Reading a Beretta Forum post this morning, I was inspired to go through my records and calculate how many rounds, stoppages, and breakages I had during the five years I worked at and shot for SIG.
This data comes from twenty-four pistols I had in my sample kit. Some fired only 50 rounds, while others had substantially higher round counts (with a max of 36,783 through a P226R 9mm).
The total for all twenty-four pistols was 176,240 rounds.
There were a total of 198 stoppages, malfunctions, and/or breakages in that time, which break down as follows:
- 130 failures to fire due to light primer strikes (20 with standard ammo, 110 with lead-free or non-toxic ammunition)
- 10 failures to feed
- 22 failures to extract
- 2 failures to eject
- 11 listed as “other”
- 23 failures blamed on defective ammunition
(These numbers do not include stoppages experienced during testing of aftermarket parts, etc.)
The breakages were:
- extractor (SIG P226R-Navy at 28,188 rounds)
- takedown lever (SIG P220ST at 18,767 rounds)
- takedown lever (SIG P229R 357 at 13,783 rounds)
- extractor (same SIG P229R 357 at 13,863 rounds)
That works out to a Mean Rounds Between Stoppage of 1007 when you discount the 23 ammo-induced failures, and 2711 if you discount all of the misfires with lead-free primers.
The gun with the highest round count (a SIG P226R 9mm) fired a total of 36,783 rounds and no parts breakages. That gun had 5 misfires (1 of which was with a lead-free primer), 3 extractions failures, 2 failures to eject, and 1 failure to feed for a total of 11 stoppages. About half of the stoppages were attributed to maintenance, as the gun was only getting cleaned every 4-5,000 rounds during part of the time it was in service.
Train hard & stay safe! ToddG
Todd,
Interesting info.
I’d like to see how an older, rolled slide P226 or P220 do as opposed to the machined slides they are putting out. I’ve seen older Sigs run like tops after 20K, but the new ones seem to have teething problems out of the box.
Todd,
It seems like you really don’t like to clean your guns…
MHCPD — I think the stainless/solid slides are a better design, especially in terms of major component durability. The “teething problems” we are seeing with current production SIGs has nothing to do with the design. It has everything to do with changes in the company’s parts sourcing & quality control processes.
Mort — I keep them clean enough to run reliably. What more do yo need? 8)
Great info Todd, thanks, just put 60 rounds thru my new P 229 R Elite 9mm, everything went fine, nice and tight groups at 6 and at 12 meters, the good friend who sold it to me only shot around 1000 rounds with the gun, I know it will take time but just to be prepared if it ever… what will happen if one day the takedown lever breaks? will that happen after a round is shot, or I will find out that is broke when I clean it? Im happy with my new gun, but still feel more comfortable concelead carry with my M&P 9c… thanks again Todd, have a good weekend.
Wait a minute, in the origional post you say that half of the stoppages were due to maintainence. Wouldn’t regular (think more than every 4-5 thousand rounds) cleaning be a key part of maintainence?
I would suggest that you didn’t clean often enough to ensure reliability…
Mort — Very true. That gun was sort of a test bed for me, a few times I shot the gun to failure which is why I mentioned the lack of maintenance. I think a gun that starts to have a stoppage or two after 4,000 rounds without cleaning is still doing pretty well. But given my training schedule, one that doesn’t have stoppages after 4,000 rounds is even better. 8)
I’m a big fan of shooting every gun until failure to determine where that point occurs. Basically, once you find that point you can not nitpick over the BS 50-200rds here or there and overclean your gun. Todd has the right approach and obviously someone else is footing the ammo bill, which is even better.
Necropost sorry Todd,
Do you have a recommended PM schedule for the 226?
JLM — Replace the recoil spring every 5,000 rounds. Replace all springs and pins (except firing “pin”) every 10,000 rounds. Replace takedown lever, extractor, and safety lever (which is a little internal part) at 20,000.
…because when the roll pin in the breechblock starts to go, the breechblock will then bend like a cracked carbon steel banana, causing a bad case of “gun no worky”. (cf. our rental 228…)
Tam — Good point and something I always forget. There are still folks who have the older (2-piece, carbon) slide on their P226. For those guns, the ones that don’t have “stainless” engraved on the slide somewhere, you should replace the dual rolls pins in the slide every 5,000 rounds instead of every 10,000. Otherwise, you can break your block or, more commonly, get cracked frame rails.
After less than 200 rounds with My P226R made in 2009 bought new last month..The Extractor and pin and spring fell out at range i could not find them on the floor at all and my sig was jammed up very bad requiring me to strip the magazine out and pull the empty case out of the chamber with my fingernail..
very strange..It was federal american eagle ammo 124gr FMJ the preferred range ammo i use in my 9mm’s
Sig says this only happens with faulty ammo..I am sure the ammo was fine no case failure..
Anyone know if this is common now?