Wringin' Out the 'Rinco

[Dave Sample]

Thanks Brian. There is an old baseball story from the Days of Yesteryear concerning a lunch meeting with three Umpires. The shop talk kinda went like this...........................the first Ump said flatly " I call's 'em like I see's 'em!" and then the number two Ump said " I call them as they are!" to which the third and final Ump said " They ain't nothing 'til I call "em!" I was a cop too long to take anyone's word for anything. I like to hear all sides of the issues and not just the one I like the best. I do not swallow all the internet hog wash like the more gullible members of these "Forums". I also know that there are good parts and bad parts and parts that I use and parts that I won't use. I paid a lot of Yankee Dollars to learn what I will install in a 1911 and when they did not work like I wanted them too, I filed them in the circular file. How many of you know that the Bill Wilson Ambi used to have "A.Swenson" stamped on the side of it years ago. Bill purchased that from him (Or Mrs. Swenson) and hasn't changed it in 20 years or more. It is still too thin and no one cares, but I do. They tend to pry off your plunger tube becuase the pin is not centered right. It rides on the outside edge of the thumb safety. I don't use them. How many pictures have you seen of blown up and destroyed MIM parts on these forums? How many Chip McCormick hammers have exploded into a thousand little pieces? None that I know of, and I prefer them to any available. Maybe one will break someday and if it does, he will send me a new one at no charge. Machined/cast/investment cast/forged/Metal Injected Moulded........................and so forth. Just try to hand checker a Norinco front strap and then do a Colt '70 series. Then you will know what is hard and what cuts like Butter. So much for forged parts. Norinco lower ends are harder that the Hinges of Hades. Try a Bo-Mar cut on a Norinco slide and watch your tooling go bye bye and you will know what a hard slide is like. Contrary to popular belief on these forums, Experience Counts. That concludes my metal rant!

 

[tomkatz]

We are very lucky to have folks like tuner and mr. sample and others on these forums, you guys are the real deal!!!!
Heres a pic of my 'rinco commander.......tom

 

[1911Tuner]

re: All Kinda Stuff

Brian, if the Cap'n was to suddenly wax all warm and fuzzy, I'd think he was at death's door...

He said:

Norinco lower ends are harder that the Hinges of Hades. Try a Bo-Mar cut on a Norinco slide and watch your tooling go bye bye and you will know what a hard slide is like.
____________________

Man yeah! That was one of the first things that put me wise to
Norincos...about 6 months too late.

I had been to the range, and took the long way home so I could stop by a semi-local, well-stocked smith's little shop of horrors to bum a few odds and ends so I wouldn't have to call Brownells. He's an old-school pistol wrench and 1911 armorer who...like me had sneered at the Norks
when he first saw'em. He turned down the chance to sell'em in his small
gun shop that he used to help fund his gunsmithing operation...open to the public 2 days a week for 6 hours a day.

When I walked in the back door of the shop, he was cussin' and fumin'
and fit to be tied. Seems that he was in the process of cuttin' a dovetail for a front sight on a Norinco slide. He had completely dulled
one cutter, and the new one wasn't faring too well. His exact words were:
G-Da##it! EFFIN Chinese bas##ards! What the G-Da## hello did they make these effin slides out of? G-Da##ed PIG IRON???

Now...I had never heard him cuss much beyond a mild oath once in a blue moon...so I knew that I had stumbled onto somethin'. Not only are those parts harder than the "Hingles of Hell", they're also as tough as a piece of aged Hickory. Since the owner had ruined the hammer and sear with a
home-style, Dremel-enhanced trigger job, he took a break and we did a
scientific test on the hammer...We clamped it in a vise and beat on it with an 8-ounce ball-peen. Not only could we not break it...it was a pretty good strain to even bend it very much.

I heard a rumor that the Chinese had ripped up and replaced thousands of miles of railroad track...reclaimed the steel in the worn rails...resmelted
and re-alloyed it...and used it to make guns out of for the Yankee market.
Don't know how true it is...but I know they produced some pretty tough guns out of whatever the steel was.

I also know a guy who bought one of the early Norinco 1911s...He told me a story about how his son had goofed during the learning curve on a progressive loader...and had double-charged a small lot of jacketed 230 RN ammo...with Bullseye. When Paul dropped the hammer on the first round,
the report and recoil was something akin to a .44 Magnum. The pistol
took it in stride. Nothing was bulged, bent, or broken after firing a 230-grain bullet with 10 grains of one of the quickest and most violent pistol powders in the world. The pressures had to be right up there with a
low-end .308 rifle round...and the gun was unscathed. Paul shot the gun
an estimated 15,000 more rounds before he sold it to another range member...and it's still tickin'.

 

[valor1]

1911Tuner,
maybe the chinese melted their supply of tanks and transformed them into pistols.

 

[ken grant]

Norinco 1911a1

All the chinese did was take a proven design and make it of proper materials. Works everytime!
Not purty but it does work and takes a licking and keeps on ticking

 

[Dave Sample]

"Beauty is only skin deep, but Ugly goes all the way through" Just remembering some girls I used to know...................................

 

[1911Tuner]

'Rinco Wringout-Part Deux

Finally! Popped back down to the old range this A.M. with my trusty bucket of H2-Oh and mucho ammo to put the 'Rinco through the 9th level of hell...One *thousand* rounds went bang (Ow, my pore hand)...and one thousand times the Chinese Clone didn't miss a beat. I ran it hot and dunked it in the water...brought it back out and kept on truckin'. I stopped at the 500 round mark to rest. I figured that the gun would have just fell plum apart in my hand, considerin' all the junk parts on the inside...
Goodness gracious! I guess I just got lucky with this one, too!

The second run at it produced the same results as the first. All ammo was
reloaded...5 grains of Hercules Red Dot (Not Alliant) and 234-grain cast bullets. I did a little tradin' a few days ago with my neighbor, and he swapped me some of my own ammo back that we loaded up for him to offset the price of the pistole that he bought back from me, and I felt obligated to burn it up before it went stale...

'Bout all I've got for this trip...but I'll clean it up and start anew in about a week or so. I've got another 1500 rounds and I don't wanna let it lay around too long. Oh yeah...I didn't oil the rails for this one. It's a miracle that it didn't gall and lock slap up! Goodness gracious! No tellin' what I might find when I break it down though...but I'll hafta wait a while. Did I mention that my hand is kinda tired and sore?

Welp...Gotta git!

Ree-gards!

Tuner

 

[Shootcraps]

Nice thread Tuner. I saw three NIB Rincos at the gunshow this weekend. Two were $450 and the third was $399.

 

[hnm201]

Here's my Rinco story. I just bought one this week. It has MMC fixed sights which I believe is the only after market addition to pistol. The round count is unknown but it has some wear on the slide's dustcover where it contacts the frame rails. There was a little side to side play in the slide.

I took it to the range with with 7rd shooting star that came with it, a new Wilson 47D and new chip mccormick 10 rd power mag. The pistol was very accurate but with the wilson 47d it stovepiped on every last round in the mag consistently. With the 7rd shooting star and the CM 10 rd the slide would not lock open on the last round. I immediately suspected the slide stop. I took the slide stop out of the gun and replaced it with the slide stop from the range owner's colt gold cup and the malfunctions ceased.

Upon returning home, I read the following on the card insert that came with my CMC 10rd Power mag:

"When pistol fails to lock open on the last shot, check slide stop lobe length (.195 inch minimum). Some slide stop with dimpleswhere the plunger hole contacts will not lock open and need polishing or replacement"

Here is a picture of my Rinco's stock slide stop:

I guess that this stop could be polished to remove the dimple but I am probably better off with the Chip McCormick slide stop that I bought for $19.95 to replace it.

What do you think Tuner?

 

[1911Tuner]

Sidestop

Howdy Dominic,

Looks like somebody dimpled that stop to keep it from lockin' the slide with ammo in the magazine...Sometimes that'll happen. They probably could have stopped it without the surgery, but that's another thing that we'll never know, since the stop is killed.

The last-round stovepipes...Extractor problem...Either not enough tension or the extractor is clocking in the bore. Most of the time....clocking shows up with a last-round failure...usually crunching the mouth of the case
between the slide and barrel hood. Put a little more bend in it to add some tension and see what happens. If it doesn't change anything or if the last round gets stuffed back into the magazine...it's clocking. Fit an oversized firing pin stop to the gun to keep the extractor squared up and it'll stop.

Luck!

Tuner

 

[Dave Sample]

If the malfunction stopped after the slide stop was changed, I would say that was the end of the story. Sometimes CMC slide stops have to be fitted so good luck with that job.

 

[hnm201]

I took my rinco back to range today with 200rds S&B FMJ 230gr and one Wilson 47D magazine

I fired 40rds with the CMC slide stop installed. No failures of any kind.

I then removed the CMC stop and dropped in the stock slide stop (with the dimple shown above) in and fired 30 rds. The gun consistently stove piped the last round in the magazine.

I then removed the stock slide stop and reinstalled the CMC stop. Fired 30 rds with no malfunctions, though now I started to watch how the gun was ejecting and it really wasn't doing such a positive job. Some cases were kind of rolling out of the gun, if you know what I mean.

I should note here that I had thoroughly clean the gun and removed the extractor and removed the build-up on the hook. I had also tested the extractor tension by removing the recoil spring, loading a mag of snap caps with the slide open, moving the slide into battery by hand (it fed smooth) and then dropping the mag and slowing moving the slide back to see how the snap cap held to the breech face and it held before hitting the ejector. It seems to work fine, but of course it was a light snap cap and not a dummy round.

Anywhay, I had started to put another box through the gun and was about 20 rds into it when I decided to swap out the stock extractor for an Ed Brown extactor that I had in my range bag. The tension was too tight at first. The gun would not easily go into battery from slide locked open while chambering a round. I took the extractor out and bent it a little the other way to open it up a little.

That seemed to do the trick. The ejection improved dramatically and I was just a few rounds into my fourth box and everything was going swimingly when the front sight broke loose (aftermarket MMC, came with the gun), ricocheted off my bald head and landed somewhere at the back of the bay. I pulled out the surefire and got down on all fours and hunted for about 10 minutes and finally found it. It looks like sight was just sliver soldered into a groove and not staked. So then I finished up the box (which was kinda fun, without the front sight) and there were no malfunctions and ejection very positive.

I don't want to hijack the thread. I just thought someone else who is having gun-bugs might read my story and say, "Whew! I am not the only one!" LOL.

But why me? Why does every 1911 that I touch break?

 

[Gabe]

I'd love to see a chemical composition test of these Norinco parts. If steel is harder and tougher at the same time it's probably a different steel. I'm guessing they're using gun barrel steel to make gun frames. The nickle in them make them hard to cut and real tough too, even if they're not necessarily "harder" on the Rockwell scale.

 

[Dave Sample]

pieces/parts/flying front sights/ leave me with nothing more to say. I staked in the front sights on the Norincos I worked on. I have headr they were silver sodered on now but never saw one like that. I used a .055 tenon MGW front with a Combat MGW rear.

 

[Beren]

You guys have plenty of good things to say about the Norinco 1911's.. A local shop has one used for $270; is that a good price? I have no idea how much of it is stock. The grips, at least, have been changed. My Colt Gunsite Pistol needs some company, the idea of setting a $300 pistol next to a $1200 pistol tickles me somehow.

 

[UltimaSE]

Beren I'm sure others will chime in on this as well, but I believe that's an excellent price for a norinco. Of course you might want to take it apart to see how much of it in fact stock, but I get the feeling you're going to start having people ask you where this norinco is at...

UltimaSE

 

[Beren]

How can I tell whether the internals are stock parts?

 

[1911Tuner]

How?

Beren asked:

How can I tell whether the internals are stock parts?
___________________

Hard to tell without knowin' what you're lookin' for, but a pretty good yardstick is to hold the trigger rearward, rack the slide briskly to cock the hammer, release the trigger and squeeze it until the hammer falls. Most Norinco triggers are a bit rough as delivered, and average about 7-8 pounds, usually fairly gritty or creepy.

Since the trigger pull is most often one of the first modifications done to factory pistols, if the trigger group ain't been dinked with, the rest of the gun probably ain't been dinked with either.

The trigger can be massaged to a pretty smooth, clean 6-pound break without messin' with any critical angles or compromising the relative safety of the gun.

 

[quantico]

I have owned my new in box norinco about three weeks. I have 600 flawless rounds through it with zero stoppages or failures of any kind. I used wilson 47-D mags for most of the shooting although even the mag that came with the pistol has been flawless in feeding. The only issue I have is that I need to aim about 10 inches low at 25 yards as the pistol shoots very high above point of aim. I want a drop in beavertail and better low mount sights and some better trigger parts. Based on what you guys have found inside the pistol I think I will go far a good quality slide stop and extractor at the same time.

I am not sure if I want to mess with the cosmetics... the slide looks like blueing that someone tried to remove with a scotchbrite pad... the lower looks like a 7 year old with a can of spray on grill paint.

Is the pistol worth 700 + dollars of parts and finish ??? sights / beavertail / trigger / sear / hammer / extractor / springs / barrel link / mainspring - housing / crown barrel / throat and polish chamber and ramp / safety / dehorn sharp edges.... I might as well have purchased an empty box ???? I could have purchased a used TRS or CQB for the same money it seems... ????

What do you think ???

 

[1911Tuner]

Think?

Howdy quantico,

I think I'd like to have that extractor, hammer, slide stop and grip safety when ya upgrade it...Mainspring housing too, especially if it's got a lanyard loop on it. Let me know and I'll make an offer.

 

[TooTaxed]

I avoided the Norincos...cheap Chinese made guns!...until about 15 years ago I asked a prominent gunsmith what to get and modify into a fine match pistol at a reasonable cost. He amazed me by advising me to start with either a Norinco 1911A1 or 1927 Argentine...he said either have better metal than any of the modern commercial .45s and are completely parts interchangable with the original Colt 1911s, an advantage to modification.

So I bought my first Norinco, and took it to the range to see what I needed to do to it. Found it to be utterly reliable and surprisingly accurate. I polished the feed ramp, installed a Clark trigger, and put on Hogue grips...and I have my favorite .45, which gets shot probably about ten times as much as my other three put together. My other .45's, each of which cost considerably more than the modified Norinco, have specific load preferences and are a bit finicky with some particular bullet types or weights...the Norinco has digested everything I throw at it without a hiccup. Have never had to have it repaired.

I bought a second Norinco and have it stored for the future, still stock...

 

[quantico]

1911 Tuner : The MSH has no loop on it. I will likely keep the stock parts just in case I want to go back to stock. The stock grip safety works for me about 40 percent of the time that I grab the gun.... so I hope that the drop in beavertail has enough bump for me to get the gun to fire when I grab it.... otherwise I will be doing the dane burns shock-buff trick.

Right now I am thinking of getting some 600 or higher grit hardware cloth and smoothing out the rough edges on the front of the slide and the trigger guard area and the bottom of the mag well. I hate and detest rough / sharp edges on any gun that I own. I won't go for full meltdown as I think it would look stupid on this gun... but what do you think of taking off all the sharp edges on the frame and slide that come in contact with clothing or hand ???? Don't worry .... I am not a dremel maniac. I will do this very very slowly by hand.

I purchased a springfield longslide in stainless a few years ago... and I purchased a few stones to take all the edges off of the gun that were drawing blood every time I handled the darn gun... I often teach women to shoot... and most women have little love for bleeding all over the place.... I don't mind bleeding on weekends and special occasions . . . , but cleaning up the rough edges didn't take away too much fun...

Tuner . . . . you think the norinco " purists " will be burning crosses on my lawn again after this ? ? ?

 

[19112XS]

After watching a "dinked with" Norinco being expertly morphed into a NorBrowCoDeckiMac, I know 2 people who won't be participating in a yard fire at your house.

 

[mpthole]

19112XS - huh?

 

[1911Tuner]

Morphed 'Rinco

mpthole asked, with apparent confusion:

huh?
__________________

LOL...2XS is referrin'to the 'Rinco that he brought to me a few weeks ago
that had been dang-near smiffed to death. I replaced various insundry
parts, which included a Nowlin sear, an Ed Brown hammer, and a Colt thumb safety...and got'er doin goooooood. He came down yesterday and we ran down to the shootin' place and sent many many grains of lead downrange.

So....Now it's a Semi-Tunerized ColNork-McCormBrown-God-Only-Knows...
1911 clone. Shoots purty good though...