26-Mar-10 – 19:43 by ToddG

91,322 rounds

13 stoppages, 0 malfunctions, 5 parts breakages

test ended at: 91,622 rounds

At 91,300 rounds, the P30 was running strong. Even after a chunk went missing from the frame, the gun had turned in well over five thousand rounds of accurate and reliable service. I carried it every day.

By 91,322 however, the pistol had suffered three stovepipe stoppages. In the course of those twenty-two rounds, the P30 — hot, broken, and abused — finally skipped a beat. Something clearly wasn’t right. So on Monday, the pistol got packed up and sent to HK’s Sam Bass for a detailed inspection. Sam has been the go-to guy for every technical issue and question during this project, and if anyone was going to get to the bottom of this, it was him.

The conclusion was pretty straightforward. When that sliver of material came off the frame, the guide rod had more room to shift around in recoil. This, in turn, allowed the barrel to shift around more when the gun was unlocked. Without the barrel in its designed orientation as the slide cycled, the extractor and ejector couldn’t be guaranteed to make proper contact with the casing and a stovepipe would result.

The problem was further exacerbated by the heat built up in the barrel, guide rod, and frame during the rapid fire shooting I was doing. Amazingly, the gun still functions properly when it’s cool!

Nonetheless, it would not be responsible to continue using the P30 test gun for everyday carry. For the time being — until the next 50,000 round endurance test begins — I’m carrying my spare P30. And the weekly updates are also coming to an end.

From 1-May-09 to 19-Mar-10 — 322 days — the pistol fired 91,322 rounds.

Of those 322, it spent 130 days at the range, averaging over 700 rounds per trip.

It spent 512 hours at the range, averaging almost 180 rounds per hour. By the way, 512 hours is more than three weeks at twenty four hours per day, seven days a week.

That rnd/hr number is a bit skewed, though, because it includes many hours on the range teaching. When you look at just my personal practice routines, the gun was regularly firing 350-550 rounds per hour.

During the entire test, the pistol experienced a total of thirteen stoppages. Those who have followed the test from the beginning will remember that the first seven were the result of an out-of-spec mainspring that was replaced before the 10,000 round mark. The last three, as reported above, were in quick succession due to the gun reaching the end of its service life. Between the time when the mainspring was replaced and the gun’s final death throes, there were only three stoppages… that’s less than one stoppage per 27,000 rounds fired.

So what finally brought the gun to a stop? Heat. As Sam explained it, the part of the frame that was damaged is in contact with the recoil spring assembly. Every time the gun is fired, heat gets transferred through the barrel lug to the recoil assembly. Under any normal condition, that is not a problem.

But while many folks have criticized the term “torture test” to describe the pistol-training.com endurance tests, torture is exactly what these guns are subjected to. In 91,322 rounds, the gun was only cleaned fifteen times — once going over 12,000 rounds between cleanings. It was rarely lubed more often than once every 4-5,000 rounds. Multiple days per week it was subjected to consecutive hours of high volume rapid fire practice that often made the gun too hot to touch.

All of that adds up to a lot of heat lying against the frame for hours at a time. Eventually, that small piece broke off. Even after that, it took more than 5,000 rounds for the damage to impair function of the pistol.

For ten months, the HK P30 has been an everyday companion on my belt. It’s traveled to more than a dozen states and been shot by probably close to 100 different people. The P30 has helped me set so many personal records on various shooting drills that I could not even begin to count, including a 4.08 on the F.A.S.T. just two weeks ago.

So what are we doing with the P30 from here on out? That decision was finally reached today… which is why this week’s Thursday report is actually coming out on Friday.

As I said, the P30 still runs fine until it’s been heated up by hundreds of rounds of rapid fire. So the gun is still going to be shot on a regular basis, just not allowed to get as too-hot-to-touch. We’ll see how well it still functions under more normal circumstances. We’ll post an update once a month (P30 30th, anyone?) so folks can continue to track progress.

If all goes according to plan, we’ll hit 100,000 rounds before the end of the year… even with the next Endurance Test going on at the same time. (as to what the next test gun is going to be,we’ll have a little contest next week to see who can guess)

Train hard & stay safe! ToddG

Previous P30 Endurance Test posts at pistol-training.com: