According to RIA’s website, the frames are not forged.
Fair questions, but way off topic.
Out of the box eat anything, low maintenance, high reliablity.
My 9mm 1911 tactical had quite a few hiccups in the first couple hundred rounds with the magazine that came with it. A Trypp magazine later it works like a charm. Now even the original magazine works well.
I will say that I’ll never understand people’s obsession with 1911’s. You can pay a boat-load of money for a gun that has to be broken in, tinkered with, and/or polished half the time to run like a top. Any other gun with the same kind of record would be called junk.
Don’t get me wrong, its fun to shoot, points well. I can nail sheep and deer silhouette off hand all day long at 75-125 yards with the factory sites. . . . but I wouldn’t pay for anything more than a RIA at this point.
Out of the box reliability. Extreme durability. Good aftermarket support. Extremely easy to shoot well. Runs extremely well suppressed. Doesn’t require an extreme amount of tinkering to run correctly. If you have to tinker around, it’s stupid simple to do a detail strip. Forgiving as hell in regards to maintenence. Magazine capacity. Decent accuracy. Perfect size. Lightest weight combat handgun currently manufactured. (AFAIK) etc.
How could you even ask that?
The store/range I work at has 3 of these that have been in service for over a year and a half, and this is in the rental business in Las Vegas. We see tons of customers and I would bet that each of these guns have at least 20-30K if not more, with minimal problems and only small parts breakages.
I pick up my new RIA M1911A1 9mm pistol tomorrow. I looked at the Kimber and Springfield Armory 1911 9mm pistols for twice as much money and could not see why they were twice the cost. A local gun smith has worked on a few of the RIA pistols and he said they are durable. He does work for a local gun shop that has sold more than 20 of them and he has only had to tune one to get it to feed properly. All of the rest of them ran well right out of the box.
We will see how mine shoots tomorrow.
I am one of the obsessive 1911 suckers. I think you may have answered your question though by stating you consistently make hits at extended ranges. They are ergonomic and “shootable”. For mass issue though, they are a headache.
I fired some rounds out of my RIA 1911 Tactical FS 9mm yesterday. It fed and fired PMC 115g factory ball and all of my 147g reloads without any problems. Recoil was light and follow up shots were fast and easy.
The pistol groups 10 shots in 3-1/2" @ 15 yards from the offhand position. POI is 2" low, which I can remedy by working on the front sight with a file and stone. My Glock 19 will group better with the same ammunition. Time to work on load development.
Update 06/11/13:
I filed down the front sight to raise the POI and increased the tension on the extractor. At 25 yards factory 115g ball ammunition grouped 3-1/2". My 124g reloads grouped 2-1/2" at 25 yards. My 147g reloads grouped under 2" at 25 yards with a few 3/4" groups. It appears the RIA 9mm likes 147g projectiles the best.
Not bad results for a $500 handgun.