PT1911 #3: Have I Ever Told You...

That I'm not overly fond of PT1911 as a result of seeing a lot of them with less than ideal quality behind them?

Here's some quick pictures of Taurus PT1911 #3, this is a different gun belonging to a different shooting buddy.


We were talking about the other two I was looking at and my friend not being much of a 1911 guy hasn't shot his much and asked if I would be willing to do a side by side comparison of this gun next to some of mine, just to see what a difference in cost gets you get.

He was not impressed with his Taurus.

Batterting of frame, not sure what's causing this as this area of the frame can not be  struck by hammer with firing pin stop in place. The joint where the ejector meets the frame looks pretty nasty as well.

Update on the PT1911s....

Or more appropriately why I don't like Taurus Products.

Both guns have been gutted, cleaned, reassembled and have passed the basic operational checks.

Some things of note on the guns, is that as I expected, the overall fit and finish were pretty rough, overall the aluminum framed .45ACP model wasn't too bad in that department. I guess my biggest grip on that is the fitment of the thumb safety, it's not done to well and appears to be scraping the frame, I can't guarantee that as I don't know the history of the gun. The grip panels on the gun as I received it were trapping the thumb safety stop lever on the right side when the grip screws were properly tightened down and made engaging / disengaging the safety harder/mushy from the drag on the panel. I had an extra pair of Mi-Tac grip panels laying around and replaced them for the user until he can replace them with something else.

Both guns have full length guide rods of the two piece variety, but thread together near the rear end of the rod and offer no ability to unscrew from outside the the gun like most typical two-piece guide rods. Why manufacturers insist on including these in builds is beyond me. They are a pain to deal with in some applications, come apart while firing in other applications, or add more tools for field stripping.

Mag catches / release in both guns were of the extended type, and a common issue I see in a lot of guns with extended mag releases is that the internal surface of the mag catch is not blended to the contours of the mag well with the magazine release pressed in which can result in the mag release trapping the magazine in place when pressed down hard.

While I had the guns apart I used some Flitz on the trigger bows and the Series 80 firing pin components and that cleaned up the trigger a pretty good amount, it's definitely more crisp than it was originally.

Colt Series 80 Firing Pin Mechanism

The only other issue I really saw with the .45 was that the extractor showed signs of "clocking" but after poking and prodding on it a little it may not be an issue.

The checkering on both guns, which is machine cut was not very nice with the lower edge of the checkering extending down to the very bottom of the gun and made for some sharp edges.

That pretty much sums it up for the .45, the 9mm variant which was stainless over stainless is a different story.

Two PT1911s to Play With....

A friend of mine has dropped off two PT1911s (.45ACP and 9mm) to be played with, while I'm particularly fond of hating on Taurus, I'm kind of interested in diddling with these two. Initially all I can say is that these are the most squishy 1911 triggers I've ever felt in my life.

More to follow...