wally
Member
This is a fairly long tale but with a very happy ending! I've been looking for a 1911 in 9mm for a long time, but I'm not willing to spend $650+ for the Kimber and Springfield offerings since my only purpose is to be able to shoot cheap ammo (~$80/1000 for Wolf & $3.86/50 for CCI Aluminum Blazer). I've been making do in the mean time with my Star BM, nice little gun but not quite a 1911.
A while back I ran into the Armscor rep over on 1911forum.com and a discussion came up where Armscor would be comming out with a 9mm "soon" So I enquired further via PM and learned he had two guns but no mags and they were widebody and used Para P18 mags.
Somebody beat me to the first one, but he offered a very good price on the second that had some "touchy feely wear from the shot show" but was otherwise new. An exchage of CC & FFL info had the gun in my hand a few days after the P18 mag from Natchez arrived (all I could find in stock the was nickel plated $5 extra, no biggie I thought at the time).
Couldn't wait to get to the range but a weekend of bad weather made me.
While waiting I noticed the mag wouldn't drop free and would lock the slide back with one round in the mag when feeding snap caps. So on a rainy afternoon I filed the mag follower shelf so it didn't hit the slide stop with one round in the mag but still locked the slide back when empty. I knocked off a few high spots in the mag well and smoothed some rough spots on the mag and really noticed how good the trigger was while dry-firing.
Finally got to it, and shot a box of Wolf and box of CCI Blazer. Accuracy was good, perfect function but the trigger wasn't always resetting. Next tried a box of 145 gr Silver Bear JHP to see if it'd feed heavy JHP. Also perfect until the durn external extractor broke on shot 138!
A quick call to Armscor in Pahrump, NV had a replacement extractor in my hand three days latter. That's when I got really bummed - it was the wrong extractor!
While waiting on the mail I detail stripped the gun figuring I'd look into the trigger reset problem, seemed to get better with shooting so I figured it was probably just some crud inside. I was wrong, the bow was dragging on the P18 mag that's why it didn't drop free. It reset for dry fire because the mag was empty, fully loaded the mag "swelled" enough to prevent trigger reset and that's why it seemed to get better with shooting as I wasn't always loading the full 18 since I'd forgotten my mag loading tool first time out. Easy enough to fix.
I Emailed a photo of what extractor I had and what they sent and recieved a reply to return the gun since the extractor on my sample gun was not what was put into production. So a trip to FedEx and more dissapointment ensues for 16 days. Then I get the gun back along with a blue 17-rnd "LEO" Mec-Gar mag, and a few Armscor promo items for my trouble. Extractor is very different -- would seem to have been a wise production mod given my initial experience so I've now got a new slide to go along with it.
From this point on couldn't be happier Shot 200 Blazer and 200 Wolf first time out with a single failure to extract with Wolf on shot 198 I believe.
Next time out got it up around 900 rounds with no more problems. Third time out Iwas shoting only wolf and had two more extraction/ejection failures, figured it was time to clean it.
Now I've got 2000 rounds thru it since its return, 1050 of Wolf with 4 failure to extract/eject and 950 with CCI aluminum Blazer with 1 failure to eject (classic stovepipe) and one failure to fire -- round had solid primer dent and did fire second time thru when I tried out of curosity..
The 17-rnd Mec-Gar mag functions perfectly. I got a second nickel PO 18-rounder and it was worse than the first being ~0.008 longer from to back so it wouldn't drop free until I'd filed off most of the plating. No more Para nickel plated mags for this gun. I want more 18-rounders cause we have 6 plates in our rack and 18 gives three quick rounds with my wife pulling the remote reset line -- very much fun. I'll futz with 'em to make it work, hopefully blue P18 mags will not be so tight.
Based on MSRP this gun should run about $450. Don't know what kind or how many mags will ship with the production guns.
--wally.
A while back I ran into the Armscor rep over on 1911forum.com and a discussion came up where Armscor would be comming out with a 9mm "soon" So I enquired further via PM and learned he had two guns but no mags and they were widebody and used Para P18 mags.
Somebody beat me to the first one, but he offered a very good price on the second that had some "touchy feely wear from the shot show" but was otherwise new. An exchage of CC & FFL info had the gun in my hand a few days after the P18 mag from Natchez arrived (all I could find in stock the was nickel plated $5 extra, no biggie I thought at the time).
Couldn't wait to get to the range but a weekend of bad weather made me.
While waiting I noticed the mag wouldn't drop free and would lock the slide back with one round in the mag when feeding snap caps. So on a rainy afternoon I filed the mag follower shelf so it didn't hit the slide stop with one round in the mag but still locked the slide back when empty. I knocked off a few high spots in the mag well and smoothed some rough spots on the mag and really noticed how good the trigger was while dry-firing.
Finally got to it, and shot a box of Wolf and box of CCI Blazer. Accuracy was good, perfect function but the trigger wasn't always resetting. Next tried a box of 145 gr Silver Bear JHP to see if it'd feed heavy JHP. Also perfect until the durn external extractor broke on shot 138!
A quick call to Armscor in Pahrump, NV had a replacement extractor in my hand three days latter. That's when I got really bummed - it was the wrong extractor!
While waiting on the mail I detail stripped the gun figuring I'd look into the trigger reset problem, seemed to get better with shooting so I figured it was probably just some crud inside. I was wrong, the bow was dragging on the P18 mag that's why it didn't drop free. It reset for dry fire because the mag was empty, fully loaded the mag "swelled" enough to prevent trigger reset and that's why it seemed to get better with shooting as I wasn't always loading the full 18 since I'd forgotten my mag loading tool first time out. Easy enough to fix.
I Emailed a photo of what extractor I had and what they sent and recieved a reply to return the gun since the extractor on my sample gun was not what was put into production. So a trip to FedEx and more dissapointment ensues for 16 days. Then I get the gun back along with a blue 17-rnd "LEO" Mec-Gar mag, and a few Armscor promo items for my trouble. Extractor is very different -- would seem to have been a wise production mod given my initial experience so I've now got a new slide to go along with it.
From this point on couldn't be happier Shot 200 Blazer and 200 Wolf first time out with a single failure to extract with Wolf on shot 198 I believe.
Next time out got it up around 900 rounds with no more problems. Third time out Iwas shoting only wolf and had two more extraction/ejection failures, figured it was time to clean it.
Now I've got 2000 rounds thru it since its return, 1050 of Wolf with 4 failure to extract/eject and 950 with CCI aluminum Blazer with 1 failure to eject (classic stovepipe) and one failure to fire -- round had solid primer dent and did fire second time thru when I tried out of curosity..
The 17-rnd Mec-Gar mag functions perfectly. I got a second nickel PO 18-rounder and it was worse than the first being ~0.008 longer from to back so it wouldn't drop free until I'd filed off most of the plating. No more Para nickel plated mags for this gun. I want more 18-rounders cause we have 6 plates in our rack and 18 gives three quick rounds with my wife pulling the remote reset line -- very much fun. I'll futz with 'em to make it work, hopefully blue P18 mags will not be so tight.
Based on MSRP this gun should run about $450. Don't know what kind or how many mags will ship with the production guns.
--wally.
