I had a chance to speak with Steve about a few of the details of his work:
He essentially fixed the inertial feeding problem by utilizing a custom 20# spring, cut to his specs. He also included a red 18# spring as well.
He said that the grip safety from the Colt factory was pretty much garbage and did not cover the trigger properly. He said the easiest fix for this issue was just to fit a new safety and call it a day.
I was surprised and impressed when he told me he did not need to test fire it to know that it runs well now. He knew exactly what my issue was, how to fix it, and that it was fixed. And dammit, he was right.
Would you mind explaining what you mean by inertia feeding problem? I’m not familiar with the term “inertia feeding”.
I’m no gun smith, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express once, so here goes my explanation:
With hot ammo, the slide is cycling faster than the pistol can feed. The last round of the magazine, with the least amount of tension on it from the mag spring, is fed by inertia into the breach. This round is left loose out of the magazine, the slide stop is engaged, and the slide locks back with a live round not chambered and not in the magazine.
My 1911 was only doing this with +P ammo, not a good thing for a duty weapon with Ranger +P in it. With a much heavier recoil spring, the slide speed is slowed down significantly and now can manage cycling even the hottest of loads.