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Well it only took 3 months to get the E-Lander mags from Mako. I left 5 in the bag and opened one for trial. It seemed to work fine. Then I decided to look harder.

Mag loaded to a full 30 rounds. Insert into AR with bolt closed. Open and latch bolt. Observe round through ejection slot. what the heck? Repeat. Feeding from left side is fine, the first 3 rounds feeding from the right side all did this!




Any ideas on how to tweak this out of the mag or should I live with it since they seem to feed fine (through 4 full mag dumps so far)???

How odd. I suppose it is only out of superstition but I load new magazines and let them sit for a few days under the assumption that doing so helps the spring break in. My un-educated trouble shooting sequence is spring tension, lip geometry and follower design.

Could be a feed lip issue. Are the lips parallel? I wouldn't load AR mags to 30 rounds anyway, including PMags.

If I had to guess, my guess would be the feed lip on the right side of the mag is bent open a tad near the front of the magazine.

Big Bronze Rim wrote:Could be a feed lip issue. Are the lips parallel? I wouldn't load AR mags to 30 rounds anyway, including PMags.

Why?

I load 30s to 28, and 20s to 19. Pistol mags are all -1. Don't really care to debate the need, but it is pretty standard for working guns...and lots of high speed trainers advocate the same.

Anyways...what kind of follower does it have?

I was sincerely asking, not trying to debate but I'll take it elsewhere so as not to derail.

The ELander mags have their own followers. The mags are sold by Mako Group. They also sell their followers separately to replace in other mags.

First, debates on 28 vs. 30 rounds are silly in this case. This is a practice mag being exercised to see if it works. It was empty when I arrived and left the range. It was loaded to 30 and run dry busting clays off the berm 3 times. Self defense mag loading is another subject for another thread...

Besides, it had the identical misfeed at 30, 28, and 26 rounds in the mag. I didn't go further but suspect it would have continued a while. It's irrelevant how far down it goes IMO...

Now, the feed lips are visually parallel, but the right lip (left in pictures) has more of a point at the front edge vs. a rounded front edge on the left lip. The mag loads just fine and the cartridge only kicks up when the charging handle is pulled back. If you never look in the loading port, you'd never see it. All rounds chambered and fired fine in practice. All other mags (PMAGs, C-products AL, C-Prod SS, cheap 5 round, and Thermold have all been used) function fine.

My concern is that eventually this will start popping out cartridges. It is obviously only barely holding the top round in at that point...a double feed appears to be just a matter of time.

Can you run some inner measurements of how far those magazine lips are separated? It is tough to tell from the pictures but the Elander mag seems to have a slightly wider spread to me.

I also have 6 of the 3rd series E-lander mags which arrived after a like waiting period 2 weeks ago from Mako. They have all been loaded to 28, smacked on the back twice and have run without problem.
I was shooting the last of my Winchester IMI Q3131A/M193 through a Colt LE6920, so maybe they felt at home.

I have those same mags and tried a full 30 like you described in two different guns with no problems. All I did was insert the mag, gave it a bump to secure the set, pulled back the charging handle and let it go. Normal stuff and it seemed to work fine. Now, I did try it slowly to see how the feed looked and while it was rougher than say a pmag it fed fine, the bolt pushed the rear of the bullet up and fed it to the feed ramps in to the chamber just fine. In comparison to one of my pmags, the lack of a taper and a larger lip closest to the actual bullet does make it harder to slide out of the mag so i could see a slow feed causing a problem potentially. Just manually unloading the mag was a pain even.

Feed lips:
gap at Rear ; Front ; overall length (from back of cartridge to start of taper at front edge)

E-Lander
.474 ; .490 ; .966

C-Prod (Al)
.468 ; .471 ; 1.160

After poking and prodding, the slow (relatively) manual charging may be a culprit. I can push down on the back of a loaded cartridge and make the front pop every time. No such issue with the C-Products mags. Maybe the fast cycling during actual firing prevents the rear pressure and I just need to always load on an open bolt and let the bolt fly full speed. Seems like a silly handicap though.

Yeah, manually unloading these mags is painfully awkward. They want to hang the case mouth on the front of the mag. I need to deburr it and see if that helps...

If all else fails, I would tighten up the front gap a bit.