Hey all. Here is my situation; I have a 4" Kimber SIS that I love minus the slide serrations, but I fixed that with grip tape in the SIS which actually works well. Anyways, at around 600 rounds the front Meprolight night sight lost its glow, my assumption was that the vial containing the tritium broke. Kimber sent a new front sight to me, and the gunsmith at my range swapped it out with the old one. Everything was fine for the next 600 rounds or so. Just yesterday I was dry firing my pistol and I noticed that the front sight was dim again!!! Sure enough, I went into my dark bathroom and the front sight seems to have broken again!!! I took it back to my range and those great guys said they would take care of it once again for free. Here is the problem, Kimber said they would fix the sight, but they want me to send my slide to them… why can’t they just send me another sight??? Kimber also said that I should make sure to change the recoil spring every 700 rounds or the recoil will be to forceful and that can break the night sights??? Really??? Any one had an issue with 4" Kimbers needing their recoild springs replaced that often???
What should I do?? Has any one had this problem with Meprolight sights??? Should I send my slide to Kimber or buy some different sights for my gun?? If I should get some new sights what do you recommend? Fiber optic front…Warren staight eight…any ideas would be appreciated, but any sights that I switch to must have a ledge on the rear sight for one handed manipulation. Thanks for the help.
If you really beat on a night sight when installing it, you can break the vials. Kimber 1911 sights are known to be VERY tight in their dovetails. It sounds like they want to do the install so they can be sure it’s getting properly installed.
Yeah I am sure that is Kimber’s reasoning behind wanting me to ship the slide back to them. My hesitation is that this is the second time the vial has busted, and I do not want it to happen again. So, do I go through the nonsense of sending in my slide and wait for it to happen a 3rd time or do I go a different way and buy new sights???
Maybe instead of buying myself a Kimber I should have purchased a M&P45 instead:D
The 4" Kimbers call for recoil spring replacement ~ 800 rounds. The turn-around time should not take that long for them to replace the front sight (unless there is a big backlog). The dovetails are pretty tight.
Yeah, I just decided to take my head out of the sand and look into that. I seem to have found the same info on spring replacement, who would have thought… I guess I will have to purchase a couple of those to have them on hand.
I think that I will change the sights. To do the same thing three times and expect a different out come is crazy; so, the question is where do I go now. Heinie…
This is a carry gun and my main home defense gun for the time being because I shoot it more than my 5" 1911 and my Berreta 92. I will be purchasing a M&P in the future and that will become my home defense gun.
yes, I have thought about a fiber optic front, but have not made the leap as of yet, but I think I might put one on my 5" to see if I like them. Up until this point I was hesitant to use them because of the stories I have heard of the tube falling out, but I guess they can not be worse then these last two front sights I have had!!
No, I do not have a light attached to my SIS, no rail…
I agree. I had my colt sent off last year to Novak to have a rear sight installed. Very fast turn around time. As far as the fiber optic sight goes (novak sells them too) Yeh they do break but rarely. I’ve got Brazos custom lightning rod fiber optic sights on both my 1911s and LOVE them. The only time I had one break was when dummy me didn’t take the rod out before I installed the sight and hit it with a drift punch. Besides, if you do break one in a bad situation you still have a front post.
Yes, change the recoil spring every 700 - 800 rounds…if you get failures to return to battery then sooner. I’ve sent kimber quite a few slides in the past and they always did a great job replacing the sights. Just about all kimbers I bought where Series 1’s with the older sights and they replaced all of them with new ones. No problems.
Thanks all for the info. Before I send it back to Kimber and wait, has any one else replaced the sights in a Kimber with anything else??? If so, how did it go??