Picked up one of these recently. During the first break-in session (lots of Slip2K) of 50 rounds I had about three failures to completely eject with Federal semiauto match ammo. I’m not too concerned at this point because they all occurred with the firing of the first round in the mag, which was a time of maximum slide friction. I was only loading 5 rounds at a time, but it never occurred on anything but with that first round. Otherwise it ran nicely. It’s a likeable little cuss; looks like a GI gun that went through the wash and shrunk.
Trigger pull is around 6.5 pounds, BUT it has massive creep mid-pull. I’m going to run another 50 rounds through it, and then detail strip it to see what I can see about the hammer/sear surfaces. It might be something I can address; but I have a keen sense of my limitations with 1911 triggers. If need be, anyone know of a smith who does/can work on this little downsized 1911?
Well–that was a bust. SO–took the little guy down and got after it like it was a minature 1991–which it rather faithfully is. Good quality. The internals are virtually the same thing except for the dorky mag safety. Sear looked exactly right so did not touch it. On the other hand, the hammer hooks were angled down noticeably to create a nasty, heavy pull. After reviewing the Kuhnhausen book for the umpteenth time I oiled up a nice square hard Arkansas stone and levelled the hooks to a 90 degree angle. Didn’t go any further than I absolutely had to for starters to see what the results were. Could (and may) take them down some more for a 100% level shelf–or bevel the back of the sear surface–but quit there for now. The pull came down to about 5 1/2 pounds and while there is still some creep in there, it’s much reduced. Put about 50 rounds through it and it was noticeably easier to manage. Nice little gun.
So far I have about 180 rounds through the little guy, and the occasional FTFs are way down; only one in the last 40 rounds.
Doing takedown on this is like doing a regular 1991 with gloves on; it’s just SMALL. Also, watch the plungers and coil spring assembly for the slide stop and safety: even though I’ve been detail stripping 1911s for about a thousand years, this one got away from me. Next time I’ll do it inside a bag and not have to crawl around looking for it on the floor.