Broken firing pin on a 5.56 EBR.

[lee]

Today I broke a firing pin on a new 5.56 EBR with about 1 k rounds down the tube. The broken piece of the pin jammed protruding out of the bolt. It would not feed in this situation. Took the bolt out and pushed on the protruding pin and it then retracts back into the bolt. The dang thing worked fine after that. Got home, took the firing pin out and realized I was a fortunate dude with no out of battery discharge!!

Now the big question. I have done quite a lot of dry firing with this gun for practice purposes. Did I do this? Did I screw up this bad? The owners manual says nothing about no dry firing. I dry fire my glocks all the time when empty to "decock" the trigger to indicate it as stored safe. Is this bad too?

Ok , give to me straight. Go ahead and critique my actions. Do I need those snap caps?

[RSF]

nope just bad luck

[Donzie]

dry firing is a horrible thing to do to any gun, you should NEVER EVER EVER dry fire a firearm. I have changed dozens of firing pins from dry firing.
firing with out a round or snap cap allows most pins to travel too far into the chamber, usually letting the shoulder of the pin strike the inside of the "bolt face" (depending on type of firearm) witch may cause the pin to jam or break.
Use snap caps every time, they are cheaper than the firing pins. and no a pencil down the muzzle will not absorb enough.

[RSF]

wow over 10k reps of dry firing on my AR's and at least that many on my handguns and not one issue, Must be lucky so are some others i know.

[lee]

I guess I see both views here. In IDPA or IPSC, one MUST dry fire a Glock to show it is safe. Also in ACTS, one must dry fire in order to show safe.

[45 acp]

dry firing is a horrible thing to do to any gun, you should NEVER EVER EVER dry fire a firearm. I have changed dozens of firing pins from dry firing.
firing with out a round or snap cap allows most pins to travel too far into the chamber, usually letting the shoulder of the pin strike the inside of the "bolt face" (depending on type of firearm) witch may cause the pin to jam or break.
Use snap caps every time, they are cheaper than the firing pins. and no a pencil down the muzzle will not absorb enough.
This used to be true with older guns. By older I mean guns that were made in the early 1970's and before. Back then metallurgy was not as advanced as it is today. In order to get a firing pin to the hardness to stand up to thousands of rounds the metal was brittle. Not a problem with modern guns due to advances in metallurgy.

[lee]

I contacted the maufacturer . I'll be danged if the CEO of the company called me himself. He said the firearm can be dry fired all you want---there is no restricitons. They have had three firing pins break out of the first 2k units produced. He asked me to send him the bolt for examination. He will replace or repair under warranty. Promised a quick turn around and an explanation of failure.

[karcent]

So Kevin, who is the manufacturer?

[gjgalligan]

Took the bolt out and pushed on the protruding pin and it then retracts back into the bolt. The dang thing worked fine after that.
Ok , give to me straight. Go ahead and critique my actions.


I'm no expert but I would think that maybe you should have checked it out better before firing again.

[lee]

The firearm in question is the Robarms XCR. The CEO is Alex Robinson. Yes , it is a mom and pop company with about 22 employees. The XCR has been out for about 2 years now. Time will tell how it handles wear and tear. I have been pleased with it ---------this is my first failure.

[RSF]

we will see if my new sig 556 passes the test

[karcent]

The only modern gun that I won't dry fire is anything rimfire.
If it's too sensative to take some dry fire why would I want to own it?

[lee]

Was contacted by Robarms 24 hrs. after I sent the bolt via Fed Ex. They are sending me a new bolt to arrive by Friday. They said they may have to destroy the bolt in order to check internals for burrs or tolerences. So , the new bolt is in route to me. Quick turn around. I was also told of new improvements in the adjustable gas system. The new gas adjustment block will be hand adjustable with no tools needed and have 5 positions instead of the current 4 with a needed 5/8 " wrench. The new block will be backward compatable to the original design rifles if you want to upgrade. Now no tools will be needed to field adjust the gas system from either low powered rounds used with a suppressor to a high powered rounds with 77 grain bullets.

Per my suggestion, Robarms will develop a field repair kit with all the little proprietary hardware such as springs, drift pins, spring retainers,and firing pins. The kit will be sold near cost and small enough to stuff into your case or magazine holder/pocket. This may just be a security blanket but nice to have since there is less of a pool of parts available compared to AR's. The 6.8 conversion kits will be available soon. You can convert the weapon in about two minutes with just one allen wrench. After this the 7.62X39 conversion will come out-------this conversion takes about three minutes---have to change the case deflector and this adds a little more time to the conversion. The optics and sites stay on the rifle---the barrel / gas block , bolt , and mag are all that has to be changed. Again , time will tell.

[lee]

New bolt arrived today-------------4 day turnaround. Also received two spare pins @ $11.50 each for my spare parts kit. Will take it to the range tomorrow.

[sprink]

Good service! The firearms industry does seem to have the best customer service of any industry, with a couple of exceptions.

If dry firing led to it's failure, something was wrong with it anyway. Dry fire away with most any modern firearm except as Karcent mentioned, most rimfires.