Most reliable 1911 for under 1000.

Status
Not open for further replies.
JDR said:
Shooting a .45ACP 1911 is going to be considerably more maintenance intensive than shooting a .45ACP Glock 21. If the expectation is to own & operate a 1911 that is reliable, “IMHO” first get it reliability tuned by a good gunsmith, then keep it cleaned & oiled at all times. Otherwise pick a .45ACP M&P, Walther PPQ or the aforementioned Glock 21 and go pound some rounds through it at the local range.
Click to expand...
What I hear you saying is it is possible to get away with being a slob when you shoot a Glock .45ACP but not with a 1911 in .45ACP. Maybe so, but what does it matter? A person who cares for his guns in a reasonably careful manner will see no difference. Not with a modern 1911 at least. I certainly have no reliability issues when cleaning my 9mm and .45ACP 1911s about every 300 rounds or so. I wouldn’t let any gun, Glock or otherwise, fester any longer than that.

As for reliability tuning, give me a break! You have got to be joking. Both my 1911s have served me well right out of the box and continue to do so many thousands of rounds later.
 
rpenmanparker said:
What I hear you saying is it is possible to get away with being a slob when you shoot a Glock .45ACP but not with a 1911 in .45ACP.
Click to expand...
It seems that your filter has the bias turned up too high.

It is generally acknowledged, by folks who have carried and favor the 1911, that it requires a higher level of maintenance to keep running in normal hard use conditions...duty carry, military use, competition...

I certainly have no reliability issues when cleaning my 9mm and .45ACP 1911s about every 300 rounds or so.
Click to expand...
I guess a class that required 500+ rounds each day would then be cause for concern
 
9mmepiphany said:
It seems that your filter has the bias turned up too high.

It is generally acknowledged, by folks who have carried and favor the 1911, that it requires a higher level of maintenance to keep running in normal hard use conditions...duty carry, military use, competition...


I guess a class that required 500+ rounds each day would then be cause for concern
Click to expand...
Just speaking generally. 300 is not a magic number. In the class situation, I wouldn't worry about the extra rounds. But in my one class experience we shot 650 rounds over four days. 300 a day didn’t happen.

How would someone know that more maintenance was required? Did their gun fail in a gunfight? It’s all BS. Modern 1911s require no more cleaning and lubing type maintenance than other guns. I shoot them as much as any LEO and they are reliable.

Sure, the mechanics are more complex in a 1911. But that is not a daily issue.
 
rpenmanparker said:
How would someone know that more maintenance was required?
Click to expand...
I would think the opinion of both Larry Vickers (spec op expertise) and Hilton Yam (LE SWAT expertise) would carry some weight on the subject.

Modern 1911s require no more cleaning and lubing type maintenance than other guns.
Click to expand...
Just going by manufacturer's recommendations, that is patently incorrect. If you tried to run any 1911 with as little lube as Glock recommends on their pistols, this would soon become obvious

I shoot them as much as any LEO
Click to expand...
That is a very low bar

But in my one class experience we shot 650 rounds over four days.
Click to expand...
Most top tier classes will easily run 2k-4k rounds for a 4 day class
 
Last edited:
rpenmanparker: said:
What I hear you saying is it is possible to get away with being a slob when you shoot a Glock .45ACP but not with a 1911 in .45ACP. Maybe so, but what does it matter? A person who cares for his guns in a reasonably careful manner will see no difference. Not with a modern 1911 at least. I certainly have no reliability issues when cleaning my 9mm and .45ACP 1911s about every 300 rounds or so. I wouldn’t let any gun, Glock or otherwise, fester any longer than that.

As for reliability tuning, give me a break! You have got to be joking. Both my 1911s have served me well right out of the box and continue to do so many thousands of rounds later.
Click to expand...

Hey it’s all good, I would never say that it’s acceptable to be a slob under any circumstances. With anything firearms related good common sense and judgement have to control what you’re doing.

I merely responded to the OP’s comment that it would be great to have a 1911 that is as reliable as a Glock. And that would be great but it’s only realistic if you are committed to more regular intervals of cleaning & oiling the 1911 compared what some people would say are acceptable maintenance intervals for other modern guns.

I own 1911’s and Glocks and the round counts are a lot higher on the Glocks than the 1911’s. Maybe you don’t need a reliability tune on your 1911’s but I have had all but one of mine done when it wa warranted. I go back far enough to when a lot of 1911’s needed it, YMMV and like I said it’s all good.
 
JDR said:
I go back far enough to when a lot of 1911’s needed it
Click to expand...
I go back to the time when your first stop after picking up your 1911 was to your 1911smith...so that it would be reliable enough to carry with defensive ammo and friendly enough to be able to hit anything at speed.

But that was a long time ago...before the Kimber 1911 changed the whole expectation level of 1911 performance
 
JDR said:
Hey it’s all good, I would never say that it’s acceptable to be a slob under any circumstances. With anything firearms related good common sense and judgement have to control what you’re doing.

I merely responded to the OP’s comment that it would be great to have a 1911 that is as reliable as a Glock. And that would be great but it’s only realistic if you are committed to more regular intervals of cleaning & oiling the 1911 compared what some people would say are acceptable maintenance intervals for other modern guns.

I own 1911’s and Glocks and the round counts are a lot higher on the Glocks than the 1911’s. Maybe you don’t need a reliability tune on your 1911’s but I have had all but one of mine done when it wa warranted. I go back far enough to when a lot of 1911’s needed it, YMMV and like I said it’s all good.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your post. The bottom line I was saying is that I’m not going to push a gun to its dirt limit whether it is a Glock or a 1911 so the difference is moot. Glocks may run well dirtier. Okay. But they are still dirty. Who wants that? Just a touch of ownership pride and suddenly there is no difference between the guns. That was my point. Mechanical maintenance is another story. I wouldn't know the limits yet. After several thousand rounds the 1911s are still running perfectly.
 
9mmepiphany said:
I would think the opinion of both Larry Vickers (spec op expertise) and Hilton Yam (LE SWAT expertise) would carry some weight on the subject.


Just going by manufacturer's recommendations, that is patently incorrect. If you tried to run any 1911 with as little lube as Glock recommends on their pistols, this would soon become obvious


That is a very low bar


Most top tier classes will easily run 2k-4k rounds for a 4 day class
Click to expand...
Never heard of them. I’m stuck with my own experience. Are we really arguing about a few drops of oil? And no one ever accused me of being top tier.
 
Does anybody here remember when Colt put collett bushings on their 1911 pistols? When the tolerances happened to stack up properly on a particular gun they worked. When they didn’t, the little arms on the collett had a nasty habit of breaking which often disabled the gun. And a lot of older Colts that started life with a collett bushing got updated with a solid bushing whether the collet worked or whether it broke. A lot of younger bloods only remember solid or angle bore 1911 bushings, but when I think of 1911 reliability these darned collett bushings from years ago stick in my slightly feeble mind!
 
Last edited:
JDR said:
Does anybody here remember when Colt put collett bushings on their 1911 pistols? When the tolerances happened to stack up properly on a particular gun they worked. When they didn’t, the little arms on the collett had a nasty habit of breaking which often disabled the gun. And a lot of older Colts that started life with a collett bushing got updated with a solid bushing whether the collet worked or whether it broke. A lot of younger bloods only remember solid or angle bore 1911 bushings, but when I think of 1911 reliability these darned collett bushings from years ago stick in my slightly feeble mind!
Click to expand...
My first handgun was one of those Series 70 Colts. It's still my bullseye wadcutter gun. The guy who worked on my guns replaced the collet bushing with a solid one.
 
JDR said:
Shooting a .45ACP 1911 is going to be considerably more maintenance intensive than shooting a .45ACP Glock 21. If the expectation is to own & operate a 1911 that is reliable, “IMHO” first get it reliability tuned by a good gunsmith, then keep it cleaned & oiled at all times. Otherwise pick a .45ACP M&P, Walther PPQ or the aforementioned Glock 21 and go pound some rounds through it at the local range.
Click to expand...

Ridiculous! I've owned over two dozen 1911 pistols in my life and NOT A ONE has ever been to the gunsmith for a reliability tune up. A Remington R1 or a Springfield Armory Range Officer will work just fine out of the box.
 
JDR said:
Does anybody here remember when Colt put collett bushings on their 1911 pistols? When the tolerances happened to stack up properly on a particular gun they worked. When they didn’t, the little arms on the collett had a nasty habit of breaking which often disabled the gun. And a lot of older Colts that started life with a collett bushing got updated with a solid bushing whether the collet worked or whether it broke. A lot of younger bloods only remember solid or angle bore 1911 bushings, but when I think of 1911 reliability these darned collett bushings from years ago stick in my slightly feeble mind!
Click to expand...

I've got one of those in my safer right now. If I had to guess I'd say 98% of those bushings were broken by people who failed to RTFM. If you tried to take one of those down like an old GI 1911 you were stressing the fingers on the collet.
 
My Ruger 9mm 1911 Commander took about 500 rounds to settle down, but no professional action was needed.
 
Go shoot Some USPSA.

It ain't Glock 41 guys tuning mags, scrubbing mags, and having failures every round. I love my 1911's. But reliability under stress with them, takes a bit more knowledge than a Glock. Not that it's hard to learn what a proper 1911/2011 should look and function like.
 
9mmepiphany: said:
I would think the opinion of both Larry Vickers (spec op expertise) and Hilton Yam (LE SWAT expertise) would carry some weight on the subject.
Click to expand...

I don’t like everything that Larry Vickers presents on YouTube, his bud Ken Hackathorn’s YouTube videos are more to my liking. But I sure do like his Vickers Elite F.O. Front & Battlesight rear sights on my (here it comes) Glock 17. OBTW these sights are made & sold by....Wilson Combat! None of us here know everything about the 1911, but I’ll say that Bill Wilson sure knows just about.everything about the 1911.

If you log onto modernserviceweapons.com and read some of Hilton Yam’s articles, there is very good stuff there, the guy KNOWS defensive pistol training in general, and 1911 pistolsmithing and armoring in particular.

These names are all worth Googleing, you can always learn something.
 
JDR

Does anybody here remember when Colt put collett bushings on their 1911 pistols?
Click to expand...

I remember them and though I had quite a few Series 70 Colt Governments I never had a problem with the collet bushings. Not to say Colt didn't have their fair share of problems with them; I could see where if the barrel and bushing were improperly fitted to the slide and one or more of the fingers became stressed, it could break and create a huge problem. I believe Bar-Sto use to make a collet bushing for their barrels only they used three fingers with a slightly wider one on the bottom of the bushing for better spring tension on the barrel.
 
Zerodefect said:
Go shoot Some USPSA.

It ain't Glock 41 guys tuning mags, scrubbing mags, and having failures every round. I love my 1911's. But reliability under stress with them, takes a bit more knowledge than a Glock. Not that it's hard to learn what a proper 1911/2011 should look and function like.
Click to expand...

There's one company that makes Glocks, they also make the majority of mags. There's got to be at least 30 companies making 1911 pistols, all with their own set of blueprints, then there are another 10-12 companies making magazines, again, all with their own blueprints.

I haven't tuned a 1911 magazine yet. I rarely scrub them. Failures every round? That sounds like a personal problem. I should at least 1000 reloads a month through a couple of 1911 pistols. I can't remember the last time I had a problem that I didn't create.
 
Every round of matches. Not every round round, is what I meant. So one person of all of us, on stage 1 for example.

But yeah, 2011 mags need scrubbed and checked/tuned every time they hit the ground. Super frustrating, and expensive. A .40, 2011, based on Glock 35 mags, would be heaven sent.

Same goes for 1911's, but they're dying off fast. The 1911 frame still hasn't improved after all of these years, so we're running them only in single stack now. Haven't seen a 1911 in limited 10, in forever.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

F
  • Locked
1911 Reliability for Self Defense?
2 3 4 5 6 7
Replies
152
Views
11K
Zerodefect
Z
B
  • Locked
Is it that hard to make reliable 1911's?
2 3
Replies
57
Views
6K
Ridgerunner665
R
P
  • Locked
Best out of box 1911 under 1K?
2 3 4
Replies
83
Views
9K
BroughtEnoughGun
B
H
  • Locked
Most reliable 1911 out of box?
2
Replies
39
Views
3K
The Real Hawkeye
T
U
  • Locked
Which 1911 for under $1100
2
Replies
32
Views
2K
APIT50
A
Back
Top