bountyhunter

Unfortunately, democracy works both for good and evil. If 50.1% of the people in a state are morons, moronic laws soon follow.What really burns me up about the smog laws is that counties are allowed to enact any limits they want. A car that fails the unfair limits in Nor cal would easily pass in most other counties within kali. About 4 years ago the limits for me dropped about 40% and that's when none of the old cars could pass any more.

Wow... the idiots at Schwab and all the rest have yet to even send out our 1099 forms. I'm amazed anybody has filed now. Wish we could.

I guess saying all those Hail Mary's worked because my 1992 Saturn just passed california's ridiculous smog test designed to sweep all the old cars into the junk yard. Bottom line, they implemented mandatory treadmill testing on all the old cars to limits they were never intended to pass.... and they keep lowering the limits. Last time I had to dump about $800 worth of parts and work into it (including a very expensive oversized cat converter) and it ended up passing the 67 PPM limit for HC by a whopping 2 PPM...... I scored a 65 PPM with the brand new cat, so I knew it would fail this time. This time I "cheated": I used E-85 to blend up the gas in my tank to about E30 which lowers the HC output and I passed the HC test with a reading of 39 PPM!!!!!!!!! And then I went straight to the gas station and filled up with regular to dilute out the toxic alcohol which I hope hasn't damaged my seals. Anyway, my great running old beater car gets another two years before it's appointment with California's Grim Reaper. Score one for the good guys.

I think that's apples to oranges. The Spartan was brought out to compete against other cheap mass made guns like Para, SA, Colt, etc and it is a good value for that. The Trojan is a semi custom (fitted) 1911 and you pay a little more for that but you get a lot better gun.

I have been shooting an STI Trojan 9mm for about 15 years. Probably has at least 30k rounds fired. You won't find a better value in a semi-custom 1911.

My former boss always wrote down "DB" for my personality type, but never explained what that meant......

No Kali state laws against mailing in ammo as of today, but that is the one thing they are about to shut down. They want to greatly restrict ammo sales by limiting licensed sale outlets, requiring background checks for ammo purchase, and also implement state fees on ammo sales. As of today, not yet. But we have a dem governor and the state legislature is about 65% democratic so the laws are coming. I believe the ammo must be labeled ORM-D, you probably have to disclose to the carrier shipping it (they may have their own restrictions)

I use it on all guns. In colder temps, I mix in some FP-10 to thin it a little.

IMO, the stock Ber barrel is a good one at least the ones I have seen. Accuracy variance is probably due to the inherent design and variation in the barrel's position in the slide. Not sure dropping in an expensive barrel will buy much, locking the barrel down within the slide will help. The rear of the barrel locks into the frame, not the slide. When the Army accurized the M9 for their AMU, I recall the had to install slide rails to keep the slide on line and also the front bushing to hold the barrel tight at the front.

How heavy is the jug? negligible. It's plastic so maybe an ounce or two.

I will never buy another SW gun. I bought a $1300 model 627 revo from their PC and it was a disaster. Looked like gorillas had fitted it. Defective MIM trigger lever, frame cylinder opening not square, barrel-breach gap too narrow (jammed on fired brass). I have been seeing the junk from SW for years, thought the PC would be better. What a mistake.

Use a plastic gallon milk jug with water added. each ounce water equals one ounce weight. you can use dental floss looped around the trigger, tied to the handle of the jug. Keep adding water until the trigger releases. On my old jug, I drew lines on the side for "pound" markers using a sharpie/

Not any more, they changed that. Now when you donate a car to charity, you can only deduct whatever they get for it... and they usually dump them off at a wholesale auction. http://www.cars.com/go/advice/car-donation/tax-deduction.jsp

The funny thing is that it would be legal in many counties right here in Cali. They set their own standards. Northern Cali is really bad and I assume LA area is as well. I might try it but not sure the effort would be worth it if it had to be driven several hundred miles. The cars is probably only worth maybe $500.

I plan to do that with some E85 which is 85% alcohol in a blend about 50-50 with regular gas. It's dangerous because it attacks all the rubber parts but no way to pass otherwise. If my car bursts into flames, you'll know what happened. Rubbing alcohol can't be used because it's about 30% water.

No way to do it. Out here, ait's all automated. The car goes on the "treadmill" and the tester has to hook his computer to the state's computer system and the results are logged as the test is run.The only way to "trick" it is "clean piping" which would be to put a new car on the rollers and enter the older car's info into the computer. Back in the day, a Dodge dealer did that with my old 1986 Charger. The law then was there was a max cap of about $300 that you had to pay and then the seller had to make all repairs so it would pass. I know the weasel clean piped it because it could never pass and the results were ridiculously low readings. Too bad that law is no longer in effect, they just want all the old cars in the junkyard.

I have to get the old 1992 Saturn smog tested in the next couple of weeks, I assume it's going to fail. It runs perfectly (had the engine and fuel system completely gone through by a diagnostic center). Problem is: it was never designed to pass the new "tradmill test" being forced onto older cars here in california. The car would easily pass the idle tests it was originally designed to pass. About ten years back the state slapped all the older cars as "gross polluters" and required they go in for special testing. Mine failed, of course, and I put a bunch of money into it to get it to pass. The problem is the HC test at 25 mph which it was never designed to run. My auto trans shifts into 3rd gear at 25 and that lugs the engine at that speed. It's illegal to hold it in a lower gear for testing. The state first set the limit at 130 ppm. With the engine tweaked up and a new cat converter, it barely passed at about 115 ppm. Two years ago it failed big time...... when they lowered the limit to 65 ppm. Turns out in cali the counties can lower emission limits to anything they want to. I took a chance and sprung for ANOTHER new catalytic converter because Magnaflow made one much better (and much more $$$) than the OEM cat. The car passed by 2 ppm with the brand new cat. I assume that it will now fail. Love it when a perfectly running car that is 100% reliable gets dumped into the junkyard because of unfair laws.

No. And BTW, I never broke my trigger finger and I had EXACTLY the same problem trying to learn to shoot my G35. It's because the bottom of the trigger guard is flattened off. On mine, I removed the trigger assembly and filed the inside of the trigger guard and smoothed it to accomodate my finger better..... but it still rubs on that same edge as yours does.It's one of multiple reasons I retired the glock to the safe.

A heck of a lot less time than 3 years.When C+S had ridiculous time backlogs they would take a deposit, then tell you when your place was coming up "in the line" to send the gun in so at least you didn't have to be without your gun for years. This kind of crap is the reason I had to start smithing my own guns.

Cleaned her up all puurdy like... Inside and out. Still happens. Here is why it happened on one of my SW's:Check the headspace between the breech face and the cyclinder ALL the way around. Some breech faces are not flat and have high spots. As the cylinder get hot and expands, the fired cases would start binding. The headspace should be about .065 and anything under about .060 will cause binding.

+1 Trojan, can get at dawson's for about $1000. I had the unhappy learning experience of the difference between a semi custom (fitted) gun like a STI and an off the rack production gun where they fit the parts together with a hammer. BTW, I've got a Para 1640 LTD for sale at discount price........ Anyway, as for the mass made guns like Para, SA, Colt, et al: if you happen to get a good one, you get a very good value. If you get one of the many dogs, you get a gun that will spend most of it's time going back to the factory.

For the one's I have saw that gun at $1200 from Dawson Dawson sells two 5" STI Trojans in 9mm. The standard one runs about $1000, the "comp ready" version with fibre optic sights, mag well, big button etc runs a couple of hundred more. For $1000, I think it's the best value for a semi custom 1911. I have been shooting a 9mm Trojan for about ten years and love it.http://www.dawsonpre...0000-1095448367 Here's the comp ready: http://www.dawsonprecision.com/ProductDetail.jsp?LISTID=8000132B-1326311105

No difference in accuracy by caliber, but you will probably shoot the 9 more accurately because of less recoil. As for the best 1911, you will like an STI Trojan in 9mm. Check them out at Dawson Precision. It's a shade more money than generic mass made guns but much better built.

As odd as it sounds, most of us do shoot better if our thumbs do not touch the gun. It seems "less secure" that way, but it forces a better grip using the fingers on the front-rear (strong hand) and left right (weak hand).The thing about thumbs is they invoke one of Newton's laws: for every force there has to be an equal opposing force provided for an object to remain at rest. If you press the left side of the frame at all with the thumbs, your strong hand has to be compensating on the other side which is actually unbalancing the grip.

However, bullseye has a way of "compensating out" the error induced by the fact that the target black dot will be grossly out of focus from focusing on the front sight. I have shot a few bullseye leagues, and you adjust the sight elevation to hit the X when the sights are aligned and the top of the front sight is just brushing up against wherever you see the bottom of the black center dot on the target. So you are choosing to set the target's black center out of focus, then use the sights to sompensate for whatever errors that causes in sighting due to vison change (perception) of where the target black area is.You can due exactly the same thing with the sights. If you are focused on target, the sight picture will still look like SOMETHING, it just won't look the same. And as you shoot and see the POI, you adjust to the different sight picture and center the shots or adjust the sights (if adjustable). The point is that sights in soft focus don't sudenly become unusable. I happen to use a Merritt sighter which "cheats" some and helps focus vison both onsight and target, but it's not mandatory.