[mrerick]

Hi Miguel and welcome to the forum. I hope that we can be of some help with resolving the problem.

Your photography is outstanding. In fact, it's some of the finest I've seen.

I expect that you came up against our file size limitation when uploading them, which is why you chose PDF format, which allows larger files. This is not necessary, and uses quite a bit of space (about 3 3/4 MB).

I've attached your photos to this post. To upload them, I resized them to 1024 pixels horizontal and applied 50% Jpeg compression. The total size is about 400Kb.

On Ammo suggestions, we always recommend standard velocity 115gn ball (full metal jacket) ammunition. Your GECO ammo might have been "NATO" power, which is loaded for machine guns and is too high a velocity.

It's possible that your recoil spring needs replacement. Check to see how hard the receiver is hitting the back of the frame by putting some masking tape there and looking for compression marks. There are several levels of coil count and thickness of the spring which yield different levels of resistance. Look at our FAQ document for details.

As Gerben mentioned, you can shoot the gun without the hold open. Just be sure to remove the broken part and it's spring before loading and firing the gun. Of course, it will close after the last cartridge is fired.

The replacement hold-open part and spring will probably require some hand fitting.

Can anyone with a metallurgy background comment on this part failure? It looks from the photos like the heat treating may have been uneven (note the fire blue color which fades before the right angle that failed).

Marc