix of early 92F's and the later 92FS. We then went to 40's with the 96 series basically the same gun. Very few issues, in fact zero out of the box. They don't have nearly the tight tolerances like Kahrs and similar guns but your racking was good exercise and certainly didn't hurt a thing either. However I did have one officer who kept the outside wiped down and looking pristene but never cleaned or lubed the inside. It developed issues everyone pretty much determined were catastrophic, time to replace.
All I did was thoroughly clean it and it was as dependable as any of them. Just gummed up which is I believe what happened to yours.
I just got some of the much touted TW25 grease a week ago and have started using it, seems like great stuff. I'm not sure switching to grease is the ticket for storing guns for a long time but it can't be bad either. I like the Du Lite Quick Seal. It claims to be good for storage up to 18 months and I have little doubt that's true. Many manufacturers use it right before the gun goes in the box to preserve it sitting on dealers shelves. I know Winchester, Colt, Ruger and Thompson Center are listed on the can as users which is a pretty good recomendation to me, if its good enough for them it should work for me. Many reblueing outfits also use it after the process to stop the blueing process and protect the new finish.