At what point do you stop trusting a good gun?

[BSA1]

I don't consider 32k rounds to be excessive. To the contrary. A steel gun is just getting broken in.

I notice it was a aftermarket barrel that failed. Inferior aftermarket parts are hardly a poor reflection on the gun itself. The other two parts had high round counts before they were damaged beyond use.

As discussed spring replacement is the best and cheapest preventive maintenance program there is. I replaced all of the springs in a Ruger 9mm after it started giving me light hammer hits. Only the hammer spring was causing problems but it was easy to replace them all at once.

If it was me I would send the gun to Cylinder & Slide in Nebraska and them give the gun a inspection. While they have it it would be a perfect time to make any upgrades such as sights.

 

[MikeJackmin]

If it's making you feel insecure, that's reason enough.

Get another pistol just like it. Carry old reliable until the new one proves itself, and then carry that.

 

[Oldschool shooter]

I have a 1928 vintage 1911. The guy I bought it from changed out the slide, so not much collector value. I changed out all the springs and replaced the ejector when I bought it almost 30 years ago. Have about 15000 rds thru it in that time and no parts breakage. I wouldn't hesitate to use it for personal protection.

 

[JohnBiltz]

Seriously, the cost of 31,000 would probably have paid for over a dozen pistols. I've got 10,000 rounds through my carry Glock 26. I've got two more that I practice with. I only shoot my carry every month as an excuse to make sure it works, clean and inspect it.

 

[Deaf Smith]

I've put well over 100,000 rounds through a Glock 17 (IDPA competition pistol) and John Farnam has a 17 with almost 200,000 rounds.

Well maintained and designed guns can take a lot more than most people think if the shooter takes care of the gun.

Deaf

 

[Old Fuff]

Concerning the Browning P-35 HiPower:

The bottom lug is a cam that determines the length of the pistol's dwell time (the time the barrel and slide are linked together until the bullet is supposed to have left the barrel and internal pressure dropped to zero). If the aftermarket barrel you had didn't have the correct lug dimensions for the ammunition you were using, or it was not machined from a forging, a lot of potential questions might be answered right there.

Browning changed the extractor design of the original version because of broken claws - a problem you sometimes see in the earlier 1911 .45 design. Even so it wasn't a common problem, and the usual solution was to install a new part on a regular schedule. Same with the ejector.

It is also a good idea to change the coil springs (hammer/mainspring and recoil springs in particular). Use a full strength one for both, because the hammer spring acts as a brake on the slide, working through the hammer.

As to your original question: I have sometimes rebuilt a heavily used handgun on a regularly scheduled basis - although this is seldom necessary. And of course replace any part(s) that show abnormal wear. If this gets prohibitively expensive I retire the gun, but that only happened once because of the difficulty of finding affordable parts.

In your case I would consider buying a later production HiPower (In my view an exceptionally fine pistol) and place the older one on back-up practice duty.

 

[Confederate]

As brilliantly built as the Hi-Power was, it doesn't fall into the category of modern ultra-reliable design. This means that you have to judge the reliability based on your own shooting experience with the ammo you use. The Hi-Power also is known for its relative reliability with hollowpoints. You can always have a gun rebuilt if you've developed a bond of trust with it. Does it ever malfuction on the range? Has it shown its reliability in all types of weather and temperatures? In either hand? In the end, you're more qualified to answer your own question than anyone here.

When the Beretta military pistols failed during testing some years ago, there was never any warning before the slides failed. The Navy would do spectral-analysis on both slides and frames every 500 rounds after 5,000 rounds and there was never once any indication at all that a catastrophic failure was about to occur. So predicting failures is a difficult proposition, and I'm not sure it's possible. If you have any doubts, it's a good excuse to buy another gun.

 

[Old Fuff]

You have a good point (up to a point ) about unpredictable catastrophic failures, but because of its introduction in 1935 followed by wide use in many military and police services over time, its potential service life and points of probable failure were by recent time well known and therefore predictable. As time went by many, if not all were addressed by the principal manufacturer, Fabrique Nationale.

In the case of the pistol under discussion, I am somewhat surprised about the early failure of the barrel - that shouldn't have happened; but I know nothing about the barrel's maker, reputation or quality.

The extractor and ejector were more predictable, and might (or might not) have been prevented by earlier replacement.

But regardless, the pistol's owner, who apparently favors this make and model, now faces a "crisis of confidence" that might be best addressed by replacement through the purchase of the same arm, but from later production with substantially less round count.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

A good question.

What guarantee do we have that any gun we own is "trustworthy" at any given point in time?

We establish "trustworthiness" through demonstrated performance, primarily, supplimented with routine maintenance/inspections.

At some point, like anything else mechanical in nature, we can expect that certain failure modes will increase in likelihood. But most handguns are engineered good enough that failures are typically waaaay off in the future for most handgun owners. There are people out there who don't even put 500 rounds a year through most of their handguns...so it would take such people literally a lifetime to get where you're at with this one.

Statistics is a funny thing, too. To get a decent idea what a "typical" round-life of a pistol might be, you have to have several of the same pistols and run them through a lot of rounds until failures start occurring...then document the failure modes and continue until you reach a point somewhere that can be defined as the end of useful life. Even 10 pistols could conceivably run 2,000,000 rounds or more in such a test.

Most issues with trustworthiness show up in relatively minor mechanical issues, like misfeeds, slidelock problems, failure to eject, etc. Such problems are indicators that "something ain't right". Catestrophic failures, where something simply breaks with no warning, tend to be rarer.

In either case, when failure occurs it's best not only to fix the failure, but to thoroughly inspect the pistol to identify any possible cause or determine if collateral damage happened as a result of the failure.

If the main components of the pistol are not showing wear or cracks, and you're maintaining the weapon well by replacing the other components when needed, I'd say that the pistol can continue to be trusted to function as designed.

 

[Berserker]

A as for the person who would take those odds, why do you carry a gun? Odds are you won't need it.

Also I disagree with the math.

Since all the failures have been at high round counts you would be better at low round counts. Unless you replace all the wear items, the counter does not restart when you replace 1 item.

Ideally I think you could have two of the same gun, one for practice and one to carry. I don't think it is a bad idea to just replace everything before it fails on a periodic basis.

 

[Zaydok Allen]

Hey! I found you a new Hi-Power for carry! Let us know how it shoots when you get it!

http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.aspx?Item=476305095

Sorry. I just needed an excuse to share this. I've never seen a Hi-Power like this before.