What happens when you take a brand-new Gen5 Glock 17 and rapid fire 200 rounds through it? Well in the Glock 17 Reliability Challenge, we find out.
Whenever we do something like the Glock 17 Reliability Challenge, the first question people ask is “what’s the point” to which I answer “because.” We have ammo, we have time, and it’s interesting to see what happens to guns when you shoot them a bunch over a short period. For example, in this challenge, my front sight flew off about halfway through. That was surprising! It also would have happened at some point to the front sight, so better it happens during a controlled range test than in a match, a class, or god forbid a self-defense situation.
The good news is that the gun itself worked fine. There were no mechanical failures, other than the front sight yeeting itself into oblivion. During the Glock 17 Reliability Challenge, the area directly under the chamber, where the barrel lugs lock into the frame got too hot to touch, and remained that way for a while after the test. In fact, Gen5 Glocks seem to heat up a lot faster than their previous generation counterparts.
Because this is an older video, the gun tested was one of the first commercially available Gen5 Glock 17s. The Gen5 is interesting because unlike earlier Generations that made iterative changes to the Glock, it is almost a whole new pistol from the ground up. New recoil springs, new trigger engagement, new slide stop springs, new slide profile, new barrel, almost everything about the Gen5 guns is a re-design from previous generations. That’s a good thing, because it addresses a lot of the complaints people had about the Gen4 guns.
Sure, it’s fun to shoot 200 rounds full speed during the Glock 17 Reliability Challenge. It’s a bummer this gun lost its front sight, but that’s an easy fix, and something that can be permanently fixed with a little loctite and a 10-8 Performance front sight. I would definitely carry this Glock 17.
