Or you could just buy a G17/19Originally Posted by GlorifiedMailman
Or you could just buy a G17/19
I'd say the 50/50 comment is spot on. My last two SAs were two Ranger Officers, one in .45 and one in 9mm. I bought the .45 as a baseline competition gun. I added a few mods and shot the piss out of it for years. It had a great trigger right out of the box and ran like a top for many thousands of rounds. It was also shockingly accurate. I worn it out and then rebuilt it and shot it some more before finally sending it down the road. I can honestly say I got more than my monies worth out of that one. I still have the 9mm as my wife quickly took to it as her favorite. It's trigger was initially crap, but the price was right and a trigger job was easily accomplished. I set it up as a twin to the .45. It's accurate and quite reliable. I've honestly been surprised on the latter point. I have to admit I've neglected its maintenance over the last several years, really just lubing it up when my wife wanted to go shooting. Now that I'm back to the 1911 for awhile I've been using it for training, so I finally cleaned it for the first time last week. Both guns had the typical SA extractor, that is to say a shitty extractor with a poorly shaped hook. The .45 got a new one fairly early on, but I took a close look at the 9mm for the first time last week and to be honest, I'm surprised it functions reliably. Being a training/fun gun, it will get a new one when it finally stops functioning. Both guns have the typical labor cutting moves by SA, plunger tubes and ejectors secured by locktite rather than staked or pinned, etc. If I was going to stake the integrity of my meat sack on an SA it would be something on the Operator/TRP level. Everything else they make is in fun/game gun territory, in my opinion.
We may lose and we may win, but we will never be here again.......
It's funny that I jump on the "you'll pay for a quality 1911" dogpile, because until I cut the boys at Alchemy a check this...August I think...literally not a single one of my 1911s that I bought was over $1000.
Hell, excluding the guns I built, the Alchemy Prime will be worth more than my current 4 gun 1911 stable combined.
Yet I've got guns in there that have literally never had a malfunction. My current competition gun is a Springfield RO (which I got used. For 450 bucks), it failed the 10-8 test, so I measured extractor tension, adjusted it, then ran the 10-8 test again, which it passed. A solid Harrison rear sight replaced the shitty adjustable (which was yeeted into the sky never to return), and it is a literal tank now. I ran about 650 rounds through it in a class without lube or cleaning and that's probably the most rounds I've ever fired through a gun without ever lubing it. I have shot it in numerous competitions, drilled with it on the range. I don't know the round count, but I've used up dozens of boxes of SNS cast 230 gr RNL projectiles, and quite a few pounds of powder with that gun. I basically just replace the recoil and firing pin spring at the start of every competition season in April, and when I do that, I detail strip, check for wiggly parts and cracked stuff and replace as needed. So far, nothing is broken. Since passing the 10-8 test, it hasn't had a malfunction.
My RRA poly, I just skipped the foreplay and set the extractor first. It has less of a round count, as a carry gun, but I've put probably 200 rounds of 230gr HST +p through it and a few thousand rounds of the same handloads I make for my competition gun. As a carry gun, I inspect it every few months, keep it lubed and shoot it less frequently. It also passes the 10-8 test on demand. It has never malfunctioned.
The 9mms have been a little more trouble some, but they seem to have made peace with me.
I don't completely trust the Colt and probably will sell it. It still struggles with the 10-8 test and the numerous problems I had with it from the start have probably soured me on the brand that was once considered to be THE GUN to get if you were into 1911s. It's one of those guns like the OP mentions. It'll get to right around a thousand rounds and then choke. It's finicky about mags and just a drama queen. I dislike it quite a bit now actually and haven't shot it in months.
The Kimber passes the 10-8 test handily. It didn't have correct extractor deflection at first and the first two FTE I had with it happened within the first five rounds. I was changing parts immediately. I bought it used. Likely it's previous owner didn't want to deal with an unreliable gun. You can tell it has "barrel bump" too from unfinished lower lug fitting. Likely explains why it isn't as accurate as some of my other 9mm handguns. So far the lugs remain intact with no cracks and I tolerate it. If they begin to fail, I'll fit a new barrel. The reliability fix was easy. I swapped the extractor (to a Wilson or an Ed Brown...I forget which) set correct deflection, and the gun has run like a raped ape over the past few thousand rounds that either myself or my brother has run through it in competition.
See, you don't need an expensive gun to get one that runs, but for me, almost every gun had something to fix. Some had several. And the process of learning that came through a time investment of me learning to do stuff. Online research, hours in the work bench with sandpaper and jeweler files, and no small amount of frustration.
(All of this I learned from my very terrible idea of "Hey, as a complete novice to the 1911 pistol, I think it would be really cool to build one!" )
It was in fact, not really cool. It was miserable. Buuut, Obama had just been elected and nobody had ammo so what the hell else was I gonna do amirite?
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If I was going for a bespoke 1911 Jason would be at the top of my list. I think he's pretty spot on with his assessment. In terms of production guns my choices are Dan Wesson, Colt and Springfield Armory, in that order. DW makes the best offerings in the production class by far. The pistols Colt's been making in the last decade are as good as any they've ever made in terms of function and SA makes a pretty solid product overall. SAs aren't always perfect, but as Jason pointed out, they do a good job of staying within the proper specs. Consequently, it's far easier to repair or replace something, especially when you compare them to the "creative" specs companies like Kimber, S&W, Taurus, etc. often exhibit.
We may lose and we may win, but we will never be here again.......
I mean...what do you view as "reliable enough to trust"?
That's the real question here and the most important one.
If you want 50,000 mean rounds between stoppages..forget it.
If you want 10,000 MRBS without cleaning, lubrication, or spring changes forget it.
If you want 10,000 MRBS with; lubrication every ~1000 rounds or 3-months, recoil spring changes every 5k rounds, and at least wiping the gun down once every 5k rounds...Then yea a 1911 can be "reliable enough to trust".
You might even get 50k MRBS with good lubrication, occasional cleaning, and recoil spring changes. But I suspect you're going to experience a need to replace an extractor, and/or have a magazine induced issues, and/or need to replace a firing pin stop, and/or replace a slide stop during that time. The 1911 design treats the firing pin stop and slide stop as effectively expendable parts with limited lifespans. While a properly fitted barrel will limit the wear on the slide stop and firing pin stop, it won't eliminate it.
Chances of getting TLG-tested HK45-like reliability from a 1911, even a really good one, are approaching zero. You can spend 6000 bucks on the gun, but it ultimately won't go 12.5k between recoil spring changes, and it almost certainly won't go 50k without a part breaking. It's the nature of the beast.
Yep, but we've been exposed to the OP's anxiety about 9mm in his Doubts about 9mm thread.
Not to mention, Glocks and Limpwristing Concerns and Glock 21 Gen 4 Lack of Reliability/Durability.
I think we're doing a good job of talking the OP out of God's Gun.
We may lose and we may win, but we will never be here again.......
All but one of the .GOV groups I’m aware of that actually “hard use” used “hard use” 1911’s (SA PROS) have replaced them with G17/19s.
Last edited by HCM; 07-01-2020 at 11:19 PM.
F*ck me. I thought the OP's username tickled the back of my mind, but being a lazy ass I didn't do a search.
First clue you've been invited to a circle jerk, everyone's sitting around a pump bottle of Jerkins hand lotion.
OTOH, a lot of the members here made this a very worthwhile thread.
"And for a regular dude I’m maybe okay...but what I learned is if there’s a door, I’m going out it not in it"-Duke
"Just because a girl sleeps with her brother doesn't mean she's easy..."-Blues
Here's the gun sitting on the nightstand right now. It's a <600 buck used Kimber TLE/RL II. I have no idea the round count on it when I bought it, it's an LE trade-in. I replaced all the springs in it, because...you know like buying a used car, change the oil and inspect it. I've shot ~1200'ish rounds through it without cleaning. I cleaned it when I bought it. I've lubed it two or three times in the past 2.5 years. I don't really know, I just kind of look at it and if it seems dry I shoot some silicone spray on it.
Like @45dotACP's Kimber, mine has the lower-lugs not perfectly fit. I don't really get barrel bump, but the gun is riding the link a bit, as evidenced by the wear pattern on the slide stop. The contact of the lower lugs is uneven on the slide-stop. I also am a bit undersized in the upper lugs, combined this gives me a bit of barrel hood play at lock-up. Whatever, this gun shoots ~2" groups with 230-grain ball and <2" groups with HST (1.79" currently being the best group) at 25-yards. So it's clearly not a problem. If the lower lugs crack, I'll just fit a Kart and drive on.
It has had zero malfunctions of any type with this gun, including an initial 150 on whatever springs the gun originally had in it when I bought it, with the suspect 7-round Kimber magazine the gun came with. It passed the 10-8 extractor test out of the gate, I've never even had the extractor out of the gun. In fact, I've never had the mainspring housing off of this gun. I just replaced the full length guide rod with a GI-style plug and guide rod setup and replaced all the stupid allen-head screws with proper flat ones. And I replaced the plunger tube spring and plungers, firing pin spring, and mag catch spring (when I replaced the allen-head mag catch lock with a slotted one), because maintenance.
This gun rides frequently on my hip in addition to on the nightstand. I trust it. If it breaks though, I know how to fix it. I don't need a $6k 1911 to have one that works...but if I'm spending the kind of coinage that buys a vacation for the wife and I on a gun, it damn sure better work. Which is to say, I kind of expect lower-end guns (<$1500 guns) to potentially need remedial work, but I expect >$3k guns to work right the fuck out of the gate and stay working as long as I maintain them.
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