Ok, so on an implulse last week I got a barely used Chiappa 1911-22 pistol. Felt good in my hand and the price was right at $229. Not being familiar with the maker or the gun, I googled it on my phone at the show and quickly found an NRA review stating 25000 rounds with no equipment failures. No brainer I thought; done deal.
Off to the range the following day... failure to fire, miss feed, shoot, miss feed, shoot, failure to extract, and so on. Not good. I go home and do some more surfing to find numerouse complaints on this gun, but some that say it's solid. Not one to take things at face value, I tear it down to see what's up. I should note that a friend purchase the same gun at the show new and he was having some feed issues, but nothing close to what I was experiencing. We were using Winchester Wildcats, Winchester M22, CCI Mini Mag Hollow Points, and Blazer. The CCI's and M22's seemed to run the best, but by no means reliable.
First thing I noticed on take down was all the factory grease that was still everywhere in the slide and frame rails. Unlikely the first owner ever even bothered to take it appart.
Clean up all that crap and oil it.
I next inspected the feed ramp - steep, like a Beretta Neo's 22... feeling around at the top of the chamber was a burr of some sort. I gently worked a flat head screw driver around it and confirmed this imperfection. Then not so gently, I got rid of it...
Feeding a bullet by hand before and after this, the difference was huge in both entry and extraction. This made me happy.
Next issue was extraction. Having the luxury of a new and identical piece to examine, I payed close attention to slide recoil and other details that seemed to varry between the two guns.
There was definately an extractor problem on my gun. Broken or extremely weak spring was the cause.
I drove out the pin and removed the extractor; the spring was not broken. Much to the pain of my finger nails, I managed to stretch the extractor spring about an eighth inch and then replaced it. Far superior action on the extractor was then noted. I also stretched the main spring out about and inch and a half. Action on the gun was then much better.
Back to the range.
Results were good. My friend's new one seemed to work fine after just a cleaning. He was running Federal Bulk and in over 100 rounds had only 1 failure to fire, on the first round of a mag, likely not racking the slide enough.
Mine seemed like a different gun. 100 rounds of M22 yielded zero failures to extract and 2 failures to fire that were likely due to my limp wristing. You cannot limp wrist this gun. The spring is way too soft and it simply will not return the slide correctly.
90 rounds of blazer was completely different. Four failures to extract, and 7 failures to feed completely into the chamber.
Photos below are of the blazer 22 ammo and the white lines point to the dents in the bullets caused durring the miss feeds. The last photo shows one of the last blazers I tried to put throught it before saying poo and going back to the M22's for good. As you can see, the bullet is actually bent.
In any event, I think a lot of the bad press on these guns is a bit excessive. I got a used one, that the owner likely shot and said junk... but with a bit of common sense care and adjustment, I think this makes a great and cheap plinker that feels great in the hand and is a hoot to shoot.
If you are counting pennies, it is the way to go over the other 1911-22's on the market. (unless there's one I don't know of)
Off to the range the following day... failure to fire, miss feed, shoot, miss feed, shoot, failure to extract, and so on. Not good. I go home and do some more surfing to find numerouse complaints on this gun, but some that say it's solid. Not one to take things at face value, I tear it down to see what's up. I should note that a friend purchase the same gun at the show new and he was having some feed issues, but nothing close to what I was experiencing. We were using Winchester Wildcats, Winchester M22, CCI Mini Mag Hollow Points, and Blazer. The CCI's and M22's seemed to run the best, but by no means reliable.
First thing I noticed on take down was all the factory grease that was still everywhere in the slide and frame rails. Unlikely the first owner ever even bothered to take it appart.
Clean up all that crap and oil it.
I next inspected the feed ramp - steep, like a Beretta Neo's 22... feeling around at the top of the chamber was a burr of some sort. I gently worked a flat head screw driver around it and confirmed this imperfection. Then not so gently, I got rid of it...
Feeding a bullet by hand before and after this, the difference was huge in both entry and extraction. This made me happy.
Next issue was extraction. Having the luxury of a new and identical piece to examine, I payed close attention to slide recoil and other details that seemed to varry between the two guns.
There was definately an extractor problem on my gun. Broken or extremely weak spring was the cause.
I drove out the pin and removed the extractor; the spring was not broken. Much to the pain of my finger nails, I managed to stretch the extractor spring about an eighth inch and then replaced it. Far superior action on the extractor was then noted. I also stretched the main spring out about and inch and a half. Action on the gun was then much better.
Back to the range.
Results were good. My friend's new one seemed to work fine after just a cleaning. He was running Federal Bulk and in over 100 rounds had only 1 failure to fire, on the first round of a mag, likely not racking the slide enough.
Mine seemed like a different gun. 100 rounds of M22 yielded zero failures to extract and 2 failures to fire that were likely due to my limp wristing. You cannot limp wrist this gun. The spring is way too soft and it simply will not return the slide correctly.
90 rounds of blazer was completely different. Four failures to extract, and 7 failures to feed completely into the chamber.
Photos below are of the blazer 22 ammo and the white lines point to the dents in the bullets caused durring the miss feeds. The last photo shows one of the last blazers I tried to put throught it before saying poo and going back to the M22's for good. As you can see, the bullet is actually bent.
In any event, I think a lot of the bad press on these guns is a bit excessive. I got a used one, that the owner likely shot and said junk... but with a bit of common sense care and adjustment, I think this makes a great and cheap plinker that feels great in the hand and is a hoot to shoot.
If you are counting pennies, it is the way to go over the other 1911-22's on the market. (unless there's one I don't know of)
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