So in the first mag, we got a failure to feed, a failure to fire, and a failure to extract. This gun is perfect for someone who wants to train on clearing malfunctions.
Plot twist: the technical advisor who messed up the heat treating process was actually a corporate spy from colt whose mission was to sabotage any company trying to name a pistol after a snake.
It's a feature not a bug. It makes the shooter consider each shot more carefully instead of throwing away bullets like candy. Have to take your time, and look the devil in the eye
I've heard stories how resilient the Yugo was when it crashed into tree with only a few dents and the driver walked away unharmed. That's mostly because the car was incapable of propelling itself fast enough to actually damage it.
I was soooo very excited when I first saw this pistol featured in either Guns and Ammo or it might have been Soldier of Fortune magazine. I was an SW 39/59 fanboi back in the day (Teflon coated/Pachmeyr grips/ MMC sights/ bevelled mag well) so the Mamba was, of course, the logical iteration of this type. This was back when we Aussies had less restrictive access to firearms (Without going into details we still needed a pistol licence but the type etc wasn't so much of an issue). As it turned out, the gun store in North Sydney that was going to import them never ended up getting Navy Arms to export them apparently, so we dodged a bullet (pun intended) with that pistol.
i remember them being on the cover of g and a sometimes in the late 70s early 80s thought they looked cool but omg the one they filmed was a lot better finished than that thing
Apparrently, Saffas call Rhodesians "Wenwies". I was talking to a South African colleague once about someone in the building they needed to go and see. I said that that he was from Zimbabwe, then added "Actually he calls himself Rhodesian - because he says that's the country he was born into". Colleague immediately says, "Ah, a Wenwie!" I look puzzled, and ask what that means. She says, "Have you never heard one of them tell their stories from back home? It always start with, 'When WE waah in Rhaadizzhiaa...'" 😂
The Mamba...feared weapon of the Elbonian National Police's special counter terrorism unit. Feared? Damn' straight. That's a heavy, all stainless steel pistol with lots of edges and corners. And those SCTU operators are really accurate with them. Overhand, underhand, and especially the sideways "frisbee throw".
The hammer riding the slide more than once was perfectly balanced by that light strike. Otherwise, you'd have an accidental machine pistol. What a follow-up to the 93R video!
@@Serketry88 it could happen if the sear notches were extremely shallow so that the slide going back into battery made the hammer fall. I have a WW2 Browning Hi-Power which sometimes does this BUT it has never doubled because the half-cock notch is still in good condition.
A friend of mine from South Africa used to find Mambas (the snake not the pistol) and annoy them so the snake would chase him. That's what counts as fun when you're a kid in Africa!
A couple of design features that I don't understand: - Why make a slide lock that can't be released by actuating the slide? - Why bother with the DA functionality if you're not going to give it a decocker? Could that have been used to try another strike on that one failure to fire?
Slide that can't be released other than using the slide release: Maybe training doctrine of the day poo poo'd sling shotting? Or it's possible that the gun perhaps malfunctioned? As for DA/SA guns not having decockers: This was not unusual back in the day. There was no qualms about having to physically decock a gun yourself. Fear of thumb decocking is a rather modern thing. There is no real concern if done carefully and the gun is designed to do so. But some choose to treat something like a safety style DA/SA CZ75 as a single action pistol. Carrying it cocked and locked and using the double action function as a restrike capability
@@plutothe9th361 You mean that when you reach into that plastic candy gummy bag, you get your wrist wrapped around a multi-coloured snake that start sinking its fangs into your flesh and you get sugar poisoned😃
It just looks like a 3rd generation Smith & Wesson, like a 5906 with a 5" inch barrel, but it's got an M1911-style safety instead of the slide safety/decocker.
I think the 945 would be a perfect candidate for a video. Its rare but available, very shootable and has some interesting old-school (by 2024 standards) technology behind it.
A gunsmith can make a vast improvement on the reliability and they are very sensitive to ammo. For some reason, they seem to like PMC ball or at least they used to, that stuff has obviously changed since then.
Looks alot like the S&W 645 I purchased in 1986. It has functioned flawlessly for the last 38 years. Would even cycle empty brass. This has nothing to do with the Mamba. With the similarity, it surprised me how bad it ran.
Yep. Most people wouldn’t believe it until they see it themselves, but the same chemical mechanism (passivation) that makes stainless steel resistant to corrosion also makes any joint between two stainless steel parts weld itself in to one piece when there is any friction. I worked on an aircraft project where the engineers specified stainless steel tubing joined with stainless steel fittings. After a few of those joints locked up and proved impossible to remove, they specified that we apply a light oil to the threads of each fitting before assembling it, which worked well enough to finish the build. The aircraft in question was luckily a one-off, but I pity the poor mechanic that has to do any maintenance on that system.
I wonder if it had been more reliable with 124gr ammo, it somehow looked a bit like the 115s didn´t have enough recoil to cycle that thing well. While the impulse may be about the same, there is a difference if that is delivered very sharply in a tall spike or more like a push in a broader peak, the inertia of slide and barrel may not match well to the former.
The surface pitting of the casting of the slide is pretty terrible. Especially on the serrations. Usually cast slides are cast slightly oversized and then machined to avoid that.
IDK, this seems like a somewhat solid design, let down by quality of manufacturing. The first car-related example that came to mind was the Rover SD1 for some reason.
Even in the era this came out, the Cz75 already did everything it does, better, aside from being stainless steel. And if the Ruger P85 couldn't win the XM9 trials, I don't see this even breaking into the top 3.
An interesting forgotten weapon would be the Gewehr 241(f), the German reissued and reproofed French 8mm Lebel Berthier M1916. Used by rear line and secondary troops. Wondering if it was rechambered in Mauser. Be good for your German reissue series
@@ForgottenWeapons What? The Germans didn't send an officer to put his grabby little mitts on each and every one of them before stamping them with an approval mark? Are we sure this even happened? :P
Reminds me of the Zastava CZ-999. I went through 4 of them and they all had the problems of hammer follow, light strikes, and, about half the time, the slide releasing when a new magazine was inserted. Two things I won't tolerate: 1: Guns doing things I didn't tell them to do. 2: Guns not doing things I tell them to do. Needless to say, after 4 guns in a row being sketchy and unreliable, Century Arms bought them back, and I was well rid of them.
Opens box of ammo. Displays 3 rows of 5-wide ammo. Flips displayed 15 rounds into his hand. Closes box. Am I the only one who's never seen that technique before?!??!? 🤯
Ah, unfortunately yes. In fact it's even "trained" because this is what you're supposed to do with the plastic slider boxes the better .22lr ammo comes in. It's ok though, everyone has to see something the first time the... uh... first time.
*This* looks exactly like the generic _"9 mm handgun"_ from a random action video-game with a poor weapon load out. (Said game probably has only one other handgun called the ".44 magnum" which is a generic chrome revolver, a shotgun, few automatic weapons, a sniper rifle and a rocket launcher. That's it)
6:37 oddly enough the Beretta model 84s are like that too, where it can fire double action even though it has no decocker, so you would resort to gently and manually get that hammer down. I hate that.
That's exactly what I thought! The only ammo I've ever had issues with was fiocchi. It didn't run at all in my brother's gun and barely ran in mine, causing many of the issues shown in the video. I'd be curious to see how it would have done with a different brand of ammo.
@@eimaiakominzontanos Same. Since circa 2020 their QA has really gone down the drain. Primer issues, mostly, but in some cases (8mm92) their ammo is straight up dangerous to use (50% of the time, it *will not* clear the barrel of the ONE GUN it was designed for). This being said, I don't think the ammo is to blame here...
Compression is doing some weird stuff… the background is static, but there’s an “aura” around Ian where the algorithm has determined is likely to experience change
My buddy had an AMT Hardballer back when the Mamba was coming out, and I thought a Stainless gun was the thing to have. I eventually bought a Hardballer and was quite disappointed in the gun, it had real problems to. Same guy used to subscribe to a magazine about Merc Work and the full glossy back cover was an add for the Mamba. I wanted one of those because I thought it had to be a great carry gun, I was on the PD Back then. Thankfully I never did get one, however I eventually picked up a Smith Model 59, it was OK but not the cats meow as it were, I got rid of it because I just didn't have a lot of faith in the 9mm for cop work in the Dakota's where for half the year everyone had very thick over garments to keep the frigid cold out. I eventually went with a Spanish da/sa .45 with a 10 round mag and decocker, adjustable sights a good solid gun in the Astra A-100. Still have that gun as I carried it as my last duty weapon on the PD and it was, of course private purchase, all the PD I was working for had for an issue gun was an old large framed Smith in .357 mag and there was only one, my partner carried it, the rest of us all purchased our own sidearms.
Ejection was all over the place. That slide is getting interfered with by something. Slide stop maybe. Difference in metalurgy causing galling perhaps.
My first GUN DIGEST was the 1982 edition. Mamba and LES P18 were described as powerful pieces of machinery (and the BREN TEN too, but the BREN TEN at least worked well). I may be wrong, but it seems that to design a good gun requires a good amount of lucky. Unlike the Mamba, Remington´s RP9 and R51 were designed by skilled technicians. I want to design a gun since I was twelve, but I have problems to deal with frustration. Maybe this is the only good thing about being a brazilian... we don´t create guns, we just make bad copies.
Sometimes DA/SA (more like a CZ-75B, single action with second strike capability), sometimes DAO. They should have called it Schizo instead of Mamba; it doesn't know what it is. I would think that couple of shots you took in DA mode where the hammer didn't cock after the shot was hammer follow, except it didn't land on a half cock notch and it didn't go full auto...so I'm not really sure what happened there other than the hammer failed to cock. I wonder if it even has a half cock notch. Yes, it is reminiscent of the various S&W stainless semiautos -- except they worked -- and this one...not so much.
I remember seeing this pistol in a gun magazine or book in the '80s when I was a kid/young teen and thinking it looked pretty cool (was always a fan of Smith pistols of the time). Now I can't help but think of it as a pistol from an alternate universe, one in which Ruger made a 59 clone rather than the P85 (except the Ruger would have worked). Despite its flaws, I can't help but like this pistol...for the attempt if not for the final product.
It's weird - it looks like what should be an excellent pistol. But as Ian has noted many times before, designing and manufacturing firearms is a LOT harder than many people think. The tiniest imperfections can have a significantly bigger effect than one might predict.
Guns look simple, and they are. Until you consider that such a machine has to withstand huge forces and function flawlessly while hundreds or even thousands of rounds puke hot, fouling gases in to the mechanism with no cooling system and only minimal lubrication.
At 08:00 I do think it has a resemblance to a S&W, except the Mamba has a frame-mounted safety, instead of a slide-mounted safety. Its slide has some gnarly-looking marks above the serrations on the slide. Is that from being cast, rather than milled?
It seems like they were trying to make a better Smith & Wesson model 59. With a thumb safety instead of a slide mounted safety/decocker. I have a soft spot for the third generation Smith & Wesson semi autos, but they weren’t that great by today’s standards.
I remember reading about that pistol in a South African firearms enthusiasts magazine called Magnum in the late 1970's but can't remember the verdict on the Mamba .
I'm surprised you don't follow a hangfire protocol for a failure to fire. It's mandatory at my rifle club, and also something I have to insist upon when refereeing sporting clays.
the thing I don't understand is why they bothered with making it out of stainless steel when they could use high carbon steel and have a pretty good handgun, THEN make a stainless steel version. I mean its a browning type handgun, there's a reason most pistols have that mechanism.
Penultimate means second to last so I don't think its what you meant, great video however!
Yeah, I realized that right after it came out of my mouth.
Well in the end it was pretty much the penultimate one so it makes sense...
@@ForgottenWeapons sure you didn't poast on something awful?
I had a high school English teacher who used to secretly roast another English teacher for always using the word penultimate this way
@@volusian95 probably because the word sounds synonymous with the cream of the crop. I mean it has ultimate in it, so it must be good.
So in the first mag, we got a failure to feed, a failure to fire, and a failure to extract. This gun is perfect for someone who wants to train on clearing malfunctions.
I wounder how it will work. If someone put a supressor on it.
Making a virtue out of a vice. 👍
@@exploatoresno better than a printed gun, I bet. 😅
Reminded me of my conscript's basic skills excercise from ages ago where we had a heavily rigged shooting task. "Shoot 8 hits, here's three clips."
@@lairdcummings9092 Too soon? 😂
Plot twist: the technical advisor who messed up the heat treating process was actually a corporate spy from colt whose mission was to sabotage any company trying to name a pistol after a snake.
I've heard of crazier things being true, honestly
Great job, dude!
But I was sick that day!
The lesser known 4th round hold open... never really became popular for some reason.
It's a feature not a bug. It makes the shooter consider each shot more carefully instead of throwing away bullets like candy. Have to take your time, and look the devil in the eye
Not as cool as a 1st round hold open.
Next month’s giveaway is a Yugo. We shall be entertained watching Ian attempt to drive it to the gas station
Yugo’s aren’t bad (after you replace the complete wiring harness).😂
I've heard stories how resilient the Yugo was when it crashed into tree with only a few dents and the driver walked away unharmed.
That's mostly because the car was incapable of propelling itself fast enough to actually damage it.
My step-dad had a yugo, it ran a long time before he replaced it because it wasn't great for a large family. 😂
Better example would be a Trabant. You could punch a hole in the floor just by getting in too aggressively.
Put it in “H”
I was soooo very excited when I first saw this pistol featured in either Guns and Ammo or it might have been Soldier of Fortune magazine. I was an SW 39/59 fanboi back in the day (Teflon coated/Pachmeyr grips/ MMC sights/ bevelled mag well) so the Mamba was, of course, the logical iteration of this type. This was back when we Aussies had less restrictive access to firearms (Without going into details we still needed a pistol licence but the type etc wasn't so much of an issue). As it turned out, the gun store in North Sydney that was going to import them never ended up getting Navy Arms to export them apparently, so we dodged a bullet (pun intended) with that pistol.
i remember them being on the cover of g and a sometimes in the late 70s early 80s thought they looked cool but omg the one they filmed was a lot better finished than that thing
You guys got a host of import L1A1's aside from your own version right?
Apparrently, Saffas call Rhodesians "Wenwies".
I was talking to a South African colleague once about someone in the building they needed to go and see. I said that that he was from Zimbabwe, then added "Actually he calls himself Rhodesian - because he says that's the country he was born into". Colleague immediately says, "Ah, a Wenwie!" I look puzzled, and ask what that means. She says, "Have you never heard one of them tell their stories from back home? It always start with, 'When WE waah in Rhaadizzhiaa...'" 😂
The original "Wenwies" were those ex-pats from Kenya!
The Mamba...feared weapon of the Elbonian National Police's special counter terrorism unit.
Feared? Damn' straight. That's a heavy, all stainless steel pistol with lots of edges and corners. And those SCTU operators are really accurate with them. Overhand, underhand, and especially the sideways "frisbee throw".
It makes for a fine mallet, or meat tenderizer 😂
🤪
It's Ambi. Dexterous.
I can't wait for Headstamps new Book, Weapons of the Elbonian Nation, from Crap to Dangerous. 😂
If you're in a situation where some of your opponents don't really need to be shot, this could be the perfect pistol!
Like a wedding you didn't want to go to but had to. You want to shoot someone, but it's ok if not everyone dies.
The hammer riding the slide more than once was perfectly balanced by that light strike. Otherwise, you'd have an accidental machine pistol. What a follow-up to the 93R video!
it is very rare for hammer follow to cause a round to go off. The slide prevents the hammer from reaching anywhere near enough speed.
@@sbreheny I wouldn't trust this pistol not to find a way.
@@Serketry88 it could happen if the sear notches were extremely shallow so that the slide going back into battery made the hammer fall. I have a WW2 Browning Hi-Power which sometimes does this BUT it has never doubled because the half-cock notch is still in good condition.
Mamba the surprise in every trigger pull.
So aside from the 25%+ malfunction rate, it's not actually that bad?
Pretty much...
75% of the time, it works every time.
@@abhijaman4792the mamba sponsored by Sex Panther
25% malfunctioning rate seems pretty bad to me.
@@abhijaman4792🤌
A friend of mine from South Africa used to find Mambas (the snake not the pistol) and annoy them so the snake would chase him. That's what counts as fun when you're a kid in Africa!
A couple of design features that I don't understand:
- Why make a slide lock that can't be released by actuating the slide?
- Why bother with the DA functionality if you're not going to give it a decocker? Could that have been used to try another strike on that one failure to fire?
Slide that can't be released other than using the slide release: Maybe training doctrine of the day poo poo'd sling shotting? Or it's possible that the gun perhaps malfunctioned?
As for DA/SA guns not having decockers: This was not unusual back in the day. There was no qualms about having to physically decock a gun yourself. Fear of thumb decocking is a rather modern thing. There is no real concern if done carefully and the gun is designed to do so.
But some choose to treat something like a safety style DA/SA CZ75 as a single action pistol. Carrying it cocked and locked and using the double action function as a restrike capability
60% of the time, this pistol will work every time !
That doesn't make sense.
@@Daniel-Weaverit's a joke.
@@Daniel-Weaver it does make sense
@@TTTTacu whoosh!
When it runs it works to 100%😅
Mamba is a badass name for a gun
Named after my favorite candy
@@plutothe9th361 You mean that when you reach into that plastic candy gummy bag, you get your wrist wrapped around a multi-coloured snake that start sinking its fangs into your flesh and you get sugar poisoned😃
@@Mythteller Diabetes Diamondback
@@MythtellerMulticolored?
@@Mythteller Sir, the mamba is a black snake- I mean yellow-black leather-wearing blonde woman with a katana
It just looks like a 3rd generation Smith & Wesson, like a 5906 with a 5" inch barrel, but it's got an M1911-style safety instead of the slide safety/decocker.
I wish Ian would dive into the labyrinth that is 3rd-gen smiths
@@mitchlovesgames7281 There's a 3566 vid and an XM10 vid, but a 1076 vid would be sick
@@JimoftheSlimOh man, I lust after a 1076! That and the 3913 are about the only S&W autos I care for.
I will never forgive myself for selling my S&W 411 when I needed money :/
I think the 945 would be a perfect candidate for a video. Its rare but available, very shootable and has some interesting old-school (by 2024 standards) technology behind it.
A gunsmith can make a vast improvement on the reliability and they are very sensitive to ammo. For some reason, they seem to like PMC ball or at least they used to, that stuff has obviously changed since then.
So the FN Highpowers were not worried about Mamba sales, huh? 😂
Looks alot like the S&W 645 I purchased in 1986. It has functioned flawlessly for the last 38 years. Would even cycle empty brass. This has nothing to do with the Mamba. With the similarity, it surprised me how bad it ran.
Cast stainless sliding on itself leads to galling. Probably why reliability is less than expected.
Sadly a problem also with the original Harry Sanford designed Auto Mag pistol. Great dedign but the metallurgy wasn't fully understood. 😮
Yep. Most people wouldn’t believe it until they see it themselves, but the same chemical mechanism (passivation) that makes stainless steel resistant to corrosion also makes any joint between two stainless steel parts weld itself in to one piece when there is any friction. I worked on an aircraft project where the engineers specified stainless steel tubing joined with stainless steel fittings. After a few of those joints locked up and proved impossible to remove, they specified that we apply a light oil to the threads of each fitting before assembling it, which worked well enough to finish the build. The aircraft in question was luckily a one-off, but I pity the poor mechanic that has to do any maintenance on that system.
I wonder if it had been more reliable with 124gr ammo, it somehow looked a bit like the 115s didn´t have enough recoil to cycle that thing well.
While the impulse may be about the same, there is a difference if that is delivered very sharply in a tall spike or more like a push in a broader peak, the inertia of slide and barrel may not match well to the former.
It's fascinating to watch a piece of history in action, especially one that had such a limited production run.
But would you take it over a STEN Mk2?
It's named after the fastest snakes in the world, because of how fast it malfunctions
If Bethesda Software made a snake, this would be it.
The surface pitting of the casting of the slide is pretty terrible. Especially on the serrations. Usually cast slides are cast slightly oversized and then machined to avoid that.
The Cybertruck of pistols.
😂
Need a water wash to test this hypothesis 😅
I almost spit up my coffee
IDK, this seems like a somewhat solid design, let down by quality of manufacturing. The first car-related example that came to mind was the Rover SD1 for some reason.
Well it's got the build quality of a Cybertruck, anyway.
*Elbonian minister for arms procurement has entered the chat*
Very cool wall hanger .
Still more reliable than a repro Whitney Wolverine! (I owned one, it does sucketh). The mamba sounds so crunchy in operation.
Probably galling on the stainless steel. Happens to a lot of early stainless guns that werent heat treated properly like the Automag.
Even in the era this came out, the Cz75 already did everything it does, better, aside from being stainless steel.
And if the Ruger P85 couldn't win the XM9 trials, I don't see this even breaking into the top 3.
An interesting forgotten weapon would be the Gewehr 241(f), the German reissued and reproofed French 8mm Lebel Berthier M1916. Used by rear line and secondary troops. Wondering if it was rechambered in Mauser. Be good for your German reissue series
It was not rechambered. In fact, nothing was done to them at all and it would be impossible to distinguish one today from any other M16 Berthier.
@@ForgottenWeapons What? The Germans didn't send an officer to put his grabby little mitts on each and every one of them before stamping them with an approval mark? Are we sure this even happened? :P
Curses! I've been conditioned to say "You just got jammed." Every time a gun malfunctions.
Scott approves!
Mimsey, you put the black mamba in the wrong canoe!!!!
Reminds me of the Zastava CZ-999. I went through 4 of them and they all had the problems of hammer follow, light strikes, and, about half the time, the slide releasing when a new magazine was inserted.
Two things I won't tolerate:
1: Guns doing things I didn't tell them to do.
2: Guns not doing things I tell them to do.
Needless to say, after 4 guns in a row being sketchy and unreliable, Century Arms bought them back, and I was well rid of them.
Thats a shame, i always wanted the polished one. Thought itd be a good 226 clone
If I had that thing Id try to give it away too
If you sold it, they might return it by throwing it at you 🤣
Opens box of ammo.
Displays 3 rows of 5-wide ammo.
Flips displayed 15 rounds into his hand.
Closes box.
Am I the only one who's never seen that technique before?!??!? 🤯
Yes.
Ah, unfortunately yes. In fact it's even "trained" because this is what you're supposed to do with the plastic slider boxes the better .22lr ammo comes in.
It's ok though, everyone has to see something the first time the... uh... first time.
*This* looks exactly like the generic _"9 mm handgun"_ from a random action video-game with a poor weapon load out.
(Said game probably has only one other handgun called the ".44 magnum" which is a generic chrome revolver, a shotgun, few automatic weapons, a sniper rifle and a rocket launcher. That's it)
Mamba run's 70% of the time every time.
That should be there logo
It absolutely looks like a South African pistol made in New Jersey.
6:37 oddly enough the Beretta model 84s are like that too, where it can fire double action even though it has no decocker, so you would resort to gently and manually get that hammer down. I hate that.
Great acoustics today!
That pistol, from a functioning standpoint reminds me of the AMT Skipper I once owned. Numerous trips to a gunsmith and it never ran right!
1:00 "Fiocchi" "reliable operation"
bwahaha, good one Ian! :)
That's exactly what I thought! The only ammo I've ever had issues with was fiocchi. It didn't run at all in my brother's gun and barely ran in mine, causing many of the issues shown in the video. I'd be curious to see how it would have done with a different brand of ammo.
@@eimaiakominzontanos Same. Since circa 2020 their QA has really gone down the drain. Primer issues, mostly, but in some cases (8mm92) their ammo is straight up dangerous to use (50% of the time, it *will not* clear the barrel of the ONE GUN it was designed for).
This being said, I don't think the ammo is to blame here...
Sometimes DASA/sometimes DAO, sometimes semi/sometimes manual, they really packed in the features!
THANKS
That looks like a really rough S&W Model 5906. Neat.
Compression is doing some weird stuff… the background is static, but there’s an “aura” around Ian where the algorithm has determined is likely to experience change
That’s just how Ian looks
That is actually the vapor of Cosmoline, sometimes caught on camera. It's invisible to the naked eye!
My buddy had an AMT Hardballer back when the Mamba was coming out, and I thought a Stainless gun was the thing to have. I eventually bought a Hardballer and was quite disappointed in the gun, it had real problems to. Same guy used to subscribe to a magazine about Merc Work and the full glossy back cover was an add for the Mamba. I wanted one of those because I thought it had to be a great carry gun, I was on the PD Back then. Thankfully I never did get one, however I eventually picked up a Smith Model 59, it was OK but not the cats meow as it were, I got rid of it because I just didn't have a lot of faith in the 9mm for cop work in the Dakota's where for half the year everyone had very thick over garments to keep the frigid cold out. I eventually went with a Spanish da/sa .45 with a 10 round mag and decocker, adjustable sights a good solid gun in the Astra A-100. Still have that gun as I carried it as my last duty weapon on the PD and it was, of course private purchase, all the PD I was working for had for an issue gun was an old large framed Smith in .357 mag and there was only one, my partner carried it, the rest of us all purchased our own sidearms.
Ejection was all over the place. That slide is getting interfered with by something. Slide stop maybe. Difference in metalurgy causing galling perhaps.
Those aren't flaws, they are character traits.
My first GUN DIGEST was the 1982 edition. Mamba and LES P18 were described as powerful pieces of machinery (and the BREN TEN too, but the BREN TEN at least worked well). I may be wrong, but it seems that to design a good gun requires a good amount of lucky. Unlike the Mamba, Remington´s RP9 and R51 were designed by skilled technicians. I want to design a gun since I was twelve, but I have problems to deal with frustration. Maybe this is the only good thing about being a brazilian... we don´t create guns, we just make bad copies.
I carried a 1086 and 4586 as a police officer in the 90's and thought the same thing; looks like a fat handle S&W Gen3.
Sometimes DA/SA (more like a CZ-75B, single action with second strike capability), sometimes DAO. They should have called it Schizo instead of Mamba; it doesn't know what it is. I would think that couple of shots you took in DA mode where the hammer didn't cock after the shot was hammer follow, except it didn't land on a half cock notch and it didn't go full auto...so I'm not really sure what happened there other than the hammer failed to cock. I wonder if it even has a half cock notch. Yes, it is reminiscent of the various S&W stainless semiautos -- except they worked -- and this one...not so much.
Never thought I would actually see a video of one I thought they were too rare
I'm shocked that aberration worked even once.
You know when the gun comes from Rhodesia, it's going to be 'iffy' at best. 🤣🤣🤣
Looks like an old Smith and Wesson.
I remember seeing this pistol in a gun magazine or book in the '80s when I was a kid/young teen and thinking it looked pretty cool (was always a fan of Smith pistols of the time). Now I can't help but think of it as a pistol from an alternate universe, one in which Ruger made a 59 clone rather than the P85 (except the Ruger would have worked). Despite its flaws, I can't help but like this pistol...for the attempt if not for the final product.
It's interesting, I'll give it that.
Mamba's got personality!
It's weird - it looks like what should be an excellent pistol. But as Ian has noted many times before, designing and manufacturing firearms is a LOT harder than many people think. The tiniest imperfections can have a significantly bigger effect than one might predict.
Guns look simple, and they are. Until you consider that such a machine has to withstand huge forces and function flawlessly while hundreds or even thousands of rounds puke hot, fouling gases in to the mechanism with no cooling system and only minimal lubrication.
🤣🤣🤣 "3 or 4 malfunctions in a mag, thats better than i was expecting "
At 08:00 I do think it has a resemblance to a S&W, except the Mamba has a frame-mounted safety, instead of a slide-mounted safety.
Its slide has some gnarly-looking marks above the serrations on the slide. Is that from being cast, rather than milled?
This thing was more reliable than my buddy's Remington RP9.
well, if most gun fights are 3 rounds or less, then it stopping after 4 rounds is no big deal.
"If you are a collector of failed firearms, enter to win this..." 😆
Would love to see all the combat knives bayonets combat swords machetes that a lot of countries used
"Manufacturing Standards we have at home" Ian, I'm to old and sick to laugh that hard,
“Penultimate” actually means second to last.
It seems like they were trying to make a better Smith & Wesson model 59. With a thumb safety instead of a slide mounted safety/decocker. I have a soft spot for the third generation Smith & Wesson semi autos, but they weren’t that great by today’s standards.
You should try this in a competition like it was intended…
I’d love to see a video where you shoot a Rogak … if it’s not totally dangerous to do so. I’d love to know if it’d actually run.
I think my South African friends may have the only properly working one. I’ve seen them put several mags through it without it malfunctioning.
Man that thing seems like it has an awful lot of muzzle flip for what it is
I remember reading about that pistol in a South African firearms enthusiasts magazine called Magnum in the late 1970's but can't remember the verdict on the Mamba .
Looks like a cross between a P226 and a SW5906
The South Africans were capable of making a good pistol they made the Z88 a Beretta clone that was a good reliable pistol for the police and military
I've got two of these NIB. Never even shot them.
Oh no thank you you can keep it, thanks for the thought though good video
It reminds me of a Daewoo DP51, although the DP 51 works all of the time.....
This pistol is like a temu copy of the Smith & Wesson 5906.
Ian's Home For Lackluster Firearms spoof series when?
Kind of a shame. This could have been a decent gun with just a little more care in the production.
It's funny how it almost sounds like a video game gun, and looks like one too 😂
South Africa made very good use of the Star BM back in the day.
Pistols like this are why revolvers were used for as long as they were.
This thing came out 60 years after the 1911, revolver people are stubborn in nature is the real reason.
Assembled in New Jersey? I think we found the culprit
Maybe it's a radioactive gun.
I'm surprised you don't follow a hangfire protocol for a failure to fire. It's mandatory at my rifle club, and also something I have to insist upon when refereeing sporting clays.
That thing cycles about as good as the 25 ACP Phoenix arms that I got from my grandma
That poor fly at 7:49 😂
Had this on as background noise just listening, thanks, that made my quick sweep of the comments worthwhile.
I watched at 0.25x speed, can't see a thing. What do you mean?
@@mnieh9869 There is a fly in the slide when he shoots
Did firing it D.A. break it (more)?! I'd take one anyways, funky old pistol. Thanks Ian, looking forward to the rest of the story next week!
I am willing to bet the future owner will get it running a little better
About the quality I’d expect from something designed in Rhodesia.
Been doing that for years. But I honestly can't tell you where I learned it!
I was thinking “what if it actually works properly? What then?” Of course, the Mamba ended up living up to its reputation, so not a problem.
so a stainless CZ 75 does what this was trying to do.
Lube it up if you havent and try NATO Spec 124 gr FMJ and it will probably function better .🤔
A gun so bad, the whole country went out of business.
the thing I don't understand is why they bothered with making it out of stainless steel when they could use high carbon steel and have a pretty good handgun, THEN make a stainless steel version. I mean its a browning type handgun, there's a reason most pistols have that mechanism.
Speaking up super the most bestest pistols. I would love to see the Bren ten make a comeback with a higher cap mag.
I'm looking forward to see a Rogak in action.😊