Retrofitting a grip safety to a 2011 - too short?

[matteekay]

Hey all,

 

I'm retrofitting a non-pinned grip safety to my 2011 for some IDPA hijinks. I picked up a memory bump unit from Fusion and it seems to be too short? With everything installed, it can pivot out past the mainspring housing without the "ears" making contact. I moved it into a 1911 frame and everything fits fine there; I also tried a different MSH in the 2011 frame with no success.

 

I bought this gun used so I don't have exact specifics, but it's an STI 2011 frame with an Extreme Shooters grip. The current beavertail also looks like it would be too short if it wasn't pinned. Is this a common issue? Is there a grip safety that's known to work?

[Absocold]

There are numerous styles of grip safety depending on whether it came from Para, Llama, Caspian, etc. Oddballs abound, especially on older stuff. Some can be made to fit but often won't be pretty.

 

There are some MSH's out there that are a bit shorter than the norm as well and there's no easy fix for that issue if you don't have the matching grip safety, best to chuck it if that's your problem.

 

Move BOTH the grip safety and MSH over to a 1911 and see if they work together there. If so, then there's likely a problem with a bad grip module to frame fitment issue causing a gap which results in the distance between the MSH pin hole (on the grip) and the thumb safety pin hole that locates the grip safety (on the frame) being too far apart.

Edited February 24, 2020 by Absocold

[matteekay]

13 hours ago, Absocold said:

There are numerous styles of grip safety depending on whether it came from Para, Llama, Caspian, etc. Oddballs abound, especially on older stuff. Some can be made to fit but often won't be pretty.

 

There are some MSH's out there that are a bit shorter than the norm as well and there's no easy fix for that issue if you don't have the matching grip safety, best to chuck it if that's your problem.

 

Move BOTH the grip safety and MSH over to a 1911 and see if they work together there. If so, then there's likely a problem with a bad grip module to frame fitment issue causing a gap which results in the distance between the MSH pin hole (on the grip) and the thumb safety pin hole that locates the grip safety (on the frame) being too far apart.

 

Thanks for the reply!

 

Using the MSH and grip safety from the 1911 had the same effect. I finally got smart and took apart my other 2011 and tried swapping the parts from that. Great success - the same grip safety that wasn't working with my current MSH *did* work with the one out of my other 2011. It looks like the curved-bottom STI housings are slightly taller than your standard 1911. As a bonus, the grip safety was even functional once I pulled the pin from the MSH, so all I'll need to do now is get an STI-style MSH.

[Absocold]

Now look into the magwell and make sure you don't need to trim the front edge of the MSH. An MSH for a 1911 isn't curved there and must be fitted to blend the mag funnel.

 

But if you're using a 2011 MSH then it should be fine.