Collet Bushings
Howdy MP-5,
Stans just made a good point. If you can even find an original Colt
collet bushing, it may not fit your slide/barrel combination. Most
smiths that I know of throw them away, but you may find one by asking around. I MIGHT have one here. If I do, you're welcome to it. Even if
it does fit, it may not fit right. When the collets were right, they worked
pretty well...when they didn't, the problems could range from bad
functional reliability to breakage of one of the fingers. I've seen three
that broke, and they locked the gun up solid. One was so bad, that I
had to drill the slidestop off to get it apart. All three guns had damage
to barrel, slide and frame, and on the one that I had to drill, the damage
was bad. Colt stopped using those bushings for a reason.
Another point is that the collet bushing may or may not improve your accuracy, or improve it only a little. It depends on the vertical lock at
the rear of the barrel...the lugs' fit in the slide, and the fit between the barrel hood and slide.
If you want to see if a tighter bushing will help without compromising
reliability or risking damaging the gun, I'd give George Smith a call at
EGW,(Evolution Gun Works) and give him your slide ID and barrel OD measurements. He can custom-turn one of their excellent angle-bored bushings that will fit your slide and barrel correctly. You'll need to let
him know whether you want a wrench-turn fit or finger-tight fit in the slide.
You can find EGW on the web by doing a search.
Hope this helps.
Tuner