bountyhunter

I have both super ventrichular tachycardia and also PVC runs, but (so far) have not had A fib yet. I believe that A fib is relatively easy to control with meds and they can also put in a "smart" pacemaker that will automatically pace you out of it when it happens. I think the risk factor on A fib is you can throw a clot so it is smart to control it aggressively.

Take a business card with you to the optometrist. Hold it straight out at arms length. If the letters are sharp, the sights should be too.

I have both a 5" 9mm 1911 and a 6" .40 1911. I don't see a big difference except that the long one feels nose heavy (unbalanced) and the 5 seems more perfectly balanced in my hand. Sight radius: a 5" 1911 is actually something like 7" long at the sights so going an inch longer only increases sight radius by maybe 14% which is not really much.

Not me. I pay the RO a dollar to slap me every 15 seconds and say: "Breathe, stupid...."

Every person has to decide what makes them happy. I'm old and I do know some things are absolutely true: 1) Nobody can make you happy. If you ain't happy, look in the mirror. 2) Stay away from people who expect you to make them happy. You are signing up for a life of misery. 3) Nobody knows the meaning of life. Stay away from fools who claim to. 4) Wake up each day and try to do something fun before the end of the day so it won't feel like a wasted day. Always remember: Guess which one was NEVER said on someone's deathbed: 1) I wish I had petted my dog when he was still alive. 2) I should have been nicer to my family when they were still alive. 3) If only I had come in to work on Saturdays and Sundays we could have gotten it released a week earlier.

I have shot my CZ-85 (9mm) quite a bit. It's a nice gun, but it does pull stovepipes every now and then for no reason I have ever been able to fathom. Sometimes it will go hundreds of rounds without doing it and then pull three in 50 rounds. Factory ammo, factory mags and springs. My STI Trojan has run so many years without a malfunction I don't remember that last tie. But my Para 1911 is a dog, so all 1911's are not alike.

That goes back to the old "if a tree falls and nobody hears it, does it make a sound" thing. If we are not aware of a problem we have, do we actually have a problem? Well.... yes we do. Awareness catches up with reality eventually and the problem that was there all along says "hello!". Yes, anyone that has panic attacks will back that up. Funny about panic attacks..... I have kaiser medical coverage and their solution is always to minimize everything. About 20 years ago I started having heart arrythmias of various types (super ventrichular tachycardia and VTAC runs) and I was telling my doctor that my heart sometimes felt like it was jumping out of my chest.... and he immediately concluded it was panic attacks, labeled me a nut case and wouldn't treat them. My wife worked as the Director of Cardiac Services at another hospital and she brought home a Holter portable heart rhythm recorder and she "taped" about four hours of my heart and then we paid out of pocket to have one of her people transcribe and print it out so I could show the results to my doc at Kaiser. Turns out my "panic attack" showed up as over 700 ventricular arrhythmias in a four hour period. I eventually got some drugs that control it. Sometimes a panic attack is not really.... I guess my opinion is that reality exists independently of perception. And it's reality no matter what we think it is. I guess that's boring and not very zen.

Found the attach:

Springco and norecoil both make them. http://www.sprinco.com/recoil.html http://www.norecoil.com/ would post a picture but that doesn't work here.

That goes back to the old "if a tree falls and nobody hears it, does it make a sound" thing. If we are not aware of a problem we have, do we actually have a problem? Well.... yes we do. Awareness catches up with reality eventually and the problem that was there all along says "hello!".

I would have just realigned the earth to change the orientation of the 180 boundaries so she wouldn't have been in violation....

I was going to say, simple green has been known to corrode things. I think I screwed up some wheels once using it.

I have never heard of an AD that was caused by the design of the Glock safeties (with factory parts). I assume the infamous Glock leg is the result of holstering with finger on trigger. With all stock parts (in spec) and everything right, the Glock safeties "work" as designed and the gun is reasonably safe. To keep perspective, it's probably "safer" than a revolver that has no safeties. But the Glock safety system is less effective at preventing NDs compared to a 1911 or HP or Ber 92 with the safety on which will not fire if the trigger is pulled with safety on. Glocks are OK as long as the owner understands exactly what the safeties can do and can't do but as you noticed, I think most people don't realize that the drop in trigger kits can change things with only very subtle changes in parts. I think in that respect, the Glock is not very forgiving. I'm still scratching my head that the OP got a gun that fires when you RELEASE the trigger just by changing the FP safety plunger. That would have scared me so bad I might have sold the gun...... I'd really like to understand the exact mechanism in play as to how that is causing the trigger bar to allow the striker to release.

Any unusual wear anywhere else like on barrel lugs or slide cuts? Breaking links is usually a fit or timing problem but not sure since it happened when you went up on PF. I would look really close for other signs.

As long as the trigger is forward and nothing is touching it, it would be very difficult to cause an AD. Glock AD's typically happen because of either user error or component failure/modification. But one thing any gunsmith does is understand the limitations of the design and that affects what can be done to improve performance. In the case of the Glock, you have to be VERY careful what you do to the trigger bar and striker to get a "better" release because unlike the other guns listed, you do not have the "backstop" of a safety that will prevent multiple fire events or AD fire events when something goes wrong as the slide bangs home into battery after discharge. I don't know the exact cause of the firing in this gun (I suspect) but obviously there is some difference in the FP plunger that is causing it. It just makes me take note that an event this dangerous can occur if that one part is out of spec. I mean holy crap, if I had a gun that fired when I released the trigger, that would scare the hell out of me.

It lacks one safety that every other major service weapon has: a firing pin blocking safety driven by a pivoting lever that resets on every shot as the slide moves out of battery. SIG, Beretta, Browning HP, Springfield XD and probably a bunch more I don't recall all use that type of safety. As the slide moves out of battery, the lever disengages and when the slide comes back into battery, it is automatically pushed forward and forced into a safe position where the gun's firing pin is blocked. Firing is impossible until the trigger is fully released and repulled so the trigger can re engage the lever which raises the firing pin safety out of the way, or discharge can not happen. That design is as close to foolproof as you can get for preventing the type of AD described in this thread as well as multiple fire events or going full auto as a result of a failure in the trigger group or bad gunsmithing. The Glock firing pin safety is driven up by the bump on the top of trigger bar. When the gun fires, the slide pulls out of battery and it bumps the disconnector over which causes the trigger bar to pop into the UP position. Since the trigger is still held back as the slide comes back into battery, the tab on the trigger bar catches the tab on the striker as it is coming forward. That means as the slide comes into battery, the striker is fully pulled back (spring charged) and the firing pin safety is up out of the way of the striker (fire position). Any event allowing the striker tab to slip off the trigger bar tab results in discharge, as the event in this thread shows. This is the reason I think the Glock FP safety design is inferior to the type found in other service pistols. But since the Glock has no actual sear, it would be very difficult to do the other kind. It would probably be safe to say that if only factory parts are used, and if all things are "in spec", then the pistol is safe enough. But as this thread shows, the safeties are not as good as some in terms of being forgiving when things are not exactly in spec or when something goes wrong. I am not a believer that three mediocre safeties add up to a good one. I am particularly skeptical of the "trigger safety" that works right up until something touches the trigger.... and I realize the SA XD uses the same dumb safety. And the answer always is: safe gun handling requires the operator not touch the trigger until firing... so that safety is effective as long as nothing goes wrong and the user doesn't make a mistake. IMHO, that's not a safety like the safety on a 1911 or HP or Ber 92 which prevents firing when the operator accidentally does something wrong like holster it with his finger still on the trigger (the cause of Glock Leg). Just my opinion of what a useful safety should do. And for the reasons I already stated, I think the Glock FP safety is an inferior design. Not necessarily dangerous, just not as good as others in use.

The Glock trigger bar basically "rides" under the head of the firing pin safety plunger, the bump on the trigger bar lifts the plunger. I wonder if the ZEV plunger is longer so that as the trigger bar comes forward, it forces it down low enough that the tang on the trigger bar that holds the striker tab releases the striker..... anyway, the main thing I don't like about Glock's design is the mickey mouse safeties. Probably not something to screw around with. Did you take your calipers and do a comparison between the Glock safety and the ZEV to see where the diference is? I would want to know just for curiosity.

"I took the gun out to shoot it and started getting discharges off the reset. If I released the trigger slow it would fire" Holy crap, that sounds dangerous. I never tried the ZEV safety. Don't think it sounds like a good idea...

Depends on the forum. "At what point do we take the blinders off and discuss our true feelings?" Not here. The forum owner makes the forum rules. There are lots of forums where anything goes.... but be careful what you wish for. Speaking from experience, you may get pretty tired of listening to morons rant and end up leaving that kind of place.

I don't want to turn it into a Glock bash thread, but I am intimately familar with the Glock design as well as the SA XD and IMHO, the XD design is the best striker fired service weapon available. There are multiple reasons I believe this, to summarize: the XD is better designed, has better safeties, has a better trigger system (which can easily be tuned up to a very good pull).

Maybe so.

The problem with trying to do a caliber conversion on a 1911 by changing only the barrel: the extactor is a critical fit so it probably would not extract right. I ran into that problem on a springfield XD when I bought the .40 version and got the 9mm "conversion" barrel. The XD uses a "fixed" extractor similar to 1911. Extraction is iffy on the XD, I have to change the extractor with the barrel. In designs with a pivoting (spring loaded) extractor, the extra range of movement helps keep the case rim held tight to the edge of the breech face.

Only place I think you could get "loss of material" that could cause danger would be if there is flame cutting into the top strap above the rear of the forcing cone. That's where all the frames I have seen fail come apart. I never saw one fail under the crane.

Perfectly normal. Don't try to change it.

That's basically it. IMHO, every 1911 forum should have a sticky thread showing how and where to drill the take down hole in the guide rod (if it doesn't come with one) and how to make the clip tool out of a paper clip. The tool should be long enough on the longer side so you can hold the slide all the way back and reach in from the muzzle end and put the tool in the rod's hole. Let the slide come forward and the recoil spring gets trapped all the way back so you can take it out as an assembly.