SVI Carry Gun - 5000 round report

The Gun:

A 5″, full-dustcover, all-steel SVI 2011 in .45 ACP. You can get more detailed info from my 1000 round report here: http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=606066

Ammunition:

200 230gr. +P HST

4800 handloads – 4.7gr. Bullseye under a 230gr. Missouri Bullet LRN

Maintenance:

Clean with Ballistol and brake cleaner after every range trip, typically 300-500 rounds. Lube with low viscosity slide glide with FP-10 on the internals. Full detail strip at 2000 rounds and 5000. I’ve been slacking on spring replacement, it still has all the original springs.

Malfunctions:

None from the gun. As I have noted many times previously, SVI mags don’t like to lock back on empty. In the next few weeks I’m going to start designing and 3D printing my own follower designs to try to fix this issue, so stay tuned for updates on that.

Accuracy:

Great. As is to be expected with a low round count of unjacketed lead, it hasn’t degraded any. Its hard to show real accuracy without a good target that allows consistent point of aim, but the range was out of my usual targets with the little 2″ bulls, so I had to shoot at little scaled down silhouettes. Still, did ok. Two 50 round groups at 50 feet:



Wear:

The gun only has 5000 rounds through it, and the SVI Infinicoat finish is more or less invincible (http://www.dayattherange.com/?p=1516) so its not showing much wear, but here’s a few pictures anyway:

The barrel is still nice and shiny with crisp rifling:





There’s so little wear on the barrel lugs its hard to tell whether its symmetrical or not:





Virtually no wear on the slide lugs either. Very symmetrical, though:





The ejector might as well be new. Its still so sharp you could probably cut glass with it:





The extractor has some finish wear, but structurally its untouched:











Breechface is showing next to no wear as well: (but with some cat hair and fouling I missed)





And the obligatory full-nude photo. I think I actually got all parts in the picture this time, so I’m offering an extra special prize of 50 gun nerd points for anyone that can find one I missed:





General Impressions:

Love this gun. Its runs flawless, fits my hands like a glove and balances perfectly. Its an absolute dream to shoot, it just settles down out of recoil right on original point of aim with no effort on my part. Case in point – at my last Steel Challenge match I thought missed the stop plate so shot again; a double-tap as fast as I could pull the trigger. Both shots hit the plate, 1″ apart 12 yards away. This gun has won me a couple Steel Challenge matches, and has put up more than a few sub-4 second stage times, which isn’t half bad for running full-power .45 in a speed competition and with a drawstroke that still needs a lot of practice. If I had to pick something to complain about, the trigger is noticeably squishier than my other SVI or my two 1911s with SVI fire control components. That being said, its still a better trigger than pretty much everything else on the market. Also one of the set screws on the Novak Tactical Adjustable sights was walking out – well, sprinting out about a half turn a shot – and had to be Loctited, but that’s a Novak issue, not an SVI issue. All in all, I couldn’t be happier, and I would highly recommend you get an SVI of your own. The product is top-tier and the company is phenomenal to deal with.

And I’ll leave you with one last glamour shot:

Nice report. I look at a lot of guns and I have never encountered an SVI - I will need to research and find out more.

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SVI shares the 2011 patent with STI. Whereas STI opts for the a more "production gun" business model with a variety of off-the-shelf models you can alter a few options on, SVI is a full-custom shop that only makes a few hundred guns a year. They also put a bunch of time into R&D, with some pretty cool fire control components and other innovations. Also, every part they make it EDMed out of barstock. They're by far the nicest guns I've had experience with.