CZ TS2 Failure to Feed

[EndangeredSpecies]

I'm having a similar problem with my new 75B (have my own thread.) I haven't changed any springs, and it was good for the first ~300 rounds.
The only ammo I've run is Fed/AE 124 FMJ. It passes the plunk/spin test even after hanging during cycling.
You received a lot of great suggestions here, and I'm going to refer back to them as I trouble shoot mine.
Specifically:
Wax the magazine; clean the extractor; check (maybe tune) the magazines; take it to the range and try again.
 

[dabljues]

Oh, a fellow soul having the same issues!

Well, today I ordered a new mag, new follower and a spring (to replace in the factory mag). I cleaned them before, but I'll try again. I also ordered an extractor pin (have the spare spring already) because I'm getting a feeling that after getting it out, I won't be able to put it back in (it's staked). Gonna try both mag and the extractor "route". Unfortunately, this'll be just a guesswork for the time being, since I'm only able to visit the range once in a week, on Wednesday. But I'm gonna make sure to try everything out. I also already polished the feed ramp, but since the hangup sometimes happens without the round even getting out of the magazine, this is probably not it (but it's a nice addition to have)

[EndangeredSpecies]

I have 2 factory and 2 aftermarket Mec-Gar magazines.
I have experienced feed issues with all 4, but it seems much more prevalent with the factory units. I've cleaned and lubed all 4, but received advice to disassemble, clean, strip, wax and avoid the lube. I also need to number them to ascertain if the problems are consistently related to specific ones.
The part that gets me is it ran great for 100 rounds, I made a couple minor modifications (polished feed ramp and slide, changed grips, changed front sight.) It ran great for 200 more rounds. I made no additional changes! And now it hangs ~ 25% of the time.
I hope it something like gunk behind the extractor - I haven't removed or cleaned in there yet. Am a little concerned about losing the spring, or not being able to reinstall it. Will try to blast and scrub it out without completely removing it first.
Thanks for letting me piggyback of your great advice!

[tdogg]

This most likely is a magazine spring tension or a magazine tuning issue.  It sounds like there isn't enough tension in the magazine to force the nose of the last bullet upward for proper feeding. 

The quick and easy test for this is to disassemble the magazine and stretch the spring to make it longer to apply more preload when compressed.  This will not last but can help you troubleshoot.  Also bend the last coil holding the magazine follower upward so it applies more pressure on the bullet of the cartridge (tilts bullet upward in the magazine).  Not too much but make it so the angle matches or is slightly more than the feed lips on the magazine.  You can hold the spring next to or on top of the magazine body to compare. This is more impactful when using a Gram's or CZ Custom follower vs OEM as the OEM follower will not tilt (as much) due to the follower legs stabilizing it.

Make sure there are no burr's on the magazine feel lips.  They should be smooth on the underside to provide snag free bullet release.  The feed lips on the magazine should be parallel and both at the same angle.

When fully loaded is there upward tension on the top cartridge bullet nose in the magazine (how about when loaded with only one cartridge)?  Are the cartridges stacked /nested all touching or is there gaps in the top two or three?  If not then you may benefit from magazine body tuning.  It is complicated to explain but is relatively easy to perform.

Cheers,
Toby

[dabljues]

Just gonna say it, thanks tdogg for still being here!

When fully loaded is there upward tension on the top cartridge bullet nose in the magazine (how about when loaded with only one cartridge)?

Okay, so I made 4 photos:

Almost fully loaded mag (19/20 - couldn't get the last one in, even with Uplula speedloader, though I didn't want to use excesive force):


One round (2nd mag):


One roung (3rd mag):


I pretty much never load a full mag, very very rarely load like 10 rounds, it's mostly 2-3-5. Many times I heard that the mag issues usually happen on the last round or on the fully loaded mag. So maybe I'm experiencing FTFs with 1 round, but the same would happen if the mag was fully loaded. But I wouldn't know, since when I'm target shooting, 5 is enough, many pauses between shots etc. Here's an additional image of: mag on the left with 5 rounds, mag on the right with 3:



You can kinda see the difference in the angle, in the 1st image (fully loaded - it's like more nose-diving, where the one round images are more pointing upward). When there's one/3/5 rounds in the mag, I can tilt the round a little bit forward by pulling from under the bullet - I can see the follower tilting a lil' bit.

Feed lips don't seem to have any unnatural use underneath.

Are the cartridges stacked /nested all touching or is there gaps in the top two or three?  If not then you may benefit from magazine body tuning

I can see it well in the 1st two rounds - they are definitely touching, the 3rd is the same, I think.

[dabljues]

One more thing about the extractor

This is what's bugging me. Yesterday, at the end of my trip to the range, I talked to the "range officer", if you will, and told him all about my problems. We went through:

* do you reload?
* how's your extractor?

etc. Then he took my gun and I showed him the FTFs. I showed him a clear example of an FTF with one round. Then took a 2nd mag, loaded 3 and he himself released the slide (slingshotting), no FTF. But he said "but still, it's not going that smoothly". What he meant, and what I also noticed, is that sometimes you can hear two clicks. Maybe it's actually hard to hear in the ear pro, but I think I can feel it in the wrist when the slide closes. It may be nothing, I may be imagining things, because I'm not that experienced. I thought that this was due to the fact that the round is hitting the feed ramp at an incorrect angle or something (which would be the cause of an FTF), which it still might be. But there's this guy on YT that's talking about his problems with SP-01 Shadow.

Look here, I timestamped the video: https://youtu.be/jBPV-60_vLA?t=457. He's talking about the extractor, that it might be the reason for the "2 clicks" that you can hear on this video. Maybe that's something to think about as well. He mentions in the video description:

Yes, it was an extractor issue. I filed off 0.6mm and that fixed it.

I'm kinda bouncing between mag and extractor explanation, as you see. As for the extractor - I was thinking, well, new gun, how could an extractor be bad? But then one important detail - I bought this gun in late 2022. It's production date is 2020. It was in store for 2 years, where people may have been just playing with it. And how people do that? They rack the slide. And drop it. Many times. Could it just be that people were slamming that slide on an empty chamber so much that they bent the extractor? When I bought the gun, the barrel had visible marks on it, the "rail that the hammer rides on" had them too, so I know people where having their way with it in the store.

Anyway, I finally took out the extractor, cleaned it, here are the pics:







Do you see something unusual here? Is it bent/out of shape?

[tdogg]

Does the extractor have a chip on the claw?  I can't tell in the picture but it looks like there is something on the claw.  You want a smooth claw so it doesn't catch the cartridge as it feeds up the breechface.

Was there crud under the extractor claw?  How dirty was the channel?

I don't think you want a heavier extactor spring as that will only aggravate the cartridge feeding up behind the claw.  It may need to be tuned but it hard to tell virtually.

Cheers,
Toby

[dabljues]

Does the extractor have a chip on the claw?  I can't tell in the picture but it looks like there is something on the claw

About the red arrow on the image. It points to a "gap" or "misalignment" of the extractor claw to this thing under the breeech face. I don't know if those should be in line perfectly, but there's like a fraction of a milimiter (like maybe 0.5mm) difference between those. I don't know if that means something, just wanted to point that out.

I don't know if you meant "on the claw" (as in "the side that faces the chamber") or "inside the claw" (as in "the side that faces the breech face"). I took out the extractor and felt a little "roughness" on the outside of the claw (facing the chamber), so I gave it a little polish. Very high grit, nothing invasive. I've recorder a short video showing the extractor, because it's hard to take a good picture:

https://i.imgur.com/Y5qVxpP.mp4

I don't know about the angles about some of the parts of this claw. I don't know anything about extractors, so these are maybe perfectly fine.

Was there crud under the extractor claw?  How dirty was the channel?

There was, but not directly under it, it was on the back of the claw (I'm talking like the back of the claw arch, not the side that touches the rim). As for the whole extractor (back of it) and the channel, yeah, there was some gunk there, on the spring as well.

I don't think you want a heavier extactor spring as that will only aggravate the cartridge feeding up behind the claw

When I took out the spring, I saw that it's really heavy. I mean, I couldn't really squeeze it a bit in my fingers. I now replaced it with a spring from CZ, it has like a one coil more + it's a little bit, just a hair lighter, I could squeeze it a tiny amount in my fingers.

[EndangeredSpecies]

Got my extractor out, too.
Without even testing, I know this was contributing to the problem.
Didn't got a shot of the giant glob of goo behind it.

Before:








That hunk of crud in the notch is right were I was having problems inserting cases by hand. Really hard to clean in there without taking it out!

After:

[dabljues]

I had much less gunk there when I took the extractor apart, but still, that may be it. Did it fix your issue?

Oh, and by the way, could you provide more detailed image/images of the extractor claw, because I'm still paranoid that maybe mine is bent and I cannot for the life of me find videos on YT showing it up close from each side Would like to compare to make sure that everything is fine and I don't need a new extractor.

[EndangeredSpecies]

After cleaning the extractor, I had 30 perfect feeds followed by 9 out of 10 failures. (I have 4 10rd magazines.)
Had already spent 2 hrs fiddling was mags and was just done with it!
Took the faulty one to my gunshop. Proprietor/gunsmith couldn't tell what was wrong with it, but he took it apart and reassembled it. First pass, HE put the baseplate in backwards (it didn't go back together quite right.) So he did it again, and today I got 40 perfect feeds/extractions.
Expecting that to hold out for my next range session in 2 weeks.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any other pics of the extractor and have already re-installed it.

Sorry for posting such massive pics to your thread. I thought they were a little large, but didn't realize I was breaking forum rules. I didn't know how to fix them. Now I do, so I hope all is okay.

[dabljues]

Hmm, that's strange. I mean, could it be just the mag? I have a new mag in a pristine state to check it on the range on Wednesday, but like having 3 mags in the box and each of them would be faulty? Low probability, but well, I ordered a new mag just to elimnate that variable.

Congratulations, by the way. I hope everything stays okay. 40 rounds is not the biggest sample size, but fingers crossed!

Unfortunately, I didn't get any other pics of the extractor and have already re-installed it.

It's okay. I mean, I'm trying to look at your pictures and I don't know, I think my extractor is kinda the same (maybe you could take a look at mine). Maybe someone more experienced from this forum could also take a look?

[EndangeredSpecies]

They do look the same to me. Probably need an expert to chime in.

[dabljues]

They do look the same to me. Probably need an expert to chime in.

Yeah, I kept mine in the safe with the slide disassembled in case somebody would want a different pic of it, but then I found some images on the internet (finally), and yeah, mine doesn't look particularly different.

Anyway, on Wednesday (fingers crossed for open range slots) I'll be testing:

* new mag
* fully cleaned extractor (before I cleaned it without taking it out)
  * I gave it a little polish on the outside, there was a little tiny rough spot there, nothing too invasive
* new extractor spring
* polished feed ramp

I'll start with the factory magazines to know if that was the extractor or mags. I will come back here for an update!

[dabljues]

Okay, I've been to the range on Wednesday and I can say that I'm 99.9% sure that I fixed the issue. Finally, for the love of god.

What happened:

* packed a lot of different ammo (124gr, 140gr, 147gr, 154gr - flat nose, round nose, different manufacturers - S&B, limit.cz, Gecko)
* modifications made to the gun since last time - took out and fully cleaned the extractor and polished the feed ramp
* took a brand new mag as well

I started shooting with the new mag. As I experienced no malfunctions even with the dreaded last round in the mag, I wondered. After shooting through one box of ammo, I started to check out the factory mags. No issues whatsoever. I shot 100, then 150, then 200 rounds no problem. The gun felt better, the slide closing (during firing or just after insterting a mag) felt snappy, non-dragging if you will.

That lead me to a conclusion - this must be the extractor. Because that's what people mostly suggested here and on the other places on the internet.

But then something happened. I think it was the 7th box of ammo (I've run multiple ones, this was the 140gr ammo that I shot no problem at the beginning of the range session). Failure to feed again. I felt so sad, because it kept happening. After a few of those, I was cleaning a stuck round and I noticed something - the feed ramp was so so dirty. Like when I polished it it was silver, shiny. Now it was black. I know, obvious. But the amount of gunk there was actually surprising to me. I guess I've never shot that many rounds through one gun in one range session. This prompted me to quickly take it apart, I've had some CLP in the bag (I use different chemicals at home) and Q-tips. I have it a few wipes with CLP on the Q-tip - I wasn't able to get the gunk out, just slightly. Reassembled and boom - again no malfunctions. After shooting 100 rounds more, there were occasional FTFs as well - but this I'm sure was to the fact that I wasn't able to clean it properly. So I think I can say:

IT'S THE FEED RAMP

I think it may have some irregularities from the factory. Maybe it was angled slighty wrong. But just polishing it - nothing too invasive, a gentle polish, 1500 grit and the issue was gone like magic. Funny thing is, I do polish the feed ramps on all of my handguns, but I left this particular one be because "oh, this is my favourite gun, I don't wanna mess with it". I still have some testing to do, but I can pretty much say that the issue is resolved.

Thanks to all of you guys that have helped me in this thread! @EndangeredSpecies, you may wanna try this on your gun as well. I will go to the range again on Wednesday and try to confirm, but I think like 300-400 rounds is a good sample size.

I have two questions:

1. Well, do you guys think this is it, the feed ramp?
2. If so, do you think I should polish it a lil' more? (just to maybe increase the number of rounds that can be fired through a very dirty gun on one range session before the FTFs happen again)?