I have not reached my desired round count to make a video update, but at 2000 rounds, enough has happened with this pistol in order to encourage me to give an update. It has not seen many rounds through it by my standards, but I feel that it has had enough trigger time to show or work out any "break in" issues. In the 2000 rounds I have shot so far, here is a breakdown of the round count sources: - 600 Winchester Train and Defend 180gr FMJ - 200 Blazer Brass 180gr FMJ - 500 Remington 180gr JHP - 100 Winchester 180gr JHP - 600 Reloads 165gr FMJ During this time I was also testing and using the 16 round ETS magazines, which played their own part in my testing. I did the best I could to train and practice dry and only use my range time as verification that my skills were solid and I was learning. This means I used a laser trainer alot and snap caps only when simulation of cycling or loading were necessary such as reloads and malfunctions. All my dry practice does wear on the service life of certain components after a time. Every time a spring is compressed and released, you are wearing it down. And every time you have metal on metal friction, you are wearing the surface of each metal face a little. BREAK IN PERIOD In my experience, guns like Glock that were not made specifically for high round counts with the .40 S&W will typically have components "break in" early due to higher pressures applied during cycling. With that said, there are some features about the .40 caliber Glocks like the recoil and magazine spring tensions that have seen some enhancement in the Gen4 to make it more reliable and thus attempt to bring the service life of the pistol on par with the 9mm Glocks. However, I would still say that the Glock 23 Gen4 can be appropriately considered "Worn in" after as little as 1000 rounds and maybe as much as 1500 with mouse fart loads. During this break in time, I cleaned and lubed the firearm randomly and whenever I got the desire to which was about 6 times total. I cleaned and lubed it completely with Breakfree CLP which is a simple and affordable go to product. BREAK IN FAILURES During the time of the first 1500 rounds, I spent alot of time manually cycling the slide and running snap caps through in reload drills and such. This can play a part in assisting a pistol or rifle with breaking in the extractor/ extractor spring and recoil spring without having to fire too many shots. When using the Glock factory mags, I can only say that I experienced 3 failures. One was a failure to eject by means of an inline stovepipe with Blazer Brass. The other two failures were with my reloads and they both happened in sequence. I corrected the first failure by charging the slide and it happened again. This led me to have to run the remedial action of Lock, Clear, Check for Obstruction, Reload. After expending the rest of the magazine, I reloaded the failed ammunition and tried to run it through again with success. This was an odd type of failure to have, but it could very well have been an issue of built up debris on the neck of the chamber. Regardless, these are the only failures I can honestly say happened with the factory mags. However, The ETS mags were the culprit to numerous issues that I will cover in a review on the product down the road. PROGRESS IMPRESSIONS It is too early to say how this sample of one Glock 23 Gen4 will perform as a whole. I won't need to look at replacing anything until about the 8k round mark or more. I have enough reloading components at the moment that I could easily get the round count up to 5k by the end of the month. The point of this test is to treat this firearm like a real carry gun or a gun that I would seriously use anyways. The goal is to not just hammer a few thousand rounds down and make a judgement. That is a bit unrealistic and falls more in the realm of a hasty torture test. I realistically shoot 95% of my shots dry and I want this firearm to show the effects of seriously training with it. Will it hold up to being utterly reliable even with thousands of dry shots and then still perform reliably to the recommended service life? I think it is doing fine so far considering the fact that the magazines I was testing were the only thing causing inexcusable issues. I will continue to clean the firearm and lubricating it at my own whim as I would with a serious use firearm. Until next time, I hope this was insightful, though admittedly dry in nature.
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