dmftoy1
Member
On friday I picked up a new Taurus PT145 (Stainless slide) from my local FFL. It was $367 OTD. ($331 w/o taxes). I was pretty pumped up and wanted to just go out and shoot it but decided that the best thing I could do would be to take it home and clean it first. I did this because I read threads here about the firing pin being gummed up, etc from the factory. When I broke it down to clean it there wasn't much to clean. A couple of patches down the barrel and some brake cleaner through the striker channel and that was about it. I put a couple of drops of Kroil on the frame rails, one drop on the barrel hood, and one drop where the barrel bushing would be on a 1911.
Sunday I was going to put some rounds through it but didn't get a chance. Today I decided that I HAD to shoot this pistol so I stomped out through snow that was just below my knees and put down a big tarp to catch my empties. The temp was 39 degrees but it didn't feel too bad and I had a new pistol to shoot damnit!!
Since I had mixed luck when first trying my XD45 with LSWC's I figured I needed to try some of those and since I didn't want to end up pissed off at the end of my first session if it didn't feed right I brought along some Rainer 200 Gr HP's, and 20 rounds of my SD load. (230 Grain Hornady XTP's).
The first two magazines were the 230 Grain Hornady XTP's over 8 gr. of AA#5. I was amazed that the sights seemed to be pretty well regulated for 15 yards and after missing the first shot I was able to knock down 8 six inch steel circles with 9 shots. So far so good. The first 10 rounds were really wild in terms of where the gun was ejecting brass. It varied from a 4-5 o'clock ejection maybe 15-20 feet away to a 3 o'clock ejection at least 20 feet away. I had a feeling that I was gonna lose a good bunch of brass in the snow. The gun felt pretty good, and the only "issue" that I had to work on was where to put my weakside thumb. If I put it where I'd put it on my other pistols it interfered with the tip of my trigger finger. I eventually settled on riding it on top of my strong side thumb running parallel.
The next magazine I was disappointed. At round 16 I had a failure to fire . . .I then remembered that one of the features of this gun was a second strike capability so I decided to see if it would fire with another trigger pull and voila . .BANG and DING, down went the steel target. Round 17 however failed to go completely into battery. (maybe 16th of an inch out). I'm not sure if it was because I was limp wristing or if my messing around with the grip had screwed something up. It never happened again for the remainder of the shooting.
After the first 20 rounds I pulled out a box of 200 gr. Kead LSWC's. I believe they're out of an H&G #68 mold. These are loaded over 5.0 gr. of Bullseye and were seated to a COL of 1.235 with a WLP primer. I had grabbed these because my Kimber loves them but my XD hates them. I also figured that if anything could screw the gun up it would be that nasty dirty bullseye powder. The PT145 absolutely LOVED these. It ate them up and wore me out moving back and forth to the target rack to setup the steel. The good thing was that the snow started to pack down a bit and it was getting easier to move. There were absolutely no failure to feed, failure to eject, or failure to fire's for the entire 100 rounds of this ammo.
Next up was 100 rounds of Rainer 200 gr. plated HP's over 8.0 gr. of AA#5 with a WLP and a COL of 1.251. This is the load that I had standardized on for practice with my XD45. These felt like they might be a hair long for the magazine but they loaded up fine. I did have to use the loader tool for round 10 and occasionally round 9. I have no clue why this was necessary for these rounds and not for the LSWC's. It could be that my hands were getting cold as I had been out for awhile by now. The first two magazines of these went off like a top and they seemed to be pretty accurate but I wasn't hitting as well as I was with the 200 LSWC's. This could be because I was ripping them off about as fast as I could or it could be that I just suck. :O After the first shot of the third magazine (round 152) I had a failure to feed. I was a bit bummed because up until this point the gun had been running like a top. Closer inspection of the failure revealed the the moron who had seated the magazine hadn't really seated it. A firm seat on the magazine and the slide flew forward chambering the round. That was the only failure for the remaining 68 rounds. (220 rounds total fired) After about the first 30 rounds the ejection pattern really settled down on this pistol. It was basically ejecting between 3 and 4 o'clock about 15-20 feet. Most of the empties ended up within a 3-4 foot area in a nice little pile. (Always a good thing for someone who reloads.)
Overall I really like this pistol. I think I might just leave it "uncleaned" for awhile and see how long it will take until it starts jamming . . . I don't consider #152 to have anything to do with the pistol as I believe if I had seated the magazine it wouldn't have happened. I actually am surprised that the first round chambered when I dropped the slide. I'm not sure how long I'll be able keep myself from cleaning BUT I think it'd be interesting to see how long it could go.
Here's some gratuitous gun porn . . Sorry for the high resolution of the images, I'm not completely sure how to reduce them.
Sunday I was going to put some rounds through it but didn't get a chance. Today I decided that I HAD to shoot this pistol so I stomped out through snow that was just below my knees and put down a big tarp to catch my empties. The temp was 39 degrees but it didn't feel too bad and I had a new pistol to shoot damnit!!
Since I had mixed luck when first trying my XD45 with LSWC's I figured I needed to try some of those and since I didn't want to end up pissed off at the end of my first session if it didn't feed right I brought along some Rainer 200 Gr HP's, and 20 rounds of my SD load. (230 Grain Hornady XTP's).
The first two magazines were the 230 Grain Hornady XTP's over 8 gr. of AA#5. I was amazed that the sights seemed to be pretty well regulated for 15 yards and after missing the first shot I was able to knock down 8 six inch steel circles with 9 shots. So far so good. The first 10 rounds were really wild in terms of where the gun was ejecting brass. It varied from a 4-5 o'clock ejection maybe 15-20 feet away to a 3 o'clock ejection at least 20 feet away. I had a feeling that I was gonna lose a good bunch of brass in the snow. The gun felt pretty good, and the only "issue" that I had to work on was where to put my weakside thumb. If I put it where I'd put it on my other pistols it interfered with the tip of my trigger finger. I eventually settled on riding it on top of my strong side thumb running parallel.
The next magazine I was disappointed. At round 16 I had a failure to fire . . .I then remembered that one of the features of this gun was a second strike capability so I decided to see if it would fire with another trigger pull and voila . .BANG and DING, down went the steel target. Round 17 however failed to go completely into battery. (maybe 16th of an inch out). I'm not sure if it was because I was limp wristing or if my messing around with the grip had screwed something up. It never happened again for the remainder of the shooting.
After the first 20 rounds I pulled out a box of 200 gr. Kead LSWC's. I believe they're out of an H&G #68 mold. These are loaded over 5.0 gr. of Bullseye and were seated to a COL of 1.235 with a WLP primer. I had grabbed these because my Kimber loves them but my XD hates them. I also figured that if anything could screw the gun up it would be that nasty dirty bullseye powder. The PT145 absolutely LOVED these. It ate them up and wore me out moving back and forth to the target rack to setup the steel. The good thing was that the snow started to pack down a bit and it was getting easier to move. There were absolutely no failure to feed, failure to eject, or failure to fire's for the entire 100 rounds of this ammo.
Next up was 100 rounds of Rainer 200 gr. plated HP's over 8.0 gr. of AA#5 with a WLP and a COL of 1.251. This is the load that I had standardized on for practice with my XD45. These felt like they might be a hair long for the magazine but they loaded up fine. I did have to use the loader tool for round 10 and occasionally round 9. I have no clue why this was necessary for these rounds and not for the LSWC's. It could be that my hands were getting cold as I had been out for awhile by now. The first two magazines of these went off like a top and they seemed to be pretty accurate but I wasn't hitting as well as I was with the 200 LSWC's. This could be because I was ripping them off about as fast as I could or it could be that I just suck. :O After the first shot of the third magazine (round 152) I had a failure to feed. I was a bit bummed because up until this point the gun had been running like a top. Closer inspection of the failure revealed the the moron who had seated the magazine hadn't really seated it. A firm seat on the magazine and the slide flew forward chambering the round. That was the only failure for the remaining 68 rounds. (220 rounds total fired) After about the first 30 rounds the ejection pattern really settled down on this pistol. It was basically ejecting between 3 and 4 o'clock about 15-20 feet. Most of the empties ended up within a 3-4 foot area in a nice little pile. (Always a good thing for someone who reloads.)
Overall I really like this pistol. I think I might just leave it "uncleaned" for awhile and see how long it will take until it starts jamming . . . I don't consider #152 to have anything to do with the pistol as I believe if I had seated the magazine it wouldn't have happened. I actually am surprised that the first round chambered when I dropped the slide. I'm not sure how long I'll be able keep myself from cleaning BUT I think it'd be interesting to see how long it could go.
Here's some gratuitous gun porn . .
Sorry for the high resolution of the images, I'm not completely sure how to reduce them.
