Walther P99

[Marauder06]

A friend of mine has a Walther P99 9mm pistol. He says he likes the gun but it's prone to jam. He said he uses "standard" 9mm ammo for it. I wonder if those of you who are more knowledgable about these types of things than I can offer any suggestions. I thought that maybe switching to a more powerful load or getting some smithing done ("ramped and throated?") might help.

 

[Diamondback 2/2]

What type of stoppage is happening with the pistol? Failure to feed, or a failure to eject? Can you give a break down, of what your buddy was doing when the stoppage happened, and what type of stoppage it was?

1) Failure to feed is normally caused by a dirty weapon, bag magazine, or bad drive/ recoil spring.

2) Failure to eject will be caused by a bad extractor, bad ejector, dirty weapon, new drive/ recoil spring, and or limp wristing. (Also known as riding the recoil)

If your friend is using standard factory ammo, and is keeping the pistol, clean. He should not need to run a “hot” load through it. It will more then likely be a defective part in the weapon, or shooter induced failure.

 

[8'Duece]

Sometimes I find feeding problems to be a "shooter problem"

I wasn't one to ever believe in the "limp wrist" myth, but lately I've seen a couple of newbies to pistols that throw a failure to feed in every mag. After fireing the weapon myself there were not any failures. Strange how that happens. :)

Walther P99's are generally a very reliable pistol (I have one) and I've not found any ammunition that causes failures.

First thing I would do is probably replace the mag springs with a +10% spring from Wolfe. If that doesn't help, then I'd look into sending it back to Walther and have them address any problems with the feed ramp or the extractor.

Edit to add: Standard pressure (SAAMI) 9mmx19 Luger ammunition should be enough for any 9mm Luger pistol to cycle cleanly without failure. I wouldn't feed a steady diet of higher pressured ammunition through the pistol. +P and +P+ are great self defense rounds but it's my conention that they do take up service life of the pistol. I generally try to fire a couple of mags of my EDC ammunition after firing standard pressure ammunition for target practice, just for familiarity of the recoil response.

 

[Diamondback 2/2]

Edit to add: Standard pressure (SAAMI) 9mmx19 Luger ammunition should be enough for any 9mm Luger pistol to cycle cleanly without failure. I wouldn't feed a steady diet of higher pressured ammunition through the pistol. +P and +P+ are great self defense rounds but it's my conention that they do take up service life of the pistol. I generally try to fire a couple of mags of my EDC ammunition after firing standard pressure ammunition for target practice, just for familiarity of the recoil response.

+1 That is some good info!

 

[Marauder06]

Thanks guys, I'll let him know what was said here.

 

[8'Duece]

Just so nobody thinks I'm blowing hard wind.

I'm not a pistol expert, and I've never used one in combat. I shoot alot, I've learned alot, and I've attened some pistol and carbine classes from the best in the industry of tactical training.

I shoot weekly, a couple hundred or few rounds. So I don't want to hold myself out as the GURU of all things pistol. I've just seen my fair share of bullshit and proficiency in the industry. As well, I've applied those lessons to my current practice on the range.

I'd love to get Larry Vickers, Paul How, Jim Smith, Jeff Gonzales on this board to give us some hints and clues.

 

[Diamondback 2/2]

I'd love to get Larry Vickers, Paul How, Jim Smith, Jeff Gonzales on this board to give us some hints and clues.

+1 I would love to get Vickers and Howe on here too. Someone should invite them:confused:

 

[Marauder06]

My friend says it's a failure to eject. The spent round gets stuck in the slide after he fires.

 

[8'Duece]

My friend says it's a failure to eject. The spent round gets stuck in the slide after he fires.

Sounds like a "stove pipe" Tell him to grease up the rails on the slide. Break Free, CLP, tw-25B etc.

 

[Diamondback 2/2]

Ask him if he has been storing it with the slide locked to the rear? Bad drive spring is common from people storing their pistol slide locked to the rear. Also look at the ejector, in some cases they can mushroom. (i.e. using wolf ammo) steel on stell = fucked up ejector.


Do not confuse the ejector with the extractor. Extractor pulls the case out of the chamber, the ejector kicks the round off the breach face.

 

[8'Duece]

Ask him if he has been storing it with the slide locked to the rear? Bad drive spring is common from people storing their pistol slide locked to the rear. Also look at the ejector, in some cases they can mushroom. (i.e. using wolf ammo) steel on stell = fucked up ejector.


Do not confuse the ejector with the extractor. Extractor pulls the case out of the chamber, the ejector kicks the round off the breach face.

Good points.

Personally I thinks it's "short slide stroke" If he's not lubing the rails enough, or at all, the spent casing is being pulled out then caught by the slide preventing it from closing. Could be a bent or mushroomed ejector, but I doubt it. Steel cased ammunition is only hard on cheaply manufactured pistols. This pistol is not cheaply manufactured.

I have seen newbies to pistols clean them throuroghly, then not lube the weapon after reassembly. they have at least one round per mag, if not every round stove pipe.

I'd tell him to lube the rails, rack the slide several times to get the lube all the way down into the forward areas of the slide.

I think this is a "metal on metal" type of thing. ;)

If the ejector is fine, and he's still having problems, then just send it back to Walther and let them get it running it smoothly.