breech
03-04-2006, 15:52
I initially posted this on 1911forum. I copied and pasted here for the guys who don't go over there..
Picked up a GI-FS model today. Here's my initial review. Sorry but it's a bit long winded.
Initial out of the box impression:
I was worried. Upon inspection of the gun I found slight “problems”. For $300 what do you expect? There were rough spots here and there on the gun. Nothing too drastic that would alarm anyone else. I personally hate cosmetic flaws. I also noticed that the mainspring housing was a bit loose. I could wiggle it a bit even with the mainspring pin inserted. The front sight was also crooked. Surely this thing won't hit POA..
Inspection time and dry fire function testing:
I COULD NOT pull the slide all the way to the rear. There was so much friction between the slide and frame. It felt gritty. I literally had to force the slide all the way back with my strength. When I finally got the slide pulled back, it stayed there under friction. Hmmmm… Mind you this was with recoil spring tension.
The slide and frame were not 100% with each other, if you will. It looked like they didn’t finish lapping the two together. That was a major concern. I had to slap the slide in the rear to get it to slide forward. Uh oh. The hammer followed the slide. Not safe.
I detailed stripped the gun and gave it a thorough cleaning hoping that it was just dirty. Every piece of the gun was individually scrubbed and clean.
I lubed up the gun and put it back together. Slide was still acting up so I put in a used 18.5# recoil spring to see if it would help out. It helped the slide close a bit easier but pulling it back was still difficult.
Next were the safety checks. The gun failed horribly. My first guess was that the sear spring wasn’t adjusted properly. I took it out and did some tension of the leaves. That was the ticket. The safety checks passed and the hammer no longer followed the slide during the slide slapping and slide drop. With that out of the way I had to take care of the slide and frame friction. I ended up hand cycling it dozens of times. I finally loosened up a bit. I figured live round firing would be the solution to this problem.
Range time:
I bought 100 rounds of Magtech 230gr ball ammo. It’s cheap ammo IMO. If it can feed Magtech, surely it can feed anything on the market. I also brought along 50 rounds of Federal HST carry ammo.
I had 3 total mags for the gun. Factory Novak mag, a Springfield plain-jane 7 rounder, and a CMC Power Mag 8.
For some reason I could not get the gun to load any rounds with the CMC mag. It would jam every round into the feedramp and get caught. I would have to eject the mag and clear it. I never got the mag to load and fire, period. Anyway I took the rounds out of the CMC mag and loaded the other two mags up. Low and behold BANG! 150 rounds were shot out of the two other mags without a hiccup. The gun loosened up quite a bit also. There’s still a bit of friction maybe the last ¼” of the slide cycle. You can definitely feel it. I’ll shoot 300-500 more rounds through it to see if it gets totally loose and smooth.
The gun did shoot POA. I had a fellow shooter put a few mags through the gun. He was hitting POA also. That’s a good thing.
Conclusion:
Although my gun had minor out of the box problems, it ended being 100% functional. That’s what I wanted to see. All these reviews had me going. I would have been really disappointed if I had constant FTF and FTE’s. There were no gun related malfunctions today. I'll give an updated review in a few days to a week.
http://htt.smugmug.com/photos/58541263-M.jpg
http://htt.smugmug.com/photos/58541265-M.jpg
Good primer strike
http://htt.smugmug.com/photos/58541266-M.jpg
The flaws
http://htt.smugmug.com/photos/58541268-M.jpg
http://htt.smugmug.com/photos/58541269-M.jpg
http://htt.smugmug.com/photos/58541262-M.jpg
Picked up a GI-FS model today. Here's my initial review. Sorry but it's a bit long winded.
Initial out of the box impression:
I was worried. Upon inspection of the gun I found slight “problems”. For $300 what do you expect? There were rough spots here and there on the gun. Nothing too drastic that would alarm anyone else. I personally hate cosmetic flaws. I also noticed that the mainspring housing was a bit loose. I could wiggle it a bit even with the mainspring pin inserted. The front sight was also crooked. Surely this thing won't hit POA..
Inspection time and dry fire function testing:
I COULD NOT pull the slide all the way to the rear. There was so much friction between the slide and frame. It felt gritty. I literally had to force the slide all the way back with my strength. When I finally got the slide pulled back, it stayed there under friction. Hmmmm… Mind you this was with recoil spring tension.
The slide and frame were not 100% with each other, if you will. It looked like they didn’t finish lapping the two together. That was a major concern. I had to slap the slide in the rear to get it to slide forward. Uh oh. The hammer followed the slide. Not safe.
I detailed stripped the gun and gave it a thorough cleaning hoping that it was just dirty. Every piece of the gun was individually scrubbed and clean.
I lubed up the gun and put it back together. Slide was still acting up so I put in a used 18.5# recoil spring to see if it would help out. It helped the slide close a bit easier but pulling it back was still difficult.
Next were the safety checks. The gun failed horribly. My first guess was that the sear spring wasn’t adjusted properly. I took it out and did some tension of the leaves. That was the ticket. The safety checks passed and the hammer no longer followed the slide during the slide slapping and slide drop. With that out of the way I had to take care of the slide and frame friction. I ended up hand cycling it dozens of times. I finally loosened up a bit. I figured live round firing would be the solution to this problem.
Range time:
I bought 100 rounds of Magtech 230gr ball ammo. It’s cheap ammo IMO. If it can feed Magtech, surely it can feed anything on the market. I also brought along 50 rounds of Federal HST carry ammo.
I had 3 total mags for the gun. Factory Novak mag, a Springfield plain-jane 7 rounder, and a CMC Power Mag 8.
For some reason I could not get the gun to load any rounds with the CMC mag. It would jam every round into the feedramp and get caught. I would have to eject the mag and clear it. I never got the mag to load and fire, period. Anyway I took the rounds out of the CMC mag and loaded the other two mags up. Low and behold BANG! 150 rounds were shot out of the two other mags without a hiccup. The gun loosened up quite a bit also. There’s still a bit of friction maybe the last ¼” of the slide cycle. You can definitely feel it. I’ll shoot 300-500 more rounds through it to see if it gets totally loose and smooth.
The gun did shoot POA. I had a fellow shooter put a few mags through the gun. He was hitting POA also. That’s a good thing.
Conclusion:
Although my gun had minor out of the box problems, it ended being 100% functional. That’s what I wanted to see. All these reviews had me going. I would have been really disappointed if I had constant FTF and FTE’s. There were no gun related malfunctions today. I'll give an updated review in a few days to a week.
http://htt.smugmug.com/photos/58541263-M.jpg
http://htt.smugmug.com/photos/58541265-M.jpg
Good primer strike
http://htt.smugmug.com/photos/58541266-M.jpg
The flaws
http://htt.smugmug.com/photos/58541268-M.jpg
http://htt.smugmug.com/photos/58541269-M.jpg
http://htt.smugmug.com/photos/58541262-M.jpg
