Army Armament R34 light striking with WE Mags?

[The_Lord_Poncho]

I’ve an issue with my Army Armament R34 (Glock 34) apparently light striking with all mags (inc WE, Action Army etc.) except the one that it came with. At least I assume the problem is light striking - a little pfft and an initial very low powered shot, with zero blowback. Pistol works perfectly however with the mag that it came with.

I’ve tried an uprated 120% hammer spring (finding out in the process that Glock hammer assemblies are a pain to take apart , or more accurately, put back together), and it made no difference. In fact, the hammer then also had intermittent issues latching back/the sear catching. So I then popped in a full WE hammer assembly - making no difference - worked fine with the original AA R34 mag, but none others.




Anyone got any suggestions? I have a WE spec BBU on order to try, but failing that, might I then need to look at modifying the WE mags somehow? I’d rather not invest in a load of new Army Armament mags, and instead use the 8 glock mags that I already have!

 

[Sewdhull]

Dimensionally are the 2 mags the same, in respect of the outlet valve area. Pics maybe?

 

[The_Lord_Poncho]

I believe that the dimensions of the magazines are all the same  - at least the manner in which they fit and lock into place in the grip - but i'll try to take some proper measurements later. The outlet valves do vary in appearance, from memory, looking variously like the below.

View attachment 121494

View attachment 121495

 

[Sewdhull]

My we gas mag for the big bird has a valve that sits at the same height as the back of the mag.

If your mags have different valve heights they will be struck differently by the striker, perhaps not sufficiently to work properly.

You should be able to see if this is the case as well as how the exit rubber bit sits compared to your known good mag by close inspection.

 

[The_Lord_Poncho]

I will take a look this evening and report back. I had hoped that the we hammer assembly would sort  - but as it didn't, plausibly that is because the frame holds the magazine just that little bit too far forward/away from the striker. I suppose if that is the case, i would then have two options (short of buying a brand new suite of mags) - try to transplant the nice TTI style R34 slide onto a bog standard WE G17 lower frame (anyone know if Army Armament slides fit WE glock frames?) or try to fit new output valves onto all my my WE mags - assuming that doesn't screw those mags up for my other glocks....?

 

[The_Lord_Poncho]

Ok, problem solved! A bit of a roundabout way to get there, but I ended up buying a WE Glock17 Gen 3, and then fitting the army Armament R34 slide to it (fits perfectly), hand stippling the WE lower to match the Taran Tactical/JW2 look with a soldering iron (dead easy, and looks really good), and fitting the flared magwell from the Army Armament to the WE (again, fits perfectly). Pistol now works well with all mag types  - highest FPS with WE and Action Army/AAP, slightly lower with army armament magazines. The magazines mostly have flat routers, and the BBU is curved as the original mags have curved routers, but this doesn't seem to be an issue as far as I can tell.