My Norinco 1911-A1 is probably the most reliable 1911 I’ve ever owned. The TRP has even given me a few feeding issues, so I’ve thought about adding a few things to the Norc to make it a little more shootable. The sights are still lousy, being only marginally better than USGIs, and the safety is the older 1911 (non-A1) style, and is pretty sharp. I’ve also heard that while the frames and slides are tough steel, the internals wear out faster than average, so I was considering changing out the guts for Ed Brown, Wilson, etc.
Has anyone had any problems fitting parts to Norinco guns?
Nice work from chuck as usual. One of the HUgE issues with 1911’s is people take a functional gun and tinker with it until it is an unreliable scrap heap. If your gun is 100% reliable your best bet is to get new sights and keep everything else as is. With every internal part replacement you roll the dice on making your gun less reliable
I speak of this when people try to drop I parts without expert help which usually ends very badly.
Send the gun to a reputable 1911 smith and it would probably be fine. There is an endless stream of threads on the web about changing a few parts in a previous reliable gun ( 1911 is king of this with the glock a close second) and then posting how the gun no longer runs
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Better sights, makes total sense, but if it feeds reliably and shoots well, leave it alone and enjoy it. If you’re bored and need a project, go find a project gun. That said, if you just have to tinker with the Norinco, I would send it to Rogers.
It’s called the Recover Grip. It’s a one piece polymer grip and rail. It seems pretty durable and doesn’t interfere with the operation of the gun. It’s a 50$ option to adding a rail to your 1911. It’s not pretty but it seems to work.
Up here in Canada, Norc’s are common and cheap.some dealer are selling 10000rds of Norc 45ammo and a Norc 1911 for around $600.00 Cdn. Lots of guys getThem because of thatgeneral consensus is solid quality steal and they run well. Fit and finish , Well that’s a different story.parts interchangability is hit and miss.some guys are cleaning them up (some models come clean with no Chinese markings not even Norc on them
to each his own. In my opinion you are trying yo make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. ymmv.
My slide stop broke where the barrel lugs/link ride. But those Nornincos were great blasters. The hard chromed barrels were nice. But I read that a lot of them were poorly fit to the slide.
I love the Norincos. I have four of them (mostly stock.) They are very reliable. The two problems I have had with them were that two of the four had to have the barrels replaced because headspace was on the generous side. The firing pin retaining plates on three were undersized, leading to extractor clocking. I fit an oversized plate from EGW and now they run like scalded dogs. I once asked about the quality of their internal parts over on the 1911 Forum. The consensus seemed to be that they were at least on par with the WWII GI guns.
