MemphisMechanic

I'm a 650 user. Been using one exclusively since 2008. With that in mind: The winning budget setup will be a 550 plus whatever side items you need to trim brass or swage military .308 brass. Cheap press, decently fast, and the fastest and most affordable caliber conversions. If possible, save up and buy a 1050. I'm going to convert to one soon. Swaging, trimming, loading in bulk and in insane quantities is vastly easier than a 650. With this press you'll end up doing batches: If you shoot 200 .308s a month, simply load up 1K and enjoy having ammo onhand for the next four months. The lack of warranty isn't an issue: it's designed for professionals loading thousands of rounds a day, and they're the reason it doesn't carry a warranty. You might go through $15 of springs or lost tiny locator buttons or the like per year. Maybe. Swaging on a 650 requires an aftermarket attachment that voids your warranty, just so you're aware.

I like having it on my press.

Back out of this post to the PCC forum. Click the search magnifying glass at the top - it'll run a search just in this forum. Search for "comp" or "brake" and you'll run into several lengthy topics on this. Some posts chock full of photos and testing results from guys who have run several of them, too.

I TOLD PatriotDefense that I was going to begin giving horrible advice. Living up to it.

Watched this right after you uploaded, being subscribed and all. IMO you're picking nits if you shot HOA with a borrowed gun, aside from the obvious stage plan stuff that could be done better. What failed on the gun this time? Open is dumb.

Okay. Then just apply JB Weld to the threads and run that sucker in there.

If you like the width of the factory grips, here's my suggestion: sand the entire grip down uniformly about 1/16" - 1/8" thinner that it is. You'll add that much width with the combination of epoxy and grit. When mine were finished I loved the texture, but the gun just got too fat to fit me correctly. I need to find someone with size XL hands (mine are L) to sell my SiC grips to. (Yes, I like the PD palmswell grips that are even wider, but they only fatten inside of your palms!)

Better yet, install a small rubber O-ring under the grip on top of the frame. Works great. That plus loctite finally stopped my Hennings and scales from shifting. The Patriot grips being plastic have some compressibility and that aids greatly in screw retention. I installed them with a drop of blue loctite and they haven't shifted once.

Tell me more about which sight you used, and where you found it, and what modifications were needed.

Poor lockup / improperly fitted:

I sighted mine in at around 200 rounds after installing a .140 Dawson front, bringing the rear down 5 to 10 clicks or so. When I cerakoted the gun I obviously pulled the sights off. It had 2,500 rounds or so through it. Vertical zero was still dead on for the same ammo.

M&Ps have very short chambers. Try the plunk & spin test. (Drop round into the removed barrel, and shorten your load recipe until it chambers and spins freely). Once you adjust your Glock recipe so that it drops in freely, it'll extract freely too. Occasionally your "Glock length" ammo will cause a failure to fire because the gun won't chamber it quite all the way.

No it's not unusual. For a long time either .160 or .180 was what everyone ran. I run a .140 to let me lower the rear a few notches (make that fragile LPA rear a little smaller) and love it. Any shorter and you get a lot of slide in the notch as soon as your front sight is elevated a bit. If you don't have any odd marks on the barrel hood or underside of slide from something improperly fit and signs of some peening? Order a .160 or .180 and rock it.

I use a rage bag - the midway knockoff of the Shooters Connection one - which has a center section which lifts out. That part carries mags, 200rds, eyes and ears, and very little else. I snatch that out for USPSA and the additional storage for more ammo, cleaning and spares, stapler, tools, etc all stays in the car. When I go to the range for practice, I bring the whole thing out and work out of it.

I'm a minimalist: I bring only the bare bare necessities... But quite a few of the "loaded for bear" types at my club are happy with this one: http://www.academy.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10151_10051_3123582_-1?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI0f7r--Gi1QIVRVp-Ch1DUgQHEAQYASABEgJfV_D_BwE

Why N320? Its perhaps the most expensive option for powder, and doesn't gain you anything Titegroup, Prima V, WST, or Clays won't... expect leaving the interior of your gun a little cleaner. N320 is a great option, for sure. But at 200% of the price of powders that do 90% of what it does, I can't make myself purchase it.

For competition purpose with minor power factor? For casual plinking ammo? Do you want it hot enough to mimic self defense ammo?

You stand in tall awkward narrow stances at nearly every position. Feet wider, learn to spend your entire USPSA life shooting from a semi-crouch with your weight forward. (Get low to start and stop fast and break the habit of standing up in shooting positions.) Why the standing load in stage 2? Move it somewhere where you're moving. Slow hands on most of the draws. Very slow hand speed. Toward the end you miked 3-4 times on a row of steel plates off to the right, then later on? You attempted to engage the left side's plates while moving. See a problem with that plan for a C/D class shooter? (It's fine for Max Michel) Choose a plan you personally can execute cleanly 100% of the time, and moving mikes are never faster than sprinting, stopping, and connecting. Do not shoot the plan that others are shooting. At your current skill that'll mean shooting on the move less - you're already dropping a few Deltas, a Mike, or hitting a NS in the majority of your stages. The quickest way to improve your scores would actually be to stop racking up penalties.

I wouldn't be surprised at all.

I shot one of them once. Through an M&P. Fed and ejected like any other round.

Interesting. My 650 will absolutely drop powder into a 380 case, on the rare occasion my shellsorter brass sorting widget and the lack of effort on the upstroke don't tip me off!

No. Yes. And... maybe. Here's a Production M-class run on Times Two that I shot a few months back. I had a Bravo and three Charlie's on the run! You can shoot A or M or sometimes even GM class scores on classifiers with a few Charlie's quite easily. It's when you shoot too wild and start dropping MOSTLY Charlie's, or a couple deltas and mikes, that things go to hell: Of course, there's always room for improvement. Had I been harder into the sights I might have pulled a couple Cs into the A zone and had a 95% or so run. Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda. Time is always as important as accuracy. On El Prez, it is actually more important. The hit factor on it is high. That means a longer stage time hurts you much more than dropping points at speed. You've gotta shave time off your reload and draw and stop taking all day to get the gun from target to target. Like Waktasz said, listen to my video. There is perhaps the slightest transitional delay between shots 123456, but it isn't that slow 12 ... 34 ... 56 you're doing. My splits are probably slower than yours, but I'm killing you on transitions so badly it doesn't matter. Your transitions are probably slow because your eyes are staying behind the sights as they swing. Instead snap your eyes to the next target once the sights lift, then bring the gun over there. It goes where you look.

Reloads at 1.0 flat in dryfire, and 1.2-1.3 under match conditions are generally considered a very good goal for someone trying to work their way up the ranks in USPSA.

Correct. He doesn't get to use any Patriot or Henning parts, not even springs. The reason the Xteme line of pistols exists is because of IPSC rules. They are factory guns, so that makes the Xtreme parts legal to be run in any Tanfo. You cannot even polish the internals in IPSC. Conveniently enough, all the Xtreme internals are already silver so it's much more difficult to tell if just maybe a little bit of smoothing was performed.

Coated bullets are always more accurate for me than plated. Plated bullets are preferable to throwing rocks at the targets, but only barely. Youre doing something wrong. I've never had coating chipped or cut. Use just barely enough crimp to re-straighten the case walls and bell the case generously and you shouldn't be having problems. What press? Got any photos?