Reliability of the 1911 GI or MilSpec guns
My first 1911 was a Colt 1991A1 that I picked up for $375 for a gun shop. The gun was hardly used and I don’t believe it was ever shot. Every 1911 that I own has been had for under $400. I have had maintenance issues with my Colt 1991A1, but I believe the gun has well over 10,000 rounds through it and I’ve made a few customizations to improve it. I miss my gunsmith, but he did mess up something on the gun when I took it to him to have the feed ramp polished. When he was polishing the feed ramp he hit the slide stop and put a niche in it that I noticed immediately after test firing that the gun would not lock back. He found the mistake was his and fixed it, but I thought that it was a good time to replace the slide stop with an extended one. When I put Hogue gun grips on Colt, it made the grips a little fatter and it was a little difficult to hit the slide release with my thumb.
I messed around with polishing the feed ramp and using Wilson Combat magazines and noticed a good improvement in feeding SWC and HP ammo, but I was still not happy with it not running flawlessly. At this point, I don’t care, I’ve seen enough junks of wood fly out of the back of backstops to notice the difference between a 45acp and 9mm ball ammo to know that one type of ball ammo is better than the other. I would never use 9mm ball in a defensive situation, but a 45acp is fine by my book. I have also noticed absolutely no difference between Wilson Combat magazines that are 7rd vs 8rd. I have done the 8 +1 in the chamber on several occasions and never noticed any reliability issues as long as the gun wasn’t stored like this for very long. Even though I believe manual safeties aren’t the best type of device to have on a CCW gun, I think 8rds of 45acp ball ammo in a GI 1911 is not a negative.