In 2002 I bought a Kimber Eclipse Pro II. For quality and price you couldn’t beat it. Because the Eclipse was such a damn good gun, I bought a Warrior in 2005. The Warrior is reliable and accurate but it seems the tolerances of the receiver and slide are not near as tight as the Eclipse. When I wiggle the Warrior in my hand you can feel the slide vibrating on the frame.
Also, the SS barrel on the Warrior looks like sh*t, it pitted with rust within the first month of owning it- the pits are so small I cannot remove the rust. I haven’t seen such a poor display of barrel finish on a thousand-dollar gun in my life… At least it shoots straight.
Can someone explain what, if anything happened to Kimber’s QC?
I also heard a rumor that Kimber was having parts contracted out to Brazil…and that they are not 100% USA Made anymore.
I am completely talking out my rear end, but perhaps the tolerances are looser because it is the commercial clone of the Det 1 pistol? Maybe SYSCOM wanted a little more play for use in adverse conditions. That would be my guess.
When I still had 1911s, I prefered the slight “looseness” of my Colts. My Colts NEVER suffered a stoppage, while 3 different Kimbers (one full size and two different Pro Carry’s) suffered many failures to feed no matter what mag used.
My Stainless Kimber’s finish did the same thing. It is a 17 Mach2 that was having issues with reliablitly. It was sent back and Kimber did make it run correctly, new barrle, bushing, trigger, and hammer. Sadly they left the pitted up slide with it.
It is going to be getting cerakoted soon, as every time I look at it now I get annoyed.
ETA Before shipping it I had spoken to Kimber and described the problem of function and of their SS pitting up, I then attached a note saying the same thing. When I got the gun back with the slide still messed up. I called them again, and the very polite person on the other end of the phone told me that there was no mention of an pitting on any paperwork they had.
Consider the end user for which the Warrior was designed and you could justify looser tolerances. I isn’t expected to be a bulls-eye gun . . . I can’t speak for QC on their newer guns, but my Series 1 has been extremely reliable and is still pretty tight after tens of thousands of rounds.
My barrel has seen some slight oxidation from sweat due to IWB carry, but a good cleaning has taken that off every time.
I also believe Kimber proprietary coating is probably the weakest in the industry. The rail area where I have my X200 attached is almost bare metal. Kimpro II is CRAP.
I just sent my brand new Derert Warrior back as I had 10 jams on my first 150 rounds during breakin. I used 6 differnt mags and 4 types of ammo and still had problems. For the high price of their guns I think they need to spend more to make sure their products stand up to their “Out Of the Box Reliability” advertisement.
Well Dennis at Kimbers custom shop said it would take 6 weeks to get it back. I let him know I was military and that I had purchased it as a sidearm. He called today and said it was fixed and would be back in my hands by Monday, which is quick as they picked it up this past Wednesday.
He said the chamber was way too tight, they fixed that, polished the feedramp(im not sure why it wouldnt come that way) taking the Kimpro off the feedramp, tuned the extractor and a half a dozen other things. I was half asleep when he called this morning. Im sure she will work like a charm now.
I initially had out of batteries and failure to feeds.
I’m just used to seeing much worse and have dealt with much worse- SW is one I will never buy from again. They’d rather not even fix their own problems…
The two Kimbers I’ve owned were very nice. The first thing I did was ream the chamber on both (Kimber has issues with tight chambers) and install an EGW oversized firing pin stop and Wilson Bulletproof extractor. IMO, these things will prevent about 90% of issues with the 1911, the remaining 10% being mags and ammo.
My current Kimber (Full size stainless II) is about half way between sloppy loose and tight match fit on the frame/slide rails. I prefer it this way so I never bothered to tighten it up.
I am having the Same problem with my Desert Warrior out of every 50 rnds 3+ jams different types of ammo and different mags… even does it with wilson combat mags. Both FTF and FTE but more on the FTE side. I heard through the grape vine that alot of people are replacing the “POS” extractor that kimber uses. I am going to send it back as well. -Is my third and will be my last Kimber … until I start seeing better things out of the company.
Wilson Combat here I come!
Great post… I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one!
Virtually none of the “manufacturers” use high quality extractors and fitted firing pin stops. STI is the only one that seems to use parts that aren’t MIM everywhere. If you get a Wilson you’re still getting a manufactured gun but it’s going to be fit better due to the fact that rather than use all MIM parts which can be dimensionally iffy Wilson uses CNC machined barstock and forged stuff which is much easier to fit due to increased control over the manufacturing process. You most likely don’t need to do that much “fitting” with the pile of parts that becomes a WC pistol.
That being said, every “production” gun I’ve owned has had a crappy extractor and a firing pin stop that rattles around in the slide unless under tension. Since an EGW FP stop is about $15 and a good extractor is $25 I don’t see it as a big deal to take a production gun and fix it like the factory should have. IMO WC and some others are waaaay overpriced.
If your extractor is free to rotate very much it’s going to jack your feeding and ejection all up.
EGW stops are nice and cheap but mine took a lot of filing for it to fit in my Loaded. I understood that might be the case but there are a lot of places to file and fit. The EGW trigger had less to worry about as far as places to file and fit but then again, you want the trigger to fit even tighter and it’s very easy to foul that whole operation up and end up with not much better than stock…
-Is my third and will be my last Kimber … until I start seeing better things out of the company.