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AR-15 Magazines: FAQs Asked and Answered.
My $0.02: Buy P Mags with the cover. Store them loaded. Blow the dust out of them every once in a while. When they become problematic, label them as such and use them to practice malfunction drills.
May 2nd, 2018 at 7:55 pm
You don’t even need the covers according to Magpul.
May 2nd, 2018 at 9:55 pm
Pretty good stuff. I dropped a loaded, Brownell’s AR mag on concrete the other day. Landed right on the feed lips. At first it looked OK, but then I noticed the top cartridge sitting crooked. The back of the feed lip on one side had been dented. If the opposite feed lip had been bent, I might not have notice it until I started having malfs. Not gonna mess with it, so into the trash it went. Do that to a poly mag and it may break. I don’t know which is worse, but probably a bent metal feed lip is worse because you may not notice it right away.
Also, some AR mags will not lock in with 30 rounds and the bolt carrier forward (E-Lander comes to mind). Most will. Know the difference. The Glock 20, fifteen round mag is a bitch to lock in with a full fifteen rounds in it and the slide forward. Therefore my reload has 14 rounds in it. In the above two cases, a “tactical reload” using a full mag can be difficult to impossible. You may shoot for a long time before you actually notice this, so look for it.
I’ll sometimes do it to the unsuspecting student, “Go ahead and top off with a fresh mag, then take a few more shots…” He drops the partially full mag, slaps in the fresh one, “BANG”, magazine drops out. I’ve given him one of those bitch magazines and knew it would happen, but we’ve probably all had it happen at least once, even with more cooperative magazines.
May 2nd, 2018 at 10:11 pm
Since Magpul relocated to Austin a few years ago, what’s not to like? Oddly enough, no liberals seem to have noticed the corporate move to the Austin liberal enclave within Texas’ borders.
May 3rd, 2018 at 10:04 am
PSA ran a weekend deal a few weeks ago, ten P-Mags and 200 rounds of Federal for $130 with free shipping. I took that deal and rotated the ten I had loaded to the bottom of the stack, marked with in-service date. Use the older ones for fun and keep the fresh ones on top for shtf.
Lyle hit on a sore spot of mine about cramming to full capacity; I usually keep everything loaded to -1 to solve that possibility. But, I have dropped loaded p-mags several times with no visible damage and popped a few to be sure feed was not screwed up before keeping them in the rotation. no failures yet.
But yeah…at eight bucks a pop, if there’s any doubt, throw it out.
May 3rd, 2018 at 1:31 pm
Talk about “spring fatigue” on the issue always reminds me that the problem (or lack thereof) must necessarily be due to the specific spring and manufacturer.
Because it’s not like there aren’t springs and metals that can take far more fatigue and more operating cycles under far worse conditions, and being left under more pressure for longer without problems.
(See, oh, any valve spring in an engine, eh?)
But equally a bargain-basement magazine or one made for Lowest Bid Minimum Requirements might not do quite so good.
I would not be at all surprised to see a PMAG having no trouble from sitting loaded for a decade or more.
May 3rd, 2018 at 5:44 pm
There illustration of pull tabs improvised with tape and paracord only reminds that Magpul’s original product was a rubber magazine pull tab. Hence their name.