Guns

[DingoJay]

 There has been a long running debate over whether leaving your mags fully loaded weakens the springs.  Even long before the Internet in the gunny press.  There are as many opinions as there are writers.  Personally, I have had a few weak magazine springs, though almost exclusively in wartime production pistols.  Most likely, the necessity to slap 'em together and get 'em out the door resulted in poor choice of materials and/or improper heat treating.  It might also have a lot to do with the fact that they're upwards of 75 years old now.




 Back in the early '70s I worked as a mechanic in a new car dealership.  We had a rash of broken valve springs on engines with a few hundred to a few thousand miles on them.  This caused damage ranging from a bent push rod to a totally trashed engine.  Looking at the broken ends of the springs, it was a raggedy fracture, almost like the spring material was formed in layers.




 Farmers usually have little in the way of time or money for routine maintenance.  When repairs are unavoidable, they are often as not a patch job, just enough to keep the machine running long enough to finish the task at hand.  When/if the subsidies come around, then you buy a new machine.  I did, however, once visit a dairy farm that ran 50+ year old Divco milk delivery trucks that looked and ran pretty much mint.