back in november I purchased a SA operator. I’ve put about 530 round through this gun and it’s cycled just fine however the pistol will just barely eject the last case and sometimes it will get stuck in the port or caught in the feed lips of the mag. I’m no pistol smith but I believe it’s due to a bad/improperly tuned extractor. the problem didn’t reveal itself right away but just today it became very bad. it’s done this with the two original mags and two 8 rounch chip mccormick shooting star mags. So it’s getting shipped back to the factory at their expense to get fixed. also I just recently noticed that the front sight was ever so slightly bent to the left. what I believe happened it that the person who installed the sight didn’t open up the dovetail slot enough and forced the sight into the too-tight slot and bent it in the process as indicated by the sight base being recessed on the left and protruding on the right. I forgot to discuss this with the CS rep I talked to but she told me to type a note with everything I want fixed on the gun so I added that on there too. these two issues would be hard to pick up by the QC department, especially since the extractor didn’t act up on me until about 3 weeks ago but whoever installed the front sight probably should have known better.
aside from those two issues and a few minor tool marks on the side of the trigger guard which are hard to spot, the gun has been very good and is put together well in all other aspects. slide to frame is tight, beavertail is fit nicely for an off the self production gun in this price range, and the trigger is pretty good. I don’t have a scale but the website says about 4.5lbs and I’d say that’s about right. Besides the extraction issue mentioned I have had no other malfunctions, the gun feeds well and locks back on every empty magazine as far as I can remember.
I fully expect Springfield to make everything right and I imagine after I get it back I’ll be very satisfied with the gun. I’ll post updates as I get them. as of right now I wouldn’t tell anyone not to consider a springfield armory 1911 or an operator model but I would warn when purchasing ANY gun even a brand new one give it a VERY close look. do some homework before hand and know what to look for. Impulse buying a gun is usually not a good idea.
hahaha. yes I’ve also purchased many a firearm much too hastily. I would probably avoid 1911s all together if I could go back. I do like them but for what I spent on this one I could have got 2 glocks and if anything went wrong with them I could fix it myself.
yeah, after the first time it malfunctioned I started researching the problem and found threads dating back to '01 about Springfield having extractor problems. I’m not nearly as impressed with SA as I was before.
The plus side to this is it is a simple fix (though you always hope you won’t have trouble with a new gun) and most everything I am reading says the gun runs great afterwards.
I had thought about tweaking it myself but since it’s a brand new gun I figured I’d make them do it. plus the bent front sight I’m making them fix. I imagine the warranty repair shop might put a little more attention into a gun coming back for work as opposed to one of hundreds running down an assembly line. I don’t know how SA builds their pistols but I know that doing the same thing repeatedly can get tiresome and it gets hard to see things sometimes, even if one guy is doing the whole gun.
Sounds like extractor clocking. The extractor tension is correct, allowing most of the magazine to eject properly(but probably erractically). But when the last round is extracted, there are no other rounds below it in the magazine to support it and it will get forced into the lips of the magazine. This will also sometimes be seen with a crushed brass casing. Like a horizontal stovepipe.
Replace the FPS to stop the extractor from rotating. I also recommend replacing the extractor if you are fitting an new FPS anyways. Wilson Combat extractor and an oversized EGW FPS should set you straight. I find Ed Brown extractor claws are a little long.
well being that the gun is brand new I just sent it back already and they should be working on it now. the ejection was pretty consistent with the exception of the last round. I chambered a live round, took the mag out and then slowly retracted the slide and the round was not being held tight to the breech face as it should be. however the extractor clocking does make sense since the gun worked fine and then quickly started malfunctioning.
So it’s been three years, time for a follow up. The gun went back for this same issue three times. Each time it was “fixed” and a few hundred rounds later it would malfunction again. Finally they replaced it with a new gun just recently. I’m only at 350 rounds but so far it seems to be ejecting just fine. The cases get thrown all over the place in a 3 o’clock to 5 o’clock area but I haven’t seen any that looked like they fell short nor have I had any other issues with this new gun. I’ve been video’ing my range time with this pistol and am going to see if I can get through the 2000 round challenge.
