CZ-75 in .45?

Look at the EAA Witness line. Their large-frame (now their standard frame size) is built in .45. Available both in steel and polymer.

-Sam

They have the CZ97, but it is a little larger.



It's the darker Auto in the picture.

http://www.cz-usa.com/product_detail.php?id=43

Thats probly close enough for most folks.

Someone may be listening...

cz usa is now offering the CZ97 .45 acp with a decock option, the CZ97BD. it would be sweeeet to have. I am married and not "allowed" to make purchases on that scale, just now, so i can only pine, but you- if you can, do it!

The 45 ACP is taller than other cartridges, thus the taller/bigger slide on the 97B.

Owned a 97b a couple of years ago. It's a good shooter if you use FMJ ammo, have hands larger than XL, and don't mind a pistol with lots of bugs to be worked out. The factory ramp job is typically not refined enough to allow JHPs to feed reliably. Commonly a JHP will nose dive into the bottom of the ramp and get hung up. The force of the closing slide causes another problem which is the 97b's propensity to have the magazine fall out of the grip. The magazine catch is a poor design and will easily round off. Once it's rounded off the magazine will never be all that secure in the grip and will likely need replacing. Some guys have actually wielded additional metal onto the catch to beef it up. I did my own ramp job on it and corrected the problem, and you will very likely need a gun smith to do your own. Then of course the grip is one of the thickest double stacked .45acps out there and the DA trigger reach is quite a stretch. Not very easy to operated with gloves on.

The 97b is a nice range pistol, but I think you would be foolish to depend on it as a serious defensive pistol. With a retail price of over $800s now, you can probably pick up a 97b for around $700. You can also pick up a S&W M&P, H&K USP, Glock 21, Sig P220, or other alternatives for that price which will reliably fire JHPs right out of the box, will be lighter and more compact, have better ergonomics, have better magazine capacity,.....etc. The only kudos I will give the 97b is that it is very accurate. I don't have any experience with the EAA Witness or Tangfoglio .45acps.

Owned a lot of CZs over the years and worked on a lot as well. They do a much better job with the full sized 9mms.

My fullsized Witness .45 in the WF has been perfect. No problems with anything I put through it, even some oddball "cup full of ammo" stuff a friend gave me, has hollowpoints, FMJ's, of all kinds and bullet weights in there and the Witness doesn't care, it just saws through them, mag after mag.

But another friend has a 97B, and it shoots everything too, right out of the box, and is prettier, IMO.

All the CZ-97 owners I have talked to, none of them say these things, how odd. The CZ-97s I have handled and fired, none of these issues, I must be blessed. I just have Glocks, HK, Sig, Berreta and Taurus fail on me personally. My personal experiance with the USP, (trade name when I was in the business was Useless Sh***y Pistol), was the 6 we had on the rental range - one year later we had two, one on it's way back to join it's buddies at the factory for total repair. The G-rocks, had 3 Glocks fail in my hand, one with a cracked slide. No joy. SiG P220, we had one, loved shooting it, it went back to SiG only once, frame crack. The P232 went back so many times we junked it.
I believe the expression is "your mileage may vary"?
I will say the CZ-97 has a small mag capacity for it's size, and does seem large for what it is. I also sold a few to people with large hands who loved it for that reason. those I sold one to, and those I know who own them, seem to be quite satisified, sorry your experiance was bad.

It really is the luck of the draw, isn't it?
A friend had a Witness .45 and it choked on everything, including ball ammo.
The next one off the assembly line might be perfect.
There's just no telling until it goes to the range for a try.

My CZ97 hasn't had the problems Marcus has talked of. It feeds HSTs just fine. Within the first few hundred rounds it wouldn't feed large hollowpoints correctly, but that's an easy fix.

I havn't tried to fix it though. It's doing just fine now.

I'll put a comp hammer in it one day. My 75B has one and it amazing.

I love the CZ97 because it's so accurate. One day I'll dress it up for a limited-10 gun.

My experience with the 97 was bad too..

The magazine fall out of the grip, once per mag....

Was the 97 you shot, Chilean, a pre-B model?

Deer hunter
Serial Number A3710xx, Don't know what is a pre-B model.

I agree with that, would be nice to see a 75 framed .45 ACP version. I would like to see the base CZ-75 offerred in several differant calibers, 38 Super, 357 SiG, etc., just not in the cards yet.

I had an IMI Jericho .45 (aka Magnum Research Baby Eagle), which uses the same action as the CZ. Great pistol. 100% reliable with all kinds of ammo. I used it for action shooting competition and did very well. It is too heavy to be a carry weapon. If they had used an alloy frame, I would have kept it. But my purpose in competing was to have that constitute practice for carrying and I did not want to carry it. Great gun, though. Very accurate and totally reliable.

The 45 ACP is taller than other cartridges, thus the taller/bigger slide on the 97B.

Click to expand...

Amazing how Tanfoglio could figure out how to get a 45ACP package into a form factor closer to the CZ75 than could CZ.

I like the CZ97B and have owned three/four over the last decade, but it is simply too much gun for the capacity and weight.

armoredman,

<Irrelevant stuff removed by Grammaw.> The 97b is a notoriously problematic pistol which has earned its reputation quite legitimately. The very CZ forum that you lurk in for the 97b is full of owner complaints. On this very thread there are more negative experiences than positive. There is no other CZ pistol that goes back to CZ-USA more often for smith work than the 97b.

<Insult removed. Paragraphed for clarity.>

I may be a big Sig fan myself, but I have the honesty to point out to anyone wishing for a long lasting durable performer to stay away from the P220 .45acp, P226(non 9mm), and the P239(non 9mm). Why, because they have bad durability record in Federal service. I have worked on them for many years not only for my agency, but for the Department of Interior as an armorer and processed over a hundred Sigs every year in Federal circulation. That also extends to the training range in which I serve as range master for well over 100 officers each year in not only static, but dynamic courses of fire in which firearms are put through a good level of abuse and are exposed to factors such as blowing sand. <More editing.>

<Grammaw cleanup> I agreed with some of the complaints about the 97s size and mag capacity, and agreed with the thought of a 75 sized 45. I have several CZ pistols that work perfectly, if they had choked, broken, or otherwise made themselves worthless to me, I would have said so. As for complaints to praise in this thread, count with me - post #5, first mention +/-, positive, post #7, positive want, post #9, (you), negative, post #10, negative, post#11, positive, post #14, positive, post #15, negative, post #18 positive, post #21, ambivilent, only complaint is capactity/weight.

That's, hmm, 4 positive, and 3 negative, plus one ambivilent, all those who posted shooting one.

Yall either play nice or I'm gonna cover up the sandpile.

Art

Jeff Cooper once said he was consulting with CZ on a .45 that was NOT the 97. Nothing seems to have come of that project.