Solution to feeding problems on Sig Mosquito

Squished

Squished

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Myself, like others on this forum have a Sig Mosquito. Fantastic fun little gun but it will not feed cheap ammo for the life of me. I've read a whole bunch of internet forums regarding the feeding issues, with some people swear that I will only be able to use Minimags forever. However, I did also read that by polishing the ramps it will allow the cheap ammo to feed. Honestly, I don't care what needs to be done, I just want the Mosquito eating cheap ammo. I ordered the black tube and white tube of Polish-O-Ray 555 from Brownells. They send enough to do close to 500+ barrels. If anyone wants to give some a try let me know. I went ahead and polished the ramps on my Mosquito yesterday, I'm hoping to have a range report by Sunday. Anyone else have any suggestions?

DSC01616.jpg

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Everyone talks about a white spring, what is the color of the other one? Mine came with 2 springs, neither of which was white. However, one seems to be a bit wider than the other. One is long and narrow, other is little shorter and a little fatter. I'm assuming the longer one is the high velocity spring so I have the one that is a little shorter and a little fatter in the gun now.
 
The spring that is longer and made with thinner wire is the white spring.
It is lighter for use with North American ammo.
The spring that is shorter and made with heavier wire is the black spring.
It is heavier for use with the heavier loads that are common in Germany.

Jack
 
Interesting, I tried the short thin spring only to find it failed feeding cheap ammo and minimags. I switched over to the heavier wire spring and it feeds minimags great and won't feed a single bulk pack. Now that I've polished the ramp I'm going to go back to the thin spring and try again. If that fails I'll try the heavy spring. If that fails, I'll order new springs.
 
use the light spring with Federal Auto Match. Not as cheap as bulk pack, but half the price of minimags. Only issue I get is a fail to feed every now and again. Rack the slide...keep going.

I am interested in polishing though. I talked to a guy at First Defense and he had Dennis send his Mosquito back to Sig for polishing. Apparently his eats bulk pack all day.
 
Happy to report all feeding problems are resolved via the polishing. Gun eats Federal bulk pack no problem now. Couple FTE's in 200+ rounds, but nothing like before.
 
Squished said:
Happy to report all feeding problems are resolved via the polishing. Gun eats Federal bulk pack no problem now. Couple FTE's in 200+ rounds, but nothing like before.
Click to expand...

Glad to hear it is coming around. Funny thing with the Federal bulk pack is that about one round in fifty is obviously under charged. The rest will function the gun perfectly. I can feel the light one when it happens and now just automatically rack the slide to reload. I was only wrong once in eight times.

I gave mine a cleaning after the second trip to the range. I estimate that it had 350-400 rounds through it by then. I fired another 350-400 through it this afternoon with no unexpected problems. The trigger has started to lighten up a bit so I broke up the session with some rapid fire plinking. Lotsa fun!

I had a big bag of partial boxes of all different kinds of ammo left over from testing my 10/22, 20 of this and 40 of that. There was some low velocity target ammo from Wolf and Federal that did not cycle the action well, but that was not a surprise. The Federal Gold Medal Match ammo was surprisingly snappy.

What worked well and consistently was Federal 36gr bulk pack, Remington Golden bulk pack, CCI mini-mags. These were all recently purchased. I have some 'vintage' Remington 40gr high-velocity solids left over from my silhouette shooting days, thirty years ago. These function 100%.
In fact, most of the 40gr high velocity rounds of all brands tried, seemed to work well, except for the Federal 40 gr plated Game load. That was a surprise.

The one thing that I have not seen, which I expected, was any preference, accuracy wise, for some particular load. The Skeeter seems to put most of the shots into about 3" at 25 yards. When I say most, I mean seven or eight out of ten. The others go quite a bit wide of the mark. I don't have the eyesight of a twenty year old and the trigger can be a significant challenge so I am not terribly disappointed yet. I think that the Skeeter will get a detail strip and trigger job after another thousand rounds.

Jack
 
jhrosier said:
Glad to hear it is coming around. Funny thing with the Federal bulk pack is that about one round in fifty is obviously under charged. The rest will function the gun perfectly. I can feel the light one when it happens and now just automatically rack the slide to reload. I was only wrong once in eight times.
Click to expand...

EXACTLY what i found with the Federal Bulk Pack, how funny. I'm so happy it shoots the trash ammo now, I was tired of buying minimags considering I have over 3,000 federal bulk pack. [rofl]


There is absolutely no reason why a gun should fire one .22 and not another. I even had a nice lengthy discussion about this with a Sig armorer today. I'm happy the issue is resolved.

FYI, I'd be happy to help anyone else with a Squito that is failing.
 
Squished said:
EXACTLY what i found with the Federal Bulk Pack, how funny. I'm so happy it shoots the trash ammo now, I was tired of buying minimags considering I have over 3,000 federal bulk pack. [rofl]


There is absolutely no reason why a gun should fire one .22 and not another. I even had a nice lengthy discussion about this with a Sig armorer today. I'm happy the issue is resolved.

FYI, I'd be happy to help anyone else with a Squito that is failing.
Click to expand...

Oh oh...I'm in! I'd love for mine to shoot bulk pack!
 
Squished,
Have you found anyone that has reduced the MA 10+ Lb SA trigger to a more reasonable 4.5 Lbs?
I really don't care about the DA trigger pull, although reducing the SA pull should bring the DA pull down also.

I would try it myself if I could find where to get a relacement sear if I mess up (without sending the gun back to the factory for a long vacation.)


Jack
 
jhrosier said:
Squished,
Have you found anyone that has reduced the MA 10+ Lb SA trigger to a more reasonable 4.5 Lbs?
I really don't care about the DA trigger pull, although reducing the SA pull should bring the DA pull down also.

I would try it myself if I could find where to get a relacement sear if I mess up (without sending the gun back to the factory for a long vacation.)


Jack
Click to expand...

I found nothing yet. There is very limited resources on the Squito since people know how much of a POS it is. I think with a little bit of work to make it shoot bulk pack, it's probably the most fun .22 I own.
 
Squished said:
.... people know how much of a POS it is. ...
Click to expand...

I disagree with them. The gun got a pretty poor rep before the factory changed to the lighter recoil spring.

It seems that the gun will shoot bulk pack ammo pretty reliably, after it is broke in.

Several people have posted photos of some pretty impressive groups on target over on the Sig Forum. I can only assume that they are not fighting the 10+ Lb trigger when shooting these small groups.

The trigger sux but I think that I could fix that easily. The downside is the trip back to the factory if I'm wrong. I'm right on the edge about this not even so much about the time factor, as about the outrageous cost of shipping handguns.

One issue that is widely discussed regarding all of the other Sig handguns is lubrication. The other Sigs require a good measure of lubrication before they will function well. I can't help but wonder if the same lube regimen applied to the Skeeter would produce similar results. It just seems odd that there is no discussion of lubrication, except as regards lowering the trigger pull by the use of dry lubes on the works.

Jack
 
Sig already got me 2 weeks ago for $65 in shipping my p239 back and forth, I hope to not have to bend over and do that again for a while.
 
Just wanted to say that I put the heavy spring back in my mosquito and fed it some federal bulk pack this weekend.

GREAT results! Probably 12-16 magazines worth and maybe 2 stove pipes and a few fail to feeds. The fail to feeds are expected with the AutoMatch I was running anyway.

All in all, very happy with the result. Looks like I don't need to do any polishing!
 
Brought a couple types of ammo to the range last night for the Mosquito. We thoroughly cleaned and lubed it before the visit.

First I tried CCI mini-mags high velocity. Had a couple of jams.

Then switched to Federal Classic Auto Match 22 LR Ammo. The stuff fed like a champ. Not a hiccup after this switch.

FYI I generally can buy this at Walmart. A box of 325 is around $14.50.

Cheers,

Rich
 
Sorry for the late reply back. Did you polish the ramp richc?

It's really hit or miss with these guns, as someone told me "Any gun that comes with 2 springs, it's going to be a crapshoot."

It really is true. I have also heard, although I have not tried yet, that polishing the inside breech of the barrel helps feeding problems as well. If someone wants to try this, please post your results.

I know that making any change to the gun and being able to shoot something like Federal bulk pack or Federal Classic Automatch is a huge upgrade from only being able to shoot CCI minimags. People buy a .22 for practice. Thus meaning shooting it ALOT. CCI minimags are not cheap by any means and should be saved for matches, not general plinking/practice.
 
Squished,
Mine is up to about 1K rounds now.
Federal 36gr bulk pack work flawlessly, except for the occasional under-charged round.
Remington Golden and CCI Minimags continue to work as well.
I wipe most of the excess crap out of it every 400-500 rounds.
I bought a can of Hoppes teflon dry lube and gave the inner works a spritz.
The trigger, while still 10+ Lbs, is much smoother now.
I have been lubing the slide rails with grease, as I do with my other Sigs.

I can hit a 3" spinner @ 25yds most of the time, from a rest.
The heavy trigger precludes such accuracy offhand, for me.
I let an experienced 'combat' handgunner try the Mosquito.
Once he got the feel for the trigger pull, he was bouncing empty shotshells around on the 25 yard berm.

I'm going to shoot the Skeeter and my Ruger MKIII today for comparison.

Jack
 
Nice choice Jack, I have an MKIII as well. I put a scope on my MKIII, damn that thing can pick off the small stuff! It was suggested to me to put Brownells Action Lube on the trigger of the Skeeter, i might give it a try. If I can find the correct tool, I'm also going to polish the inside 1" of the barrel on the action side.

I still wouldn't classify this gun as "reliable" as I still get the occasional FTE(either due to undercharged bulk pack or just the gun), but this little bit of extra work in it just made it that much more fun.

The real fun in .22LR for me is my SP101 in .22LR. Built on the same frame as their .357, and the cylinder being solid and heavier than the .357, you can't even feel this thing firing. That's a true tackdriver.
 
Squished said:
Why? After polishing it's probably the most fun .22 I own.
Click to expand...

My buddy had one we shot All it did was jam up on us every other round and what upsets me is it being from a company like sig dont these guys test guns anymore or just make'em and hope for the best
 
Squished said:
.....
The real fun in .22LR for me is my SP101 in .22LR. ...
Click to expand...

Speaking of nice choices![wink]

The .22 SP101 was my first choice but I haven't found one yet, so I bought the Skeeter to fill the gap.
I will probably settle for a 4" M617 if I don't find a 4" SP101.

I have never had much luck shooting the MKIII accurately, but I keep trying every couple of years.
It's just me, others have shot the gun well. I did well with a 5-1/2" bull barrel but the 6-7/8" defies my best efforts.
It looks good on the range though.[laugh]

Jack
 
Interesting results with the Skeeter and the Ruger MKII.
10 shots through each one at 25 yards, 3" black, from a sandbag.
Federal Champion .22LR.

SkeeternMKIIItarget-vi.jpg


The MKII shots are in the bottom of the bull.
The shots from the Skeeter are (mostly) in the top.

Shooting the Skeeter from a rest, it shows a strong preference, accuracy wise, for the Federal Champions. They function the gun 98% of the time even when it is dirty, better when it is clean. The groups are about half the size of what the Federal 36gr bulk pack gives and somewhat better than the CCI MiniMags.

Jack
 
Last edited:
So... tonight I brought the Mosquito to the range. I probably have 500+ rounds through her. The first few hundred I was a bit concerned about reliability. It would FTF and jam up.

So tonight I probably put 200-300 down the pipe. Not a problem... not a hiccup. Flawless.

Good stuff. FYI I tend to use this pistol with newbies. It is easy to hold, no recoil, reasonably accurate and cheap to shoot. It is a good first pistol experience.

Yup... it was rough out of the starting gate but it has all worked out.

Rich
 
richc said:
So... tonight I brought the Mosquito to the range. I probably have 500+ rounds through her. The first few hundred I was a bit concerned about reliability. It would FTF and jam up.

So tonight I probably put 200-300 down the pipe. Not a problem... not a hiccup. Flawless.

Rich
Click to expand...

What ammo were you using?
 

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