[ Test: Mud ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and if you saw, any of my previous videos on the Laugo Alien
you'll know that I pretty much immediately fell in love with this thing.
It is a magnificent pistol to shoot,
and I would love to use it as my standard competition pistol
for things up to and including like Desert Brutality and Finnish Brutality.
However, that means it has to meet a certain level of adverse condition reliability,
which I haven't seen anyone else do any sort of testing on.
So I'm going to do it, because if the gun can't handle some of these tests we're going to do,
well, then I'm not going to be using it as a competition pistol, but if it can,
and it can give me the confidence in its reliability, then fantastic, we're going to be good to go.
So we're going to go ahead and start with a mud test.
I'll fire a few rounds through the gun just to show you that it works, which obviously it does.
I'm going to go ahead and plug the muzzle with a little squishy ear plug,
because I don't need to get mud in the muzzle, that could actually be dangerous.
And I have swapped the top strap out for the iron sight top strap
because I am not interested in mud testing the red dot optic.
Now if we look at this, there are some gaps in between the slide and the top strap here.
... There's a very real potential for crap to get down in there,
and I'm not really sure exactly what the consequence of that is.
We have a hammer mechanism up here, who knows?
But, I will say full disclosure: Laugo gave me this pistol.
Which to my mind actually means there is less conflict of interest.
I think most people, who actually buy these for their immense retail price
are going to be very reticent to do things like dump them in scratchy, slimy mud.
So let's do a couple of rounds here, show you that the gun's running properly.
It's a fantastic pistol, of course it's running properly.
And then I'm going to plug this guy up.
Double check that thing that it is in fact empty.
There we go.
And I have a 16 round magazine, we'll load that in there.
We'll set this down, and let's go get some mud.
I kind of feel like I'm panning for gold here.
Alright.
So chamber is empty - just confirm that.
Magazine is loaded, chamber is empty.
We'll leave the magazine in. So it's going to go in the mud.
... In the mud, out of the mud. Pull the plug, muzzle obstructions can be weird.
And then rack it and start shooting.
Ready?
- Jesus.
- Like I said, I don't think anyone else is really out there interested in doing this sort of thing
to this very nice Laugo Alien.
My apologies to Jan for doing this to your gorgeous pistol.
Don't want to get mud down in the barrel.
Bloop.
Here we go, you ready?
- That's not promising.
- So I am not getting the slide far enough back to chamber a round.
Still not getting it, quite.
Ah, come on.
Alright, we may have gone a little overboard on the very beginning.
We want to keep this, because we need it again.
OK, that may be the answer for this.
Oh man, this feels scratchy.
- I wonder if we got gunk into the gas chamber?
- No, it can't be gunk into the gas ... well I don't see how it could have really got in that deep.
But, I think we might be ...
OK. ... It now has a round chambered. Are you ready? - Whoo hoo!
- Pleugh!
We now have an empty chamber.
That did not go as well as I was hoping.
However, once I was able to get enough of the crap out to get the slide all the way back, then it ran.
So let's try it again.
Wash off my ear plug here.
The earplug is now full of water ...
and will not squish.
I did not know that squishy earplugs absorb water, learn something every day.
There we go.
Alright, so ... if we were to do something that is slightly less severe.
Plop into the side of the mud.
It locked open on an empty magazine.
Slide's all the way in battery.
So that's one of the good things about this gun ... is the barrel is fixed.
So one of the common things that causes problems on Browning tilting-barrel guns
with this sort of abuse, is you get a little bit of gunk locked in such that
the barrel can't move properly into position, and that'll jam it up.
Because this is a fixed barrel we don't have that problem.
Safe it again. So chamber's empty.
Our issues were all here at the back.
Well, I think actually they may not have been.
Oh, OK. ... Oh, ha - I had a rock between the trigger and the frame.
Oh, and I also only had one round left in that mag, so it's locked open empty again.
And I didn't bring the third magazine over.
Excuse me one moment. - ... That one. - Do you have the third mag?
Ah, cameraman's boganing my mag. - Da da dah!
Alright, so my glasses are now covered in mud.
The Laugo is now covered in mud and smoking, which is pretty cool.
It took me a little bit of time to be able to get the thing to actually cycle all the way backwards.
... So it's not a perfect result,
but I'm honestly pretty darn impressed that with this much crap on it, it's still running,
and I'm able to let it lock open.
Part of this may be the breech face is significantly lower down in the gun
than we would have with a typical Browning style pistol.
Going back to the whole low bore axis thing of the Alien.
And what that means is that it's kind of out of the way of little bits of mud
falling off the top of the slide or the ejection port.
Again, something that causes problems in typical pistols.
So ... like normally that's exactly where we'd have problems.
There'd be some little bit of dirt on the breech face
or on the barrel locking lugs that would cause a problem.
The trigger's still working.
This thing looks awful, but ... I'd call that a not quite 100%, but I call that about a 90% success.
And you know what? I think I would be perfectly confident taking this into a muddy environment.
This is far worse than this gun's ever going to get with the protection of a holster in competition.
Or even the occasional like I'm crawling with it, and down it goes into a mud puddle.
I think we are definitely closer to Toyota Hilux levels of reliability here
than we are the sort of Maserati Italian finicky supercar,
that a lot of people assume this gun must be.
And I'll be honest, I came into this really not knowing if it was going to be
Italian supercar in the garage all the time, or Hilux that you can't stop.
So, this is the first of several tests, I've got a couple more things in mind for it.
But I will chalk that one up as pretty darn successful so far.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.