[mini14jac]

Here are my impressions of a new CD ECS.
It is an "Officer-sized" gun.

I had never shot a 1911-styled gun before, and I didn't want to spend $500+ not knowing if I would like it or not.
(I have only been shooting .45 cal for a few weeks.)
This CD was priced at $349, so I thought it would be a good beginning.

First impressions:
1. Overall fit and finish seem quite good, nice wood on the stocks, deep bluing, no machine marks on the gun.
2. The interior of the slide did show some machine marks, but all parts seem well made.

I put in two different range sessions.
Around 250 fmj, and about 70 jhp.

The Pro:
1. The gun fed Winchester, and CCI fmj with no problem, and over 50 rounds of Winchester "Personal Protection" jhp over the two sessions with no problems.
2. Most shots tended to go in one hole, approx. 1.5" across.
3. Empties ejected cleanly, about 4' to the front, right.
4. Recoil seemed tamer than with my Ruger P97, before the Ruger got a Hogue grip sleeve.
5. My gunsmith said the gun seemed well made, and used standard 1911 parts.

The Con:
1. The slide tended to lock open prematurely, with 1-2 rounds left in the mag. I could shoot 2 or 3 mags with no failures, then it would show up on the next 2 mags full. (This happened with the factory mags, and 3 Chip McCormick Shooting Star 7rd mags.)
On examination, the bullets were bumping the slide stop. A few minutes with a file, or Dremel tool should fix this.
2. The trigger seemed overly hard for a single action, so I trashed the warranty and dropped it off at the 'smith for a trigger job.
3. All shots group about 3-4" low at 10 and 15 yards with fmj, a little lower with the jhp. Maybe shooter induced, not sure.
I had hoped the trigger job would cure this, but that was not the case.
4. As I was cleaning the gun after the second shoot, the rear sight fell off. (I degreased it, applied some LockTite to the slide and the allen screw, and tightened it down. Problem solved.)
5. About 125 rounds into the second range session, I started getting light strikes on the CCI ammo. I know CCI have hard primers, but I suspect the firing pin channel needs cleaning.
It was still shooting the Winchester just fine.

The list of problems above may seem excessive to some, but I looked on www.1911forum.com and quickly found a Kimber owner having almost the exact same problems with his gun!
He was a little disappointed, but his gun cost probably twice what mine did.

I am not a 1911 expert, but the gun seems like a good beginner gun to me.
I have decided that 1911 guns are not for me, at this time.
I'll get all the bugs out of this one, and make sure it gets a good home.

Overall, I was impressed with the reliability, accuracy, and ease of shooting the gun.
As I stated above, many 1911 owners spend much more on guns that have worse initial range sessions than this one.
If you want to keep the factory warranty intact, they will pay shipping both ways.

If you do a lot of reasearch on later model CD guns, you come up with >50% recommendation.
With their warranty, and low price, I would recommend them to my friends.

[laynlow]

1. Overall fit and finish seem quite good

4. As I was cleaning the gun after the second shoot, the rear sight fell off.

:neener: :uhoh:

[mini14jac]

Yeah, yeah, I know.

Trust me, it happens to the high dollar guns too.

[WhoKnowsWho]

I like my Charles Daly too!

Welcome to the "We don't want to pay big bucks" club

Though I still wouldn't mind a Kimber Eclipse later...

[yotehunter]

My full size CD is probably the best deal I ever got. It had a few problems at first but they were easily fixed, and like you said if you go to 1911.com youll see that everyone has problems with all brands. I put a full length guide rod, shok buff, new trigger and smoothed up the action with my dremil. I have maybe 100.00 extra in it and it now works great.

[gryphon]

Every gun manufacturer has issues with products from time to time.

What really seems to cheese people off is that they paid 3 to 4 times the amount on their Kimber/Les Baer/Wilson, and they can't shoot it any better than my $350 CD.

I'm all for buying quality, but I don't want to spend more money than I need to for what I want.

The CD does everything that I want/need it to do, and there is nothing that the higher priced 1911's have that I would need to spend more money on.

[dodge]

With my full sized Charles Daly I had to replace my recoil spring with a Wolff 18.5 lbs spring as it wouldn't feed hollow points. What was happening was the bullet would nose dive and the factory spring didn't have enough strength to push it on up into the chamber. With hardball it worked everytime. Now that I've changed the spring it works with everything that I've feed it so far. I was shooting it last week with a friend that had a Kimber and it shot as well as his did. I was a bit a better shooter but that was because he has been pistol shooting only about 6 months. While I was watching him shoot I noticed few things that he was doing wrong and I gave him some hints on how to do it better and his shooting improved a little bit but tha best advice that I think I gave him was when he was watching the boob tube to dry fire his pistol getting use to it a bit more. We are planning on getting together today and doing some more shooting and I'll see if he remembers what I told him last week.