When I first acquired my Nambu T14, I replaced all springs (including G.T. doing the mag springs), and took it to the range. It wasn't a stellar performance, basically it was a Jam-O-Matic with more stovepipes than a 3 story cabin. At the time, I didn't have any Nambu snap caps to play with it and try to figure it out.
Eventually, I found some snap caps, tried cycling them through the pistol with identical results. 1 in 3 or 4 would cycle correctly, otherwise stovepipe city. Set the gun aside until now. Dove into it yesterday, did a little bit of tuning on 1 of the 2 mags to where I could feed the snap caps out of the mag by hand with much smoother results than previously. Tried cycling the snap caps through the gun - Jam-O-Matic again. After a bunch of fiddling, I came to the conclusion that something was "up" with the extractor.
I'd never removed it, it's kinda weird how it goes in and stays there - much like the rest of the gun. Got it out, it LOOKED just fine to my eye, but I cleaned some crud out from under its lip, as well as cleaning the channel it lays in on the bolt. Added oil and re-assembled.
Much to my amazement, the gun then ran the snap caps through it just fine! So today, I took it to the range, along with my Ruger MK III and my little NAA .22 short revolver.
The range trip was a success. The Nambu had exactly zero misfeeds and/or stovepipes, both mags ran fine. A substantial improvement indeed! With that said, I had a couple or three instances of the bolt not quite returning to battery - a tap on same fixed the problem each time. I also experienced my first hangfire - about a second and a half. I'm going to blame the ammo for both, it *is* non-commercial reloaded. And I have to say that the gun is dead nuts accurate, I did pretty darn good with it if I say so myself.
I'll leave out the flat tire adventure I had on the way home (in the rain) - I'm just glad I was wearing a heavy canvas skirt instead of some Chiffon number!
NSA Alert! The Grenade is an inert fake - which anyone who knows grenades can tell you just by looking at it without even seeing the hole in the bottom!