Failure to feed/Won't return to battery

[A6GATOR]

First, thanx all for the great insights on a myriad of 1911 problems.
Now to the meat of the problem. I have a stock (except grips and magazines(Wilson 8 rd)), Series 80 Combat Elite. It it one of the early original ones and I recently started shooting IDPA. It will invariably, on one or two stages, fail to feed. I can't tell you exactly what is happening w/the round other than, when the round is cleared, it will have a little smile (scratch) in the case about an 1/8" below the case mouth and the bullet will have a small flat spot on it. I'm getting really good at clearing drills, but it's not doing a lot for my scores. Any thoughts?

[John]

Have you ever changed the recoil spring in this pistol? If not, it might be weakening with the years.

Rgds

[stumbler]

$.02 - I used my go/no-go gauge (an old barrel I had hanging around) and checked that each reloaded round would work before each match.

[A6GATOR]

I thought about the recoil spring too. Replaced it w/an 18 lb Nowlin spring. I had roughly 4000 rounds through it. Wondering if a throat job is called for here? Thanx for the insights.

[Harlie]

Have discribed appears it may be caused by the extracting case marking the next in line and causing a raised area and the chambering problem. Reloads used in any match should be run though a case gage or individually chambered by hand into barrel removed from piece. Rim deformatives and oversized areas on rims caused by extractor gouges. Lips on mag may be getting out of spec' also. This allows next in line to set higher and cause rim drag at times.

[stumbler]

Do you have your mags numbered? If not, I would suggest it. This way if one mag gives you problems, you can readily identify it.

[John]

A throat job usually refers to the feeding ramps, on the frame and the barrel. Do have a look inside your chamber, maybe there are some rough spots there?

One more issue (I think it was mentioned before), which happened to me at the range today. A very short round can cause such a malfunction, as you described it. I had a few JHP which have been in and out of my 9mm 1911 a few times, so I decided to fire them. One of them had the bullet quite pressed inside the case. Guess what? It was trapped, exactly as you describe.

My 2 Eurocents only.

Rgds