Hello everybody, I’ll make a quick review of my father’s CZ 75D COMPACT (CZ 75 P-01) 9mm pistol that I gave to him as a present on January 2010.
The pistol has fixed all steel “glow in the dark” sights, SA/DA trigger with a decocker-only lever on the left side of the frame. The finish is matt black, nice and uniform. It wears CZ rubber grips. Capacity is 14+1 rounds.
Interior finish of the slide is not very good, expecially where the top portion of the barrel meets the slide itself: too many tool marks. Anyway the “barrel to slide” fit is simply perfect: NO plays. The alloy frame is, instead, very well finished; only drawback is that internally is not black-anodized and shows the metal colour. I’ve red somewhere that the P-01 frame is forged instead of being casted and CZ uses a high percentage of titanium: these are the reasons for its superior sturdiness. The “frame to slide” fit is superb: again, NO plays of any kind.
I’m not telling you lies when I say that “barrel to slide” and “frame to slide” fit is on pair with a SIG P210 or other big $$$$ pistols; I mean, when I put some oil on the guides and I rack the slide three or four times, it simply refuse the oil and spit it out.
We’ve replaced the factory grip screws with a set of Uncle Mike’s: factory screws simply sucked too much. We’ve polished the barrel with abrasive paste and now it shines. We’ve also mirror polished the feed ramp. All these works were done before the first range trip. We have the intention to replace the factory plastic guide rod with a DPM or a Sprinco recoil assembly and maybe put a set of original CZ checkered cocobolo grips to increase cool factor and look.
The gun has fired 650 rounds of many different types. DA trigger is long, heavy and gritty while the SA trigger is very light and crisp. The decocker works very good: it is easy to activate and it can’t be engaged during recoil. Accuracy is amazing for this class of pistol, expecially when you consider sights, sight radius, trigger, lightweight and …price! The grip is perfect, we love its feeling. The recoil is snappier than, for example, the HK P30 but it is a very fun gun at the range.
When new the gun was giving us some problems: some failures to feed the first round from the magazine using the slide stop (we had to close the slide on the empty chamber, insert the full magazine and rack the slide very fast). My father had also two failures to feed with factory FMJ cartridges between the 250 and 300 round count. So I fully loaded the magazines and hand cicled the slide very slow to see what was going wrong. I repeated the operation until I unloaded the magazines: some rounds fed well, some not and it was random. Once at home I disassembled the pistol and worked with a little file where I observed the rounds were snagging: it was the little area around the firing pin hole that faces the extractor hook, exactly where the left side of the case rim has to creep and spin when the slide goes into full battery (sorry, I can’t explain it any better…). I also mirror polished that area. After that little work I manually feed the rounds again very slow and I had only easy and smooth feedings; no more problems of any kind at the range even with lead truncated cone reloads (crappy and weak).
Conclusions: if you want an inexpensive all metal pistol for carry and range fun the CZ P-01 is one of the best (if not THE best) choices out there considering the price. It is a beautiful looking traditional pistol. I also highly recommend it to women for its grip, size and weight with probably only one drawback: reach the trigger in DA mode could be a little difficult if you have small hands.
Best regards, 5-SHOTS.
The pistol has fixed all steel “glow in the dark” sights, SA/DA trigger with a decocker-only lever on the left side of the frame. The finish is matt black, nice and uniform. It wears CZ rubber grips. Capacity is 14+1 rounds.
Interior finish of the slide is not very good, expecially where the top portion of the barrel meets the slide itself: too many tool marks. Anyway the “barrel to slide” fit is simply perfect: NO plays. The alloy frame is, instead, very well finished; only drawback is that internally is not black-anodized and shows the metal colour. I’ve red somewhere that the P-01 frame is forged instead of being casted and CZ uses a high percentage of titanium: these are the reasons for its superior sturdiness. The “frame to slide” fit is superb: again, NO plays of any kind.
I’m not telling you lies when I say that “barrel to slide” and “frame to slide” fit is on pair with a SIG P210 or other big $$$$ pistols; I mean, when I put some oil on the guides and I rack the slide three or four times, it simply refuse the oil and spit it out.
We’ve replaced the factory grip screws with a set of Uncle Mike’s: factory screws simply sucked too much. We’ve polished the barrel with abrasive paste and now it shines. We’ve also mirror polished the feed ramp. All these works were done before the first range trip. We have the intention to replace the factory plastic guide rod with a DPM or a Sprinco recoil assembly and maybe put a set of original CZ checkered cocobolo grips to increase cool factor and look.
The gun has fired 650 rounds of many different types. DA trigger is long, heavy and gritty while the SA trigger is very light and crisp. The decocker works very good: it is easy to activate and it can’t be engaged during recoil. Accuracy is amazing for this class of pistol, expecially when you consider sights, sight radius, trigger, lightweight and …price! The grip is perfect, we love its feeling. The recoil is snappier than, for example, the HK P30 but it is a very fun gun at the range.
When new the gun was giving us some problems: some failures to feed the first round from the magazine using the slide stop (we had to close the slide on the empty chamber, insert the full magazine and rack the slide very fast). My father had also two failures to feed with factory FMJ cartridges between the 250 and 300 round count. So I fully loaded the magazines and hand cicled the slide very slow to see what was going wrong. I repeated the operation until I unloaded the magazines: some rounds fed well, some not and it was random. Once at home I disassembled the pistol and worked with a little file where I observed the rounds were snagging: it was the little area around the firing pin hole that faces the extractor hook, exactly where the left side of the case rim has to creep and spin when the slide goes into full battery (sorry, I can’t explain it any better…). I also mirror polished that area. After that little work I manually feed the rounds again very slow and I had only easy and smooth feedings; no more problems of any kind at the range even with lead truncated cone reloads (crappy and weak).
Conclusions: if you want an inexpensive all metal pistol for carry and range fun the CZ P-01 is one of the best (if not THE best) choices out there considering the price. It is a beautiful looking traditional pistol. I also highly recommend it to women for its grip, size and weight with probably only one drawback: reach the trigger in DA mode could be a little difficult if you have small hands.
Best regards, 5-SHOTS.
