GSG 1911 .22 ongoing problems FIXED! Updated May 21

If anyone cares to follow, I filed my GSG slide down a little more tonight. It was binding on the lower left front corner. I forget if I said this in other posts, but you could slide a piece of paper between the slide and frame on the right side, but not the left - leading me to believe one part or the other was not machined quite as it should have been. (BTW, the color has been removed from my slide. It flaked off so I took it down to the original almuinum or whatever it's made from. Planning to get it annodized in nickel once I get to a company for a price)

The filing amounted to litterally 15 seconds or so with a fine file, and another 30 seconds with crokus cloth to smooth over the file marks. We're talking the width of a piece of paper worth of filing.

I'll be trying this at the range tomorrow (Monday) and post my results.

The reddish color is from me marking the area that needed attention

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There has been a small issue removing the barrel from the slide since shortly after I bought it. I shrugged this off as something getting "hammered" from the action and peening a little. I wasn't and still am not concerned about it. It doesn't affect the workings. Someone else mentioned this and I am just stating that I have that same problem.

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I never checked the actual length of the warranty, but this pistol is about 16 months old. I'm assuming a one year warranty.

Doesn't matter to me either way. I'm calling it a learning experience, and I'm not doing any alterations that may ruin the gun so it's not like I will be out a pistol.
 
Tagged for interest, I'm taking mine to the range for the first time next week, so I'll follow your progress and report on any challenges with mine.
 
Range report - I'm at a loss.

Since last firing, I used a super duper fine stone on a dremel and polished the feed ramp until the whole thing was evenly shiny.

Filed the slide as I mentioned above, went back to the round guide rod as opposed to the X shaped new one I just got because I made a buffer based on that rod. I meant to pick up a teflon washer to use as a buffer, but forgot, so I made one for test purposes out of a tough piece of leather.

Reasoning for this was the leather would actually be similar to original rubber buffer, it was easy to cut to size, and I was only using one on the premise that the buffer simply takes up space, affecting tension on the recoil spring. I was looking for a change in operation. I didn't really care what the change was at this point. There was none.

I ever so slightly spread the top of my mags. One that always seemed to work well allowed the round to sit a little tiny bit higher than the other two.
I didn't want to spread it too far because that material they're made of can break unexpectedly.

What happened today.....

The first mag was essentially a single shot pistol. I applied some remington spray lube to the slide.

The first 3 rnds of the next mag had to be cycled. After that fired the rest ok.

I loaded another mag (using win 555 bulk BTW) and the first three had to be cycled. I quickly switched to another mag and federal bulk ammo. This fired perfectly.

I loaded ONE mag with win555 and it fired with 3 FTF or FTE

Loaded the SAME mag with federal and it fired fine. So I ran three mags through with the federal and all worked well. One fail to feed the first rnd.

So now back to win555 expecting failures. All three mags worked perfectly with Win555. Frustrated yet? I was.

At the same time I concentrated on my grip. Someone suggested it might be that I was limp wristing.

So I carried on with the win555 and got a few failures here and there, even while concentrating on grip so that changed nothing.

Then I went through 3 mags as fast I could, empty, drop, smack fresh mag and fired 30 rnds with zero issue.

I put the thing down for a bit and shot another gun. When I went back to the GSG I had the usual two or three failures per mag. Various failures.

Could this all be temperature related? Seems to go through a bad period cold, then as the gun warms, it works better if not perfectly.

Not sure what my next step is, but I'm now thinking of playing with the mag springs and followers.
 
I'm going to call this gun fixed !

I've done a lot to it over the past while, and the biggest problem I had was no consistency with the failure. Never did the same thing twice it seemed.

I fired 400 rnds through it last weekend with two or three stovepipes. Great.

I fired another 2-300 through it today with one or two failures to pick up a round from a mag. Ok.

Here's what I did;

A few weeks ago I got tired of the bare aluminum finish on the slide and as a temporary measure I found some "nickel" paint. Thinking it was going to look tacky, I still painted it. Doesn't look too bad actually.

After painting it, I quickly saw wear marks on the slide. I had seen evidence of these before (see post 21 for pics).

Well, that did it for me. Failure hell. I went home and got the dremel out with a sanding wheel, and while cursing the whole time I took the grinder to the forward part of the frame that serves essentially as a dust cover. I had little or no mercy.

The next time out was the 400 rnds with 3 failures.

The slide definately moves free-er and smoother. You can feel it when you hit the slide release. It snaps rather than just just closing.

So summary, I think I had several issues. Some were addressed by other's posts (thank you).

The biggest issue was the slide binding. I am confident enough to say that the slide was machined wrong. I noticed it was a little A-symetrical if you look straight at it. I wish I had taken pics to point this out.

My second issue was limp wristing it. I grab hold of my 45, but this being a .22 I was being too light with it.

I was concerned ammo was an issue. I usually buy the cheapest I can get so the Win bulk could have been a problem. When I had the successful 400 rnd day I was using Federal, and it is obviously better ammo, so today I used Win bulk again and it was not an issue. So I say the ammo now makes no difference.

I played with the mags a little but I don't think I made things better with that. Especially considering I had the 1 original, and 2 other mags, I couldn't see them being a problem. Now if I "slam" a mag in extra fast or hard, the first round sometimes pops out on the ground, so I don't think I made anything better with that. Luckily it doesn't bother me and doesn't happen often.

So slide binding and grip. Done and done.

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Thanks for the post. Mine's started doing more of the stove-pipe action, and occasionally a failure to feed, so I may be headed down this road.

Appreciated.
 
Neil1978 said:
Thanks for the post. Mine's started doing more of the stove-pipe action, and occasionally a failure to feed, so I may be headed down this road.

Appreciated.
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If it wasn't doing it since you first got it, then you're likely not going to run into the problems I did.

A tip for you.... don't over lube, it'll slow everything down. I find Remington Dry Lube works best for me.

Keep it clean. Tends to gunk up in the nooks and crannies quickly.


Danimal247 said:
Looks half decent with the painted slide!
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It came out better than I expected. Without close inspection no one would be any the wiser.

The original finish started flaking very quickly on this gun and looked like crap so I just took the finish off. It's been bare aluminum for quite a while. I got tired of looking at that, and saw the nickel paint. I was expecting something like "chrome" paint which doesn't look anything like chrome.

I'm going to get it annodized either nickel, chrome, or brushed aluminum, I was waiting to see if I got it working right first.

I bought this gun with the intent that it was a "beater" so it didn't bother me in the least to do any of this to it.
 
Interesting. I wouldn't mind one of those pistols.

Wondering why your first pics show a straight, checkered mainspring housing and the later pics show an arched one... :confused:

I prefer straight, checkered, even if I have to do it myself.
 
Good on ya Yogi!!! Any serious handgun shooter HAS to learn how to gunsmith their own gun. You have just graduated!!!! I liked your attitude about "anything can be fixed". If you are serious about gunsmithing the 1911 - get yourself the book " The Colt .45 Automatic - a shop manual" by Jerry Kunhausen - full of pictures and very explicit instructions. Given the work you went through - I wish you had been working on a Colt 1911 .45 because now you would have yourself a REAL gun!!! Not to play down the GSG because I bought one myself after reading your "adventures" and it works great for what it is but its still a .22 and its not a Colt .45!!!! Sorry, compared to the old Colt's and the VERY old Remington/Ithica/Singer WWII the new generation 1911's just "don't have it". And this comes from doing a lot of work on them to 'get them up to speed' for competition buddies. Good luck again Yogi
 
Marcel B. said:
Interesting. I wouldn't mind one of those pistols.

Wondering why your first pics show a straight, checkered mainspring housing and the later pics show an arched one... :confused:

I prefer straight, checkered, even if I have to do it myself.
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The pics you're referring to are from leadchucker62. My GSG is as it always was except for the look of the slide. I've only had the main spring housing off it twice.
 
superted said:
Good on ya Yogi!!! Any serious handgun shooter HAS to learn how to gunsmith their own gun. You have just graduated!!!! I liked your attitude about "anything can be fixed". If you are serious about gunsmithing the 1911 - get yourself the book " The Colt .45 Automatic - a shop manual" by Jerry Kunhausen - full of pictures and very explicit instructions. Given the work you went through - I wish you had been working on a Colt 1911 .45 because now you would have yourself a REAL gun!!! Not to play down the GSG because I bought one myself after reading your "adventures" and it works great for what it is but its still a .22 and its not a Colt .45!!!! Sorry, compared to the old Colt's and the VERY old Remington/Ithica/Singer WWII the new generation 1911's just "don't have it". And this comes from doing a lot of work on them to 'get them up to speed' for competition buddies. Good luck again Yogi
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My first pistol was/is a 1927 Colt .45, Argentine contract (with a very low, 3 digit serial number - manufactured by Colt, not the Argentinians - I'm defensive about that part :) )

I agree, nothing like the originals. I don't think I would ever "smith" a Colt that old. I'd hold out for a series 70 if I wanted to modify one.

The GSG, like everyone else, is for the similar feel and look with a different ammo budget.

Thanks for your comments too.
 
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