Buford!

My new extractor just falls right through. There's no resistence when putting it in at all. It also won't even make contact with the casing in my P18. I understand that there may be some fitting required but is the falling through part normal?

The stock release may have been plastic but the one is this gun (I bought it used) is not. That's the one I ended up ordering, Chad. Except mine is SS. I like shiny things.

I should have laid a better foundation for why I'm asking. Here's the deal... I'm shooting a P18 and my hands aren't quite big enough to get my thumb around to the mag release without creating some serious movement in my grip. So, I'm trying to find a way to add an oversized button. My mag release is not tapped so I would have to replace the entire piece. All that being said, I'm guessing I'll still have to stick with Para parts. Why are they so darn hard to find? Geez.....

Will any 2011 mag release work in the Para platform or is this another one of those things that require a para only part? Specifically, I was looking at the Dawson STI release on shooters connection. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

It was a kydex style holster though so no stretching. The more I think about it and talk about it here I just have to believe that it was just the wrong holster all together.

He must have given me the wrong product number because I couldn't even get the barrel to fit in the holster. I guess the good news is that I've at least made it to this point in the project. And hey, I've learned a lot.

Well, I don't know what happened because I ordered a Safariland holster that was supposed to be for a 5" 1911 (I had a Safariland rep at a GT Distributors give me the model number) and my P18 wasn't even close to fitting in that thing. I've currently got a holster on order with Bladetech but I didn't really want to wait 5 weeks to get it since I'm shooting a match with my brother in 3 weeks and I would really like to use this new gun. Maybe I'll just take the gun up to GT and start going through the holsters to find something that will work.

Anyone know if it will work? Seems that there aren't too many options out there for a P18 so I'm looking for alternatives. Thanks.

Sweet. Thanks, Chad!

Do you guys know if the mag holders marked for the Para P14/P16 will also work for the P18 mags?

I was told that this was the guy to go to around here. So, if that's the wait time then that's the wait time. Meh. The upside to the five week wait is that I haven't even had the opportunity to shoot this gun in a competition so I won't know what I'm missing really. And I've got my M&P so it's not like I'm left high and dry. Heck, I don't even have a holster yet (it's on order) or mag holders for my belt. Speaking of that... any suggestions on which mag holders to go with?

It's definitely more sweat equity than I was planning on but I'm sure it will all be worth it. I dropped the gun off yesterday to get the trigger work done so I'll have an update in about 5 weeks.

Update: I put in the Arredondo inserts and fixed the original problem but then of course I had to deal with the followers not going down into the basepads. After some sanding (front and back of the followers) I finally got all four mags to work as advertised... at least from a loading and unloading by hand standpoint. I took the advise from slowsure and went ahead and replaced the factory springs with ISMI springs as well.

Alrighty then... inserts (and springs) will be ordered in the next 24 hours. Thanks, guys.

Here's the situation - P18 factory mags with original followers and original springs. Add Dawson Toolless basepad and the spring locksdown at round 19 when I push it down to insert round 20. I can basically rattle all the rounds out of the mag at that point. What is happening is that the first two rounds are getting stuck under the indents on the sides of the sides of the mag with one round sitting on the follower as it's supposed to and the other looks like it jumped the track and got on the outside of the follower. I've tested it with two different mags (one that I know works since I shot it last week and one that is brand new as of yesterday) and the same thing happens. Do I have to get new followers, new springs, dremmel down the indents? This little experiment is getting a bit frustating.