A few of you might have seen this picture in the post on garage sale finds, if not here is the whole story and the results of firing the ammo recovered from the gun.

I stopped at a garage sale a few weeks back and inquired if there were any guns for sale. The man initially said No, then indicated there was a gun he wanted to show me. Out comes this corroded and rusted Colt Mustang, in what was left of an eaten away nylon holster. He said he was a retired DEA agent and this was his backup gun that he thought he lost during some operation years ago. He recently discovered it under a seat while cleaning out a boat that had sat exposed to the weather for several years.

Close inspection showed (among other things) that it was loaded (with Federal Hydra-Shoks) and the hammer was cocked! The only thing holding the hammer back was a little bit of visible rust. The safety had rusted away and the firing pin didn't look all that rusty so it had the potential for firing and being that the slide and barrel were firmly rusted together, it probably would blow up if discharged.

I offered to buy it but he just gave it to me instead. I took it home and decided to try and either get the action open to remove the live round from the chamber or to make it inert somehow. I knew I had to be very careful when handling this so some operations were a bit tricky.

The first thing I did was wedge a piece of pencil eraser in front of the firing pin. Then I removed the grips and wire brushed as much rust and corrosion off as I could. Then I submerged it in penetrating oil for 3 days. After that it was a process of working on loosening rusty joints and re-soaking. At one point I applied some Muratic acid to the rusted slide. All it did was take the blue off.

After I removed the grips I could see that the frame was cracked in several places and the internals were just a glob of rust and powdery corrosion. At that point any hopes of salvaging the frame for a replacement rebuild were gone. It was a wall hanger from this point out. The magazine was firmly rusted in place and was fully loaded.

By prying the floor-plate off I was able to remove all of the rounds except the top one, it was stuck by corrosion. Fortunately the mag release freed up with only a couple of taps with a punch. Nothing I tried would free that top round, so I pushed the bullet back into the case and soaked it in more Kroil. It took a few days of scraping, picking and soaking to finally get the magazine free enough to slide out of the frame. When the mag was out the entire backstrap fell off since rust was the only thing holding it together.

At this point, the slide finally moved and came off the frame. I decided to punch out the slide stop to get it out of the way. I was then able to punch the barrel forward and the live Hydra-Shok slid right out of the chamber.

Now we get to the point of this post...
Was handling this pistol a potentially dangerous undertaking or was the ammo inert from the years of submersion and exposure? Can we rely on soaking in penetrating oil to make them into duds? Well, there is only one way to find out... load em up and fire em.

I pulled apart the top round from the magazine and was happy to see oily powder in the case. I tried firing the primed case and it was a dud. It appears the penetrating oil was able to enter when I had dislodged the bullet and pushed it back into the case. So far so good.

I loaded the rest of the recovered rounds into a functioning 380 and fired across a chrono at a 10 yd. target. The first round tried was the one loaded in the Colt's chamber... They all went bang the first try!

The string averaged 924 fps. In other tests of fresh Hydra-Shoks out of the same gun, they have averaged 937 to 964 fps, so I don't think the years of submersion and soaking in penetrating oil or exposure to corrosion and hydrochloric acid did much to deter the effectiveness of this ammo. I attribute the higher velocity of the last round (#6) from being slightly set back in the case, due to my prying it out of the corroded magazine.

Avg. fps=924 SD=22.8 ES=63
#1-897 #2-939 #3-912 #4-909 #5-926 #6-960

So Be Careful, There are a lot of old guns lost out there, keep this in mind if you ever encounter a similar situation and stay safe.

Great read! thanks for posting.

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing.

BTW, did you share your findings with the original owner? I'd imagine he would have been interested to know as well.

125JHP- Great job- both on what you did with the gun and your post. Wouldn't have attempted something like this myself- a very dicey project indeed.

Also, a great testimonial to Federal Ammunition; they'd love the story; if I were you, I'd make sure they hear about it.

Mike

Thanks for sharing that, very interesting for sure. I find one fact to be very interesting= DEA Agent losses cocked and loaded gun with the hammer back very interesting indeed.
Cracker

What a great post - thanks for taking the time to do it.

I wonder if he ever put the gun in NCIC, and if he did, if he ever cleared it.

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“What you got, ain’t new.”

125JHP,you're a gutsy guy! Glad you were able to do this safely.Just goes to show that well made ammo is tougher than we may think. Good job,sir.
I remember the original post on this pistol.Glad you were willing to undertake the project.

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Blessed be the Lord,my Rock

Thanks all,
I have to admit there were a couple of times I wondered just how crazy I was and if I should just bury it instead. I was pretty impressed with the ammo when it all fired, since I had the entire gun submerged in penetrating oil. Contacting Federal is a good idea, think I will, maybe Colt too... (I always regretted selling my Mustang... ahem.) and yes I sent the original owner an email with the pics and the results but received no comment back yet.

Thats really interesting. I would have bet that at least a couple would have misfired.

A few years ago I ran some tests with a variety of factory and military
handgun and rifle rounds. My test, not as severe as this one, was to
place various rounds in a bucket of water and leave it sitting in my
garage for a week. I tested the rounds by firing them over a chrono-
graph with non soaked rounds. The only FTFs I had were with CCI
blazers and one type of Russian 762x39 HP ammo that only had a
plastic plug sealing the base of the bullet. A few commercial rounds
with no visible primer sealant did show some reduction in velocity
while the military issue stuff with typical obvious sealing did fine.
A friend told me he was having trouble with some factory 12 ga
00 buckshot shells and asked me to try some in my guns. He gave
me six rounds to try and not one of them would fire. When questioned
he admitted that he did periodically spray his loaded shotguns with
a fine mist penetrating oil.

let us know if this works for you.

Very entertaining post.
Nice pics too.
Thanks for posting.

Thank you for that very interesting and informative post.

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Regards,
Guy-Harold Smith II

Absolutely fascinating. Yours has got to be one of the most interesting posts I have read in a long time. I had no idea the ammo would have fired after that.

So do you find another mustang so you can put those grips and guide rod to use? I doubt much of the rest is salvageable.

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SWCA 1646

heh, heh, heh ... well I just couldn't resist attempting, so I sent the pieces back to Colt to see if they could "fix" my little problem. They received it May 25th. Today I got it back Fedex... all 18 pieces in the bag.

The repair order had "un-salvageable" hand written on it.

Oh well, it was as expected... now where did I put that JB Weld?????

I'm sure that it was cocked and locked, the only proper way to carry a single action semi-auto, but ceased to be locked since the safety had rusted away.