Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns 1911 Common Failures

I have used the 1911 platform for a lot of years without really knowing much about them beyond shooting and field strip procedure.

At one time in the service I carried a 1911 that would, with the slide locked back, occasionally drop the hammer if I let the slide forward by simply releasing the slide stop with no round to pick up in the magazine.

It never let the hammer go with a round to pick up.

I reported it to the armorer, and he advised me not to let the slide slam forward without a round in the magazine. To ease it forward if closing the action with no round to pick up.

He also pulled the sear spring and made some subtle adjustment, and that pistol never had a recurrence of the hammer drop issue. Even though I occasionally forgot to let the slide forward slowly.

What are the things that cause failures like this in the 1911? I'm asking primarily about slam fires and going full auto.

Am not at all interested in discussions of other weapons, or pissing matches of any sort. Just looking for factual info on the 1911. Thanks...

Excessive wear on the sear, hammer, and/or disconnector, which probably was the case with a government issued pistol, or someone trying to "tune" it without really understanding what they are doing.

Most 1911 malfunctions are related to the pistol's 1911ishness.

I shot a Sig 938 a while back that went full auto after a trigger job. It was hands down the funnest pistol I've ever shot.

Curious as to whether your trigger job involved adjustment to the sear spring?

I don't know. It belonged to a female shooter in class. Her boyfriend had "fixed" the trigger for her. It scared her to death.

Nothing like a little excitement in class, huh?

I'd argue the Sig 938 is a single action auto, not a true 1911. Still good info about the trigger, since the triggers on them are pretty ugly. I have not yet got around to tuning mine, and it needs it.

When I was in college I knew of one competitive shooter who tinkered with the trigger on his Gold Cup, and it went full auto on him. The Gold Cups have a unique adjustable trigger to adjust take up - and if you don't adjust correctly they can go full auto.

I've owned over 20 of them, and have done trigger jobs on a few of them. I've personally never seen one go full auto. The failure that seems to happen most often is someone tries to get the trigger pull weight under 3½ - 4 lbs, and that's when they start having problems.

Did the hammer drop all the way, or to half-cock? If to half-cock, I wouldn't consider that a failure of the weapon, but rather doing what it was designed to do. My Gold Cup will do it too on the one occasion that I slammed an empty G.I. mag into the well with a little too much force and the slide stop was tripped in some manner.

In all my years with the 1911 in all of its iterations, G.I., commercial, long, short and in between, I've never had a failure of the weapon that was related to the weapon. I've had failures of my reloads, magazines, cartridges and technique, but nothing that was the result of the weapon.

IIRC, it dropped all the way. But we're talking nearly 40 years ago and my recollection may be less than perfect.

Was raised around guns and shooting, but the armorers admonition about not letting the slide slam on empty was the first time I'd heard that. My dad wasn't much on handguns in general, and preferred a revolver for his own use...

A quality 1911 that's properly set-up and fed good ammo from good magazines, is as durable and reliable as any platform out there. I'm talking major component failure here, not small parts.

Too often the problem is that some armorers think they're gunsmiths and too many novices with Youtube training think they're armorers.

I've seen barrel links fail, once or twice, and recoil spring plugs break, but that's about it for a non-dinked-with pistol. They're pretty GI proof.

The biggest cause of the 1911 platform is amateurs trying to tweak the sear/disconnector/grip safety spring for a lighter trigger pull. It is critical to performance that it be in balance. Especially the sear engagement, a bit too lite and the hammer following the slide syndrome and full auto firing are the result. The next is the sear-hammer engagement surfaces, they need to be as parallel as possible, smooth faces with sharp edges.

The 1911 was designed to be rugged and reliable, when folks get to tinkering without the proper tools, equipment and skill bad things happen.

The other problem is feeding of ammo other than ball in older guns, the barrel ramp must have the proper geometry for reliable feeding of semi-wadcutter and HP ammo. The older guns have steeper ramp than the more modern iterations and tends to jam non ball ammo against the top of the chamber. This modification MUST be approached with great caution if foe no other reason than too much material removal leads to dangerous unsupported case heads. A KB from the chamber and break grips and magazines along with hand injuries.

Now don't take my word for it as I have only worked on and/or accurized a few hundred of them and built several "race" guns in my life!

I've built, rebuilt and tinkered with the damn things for decades. Tweaking the legs of the sear spring, done right, can yield about a 3 1/2 pound pull that will work indefinitely, assuming a quality sear, hammer and disconnector is in place.

Done poorly, it can induce hammer follow but it is only one cause. If the sear angles, hammer notch etc have been fiddled with I just gut them and start over from the frame out.

The only real failure i have found in the 1911 Platform is the feed ramp angle not right and the use of cheap magazines.

^^^This^^^

I only use CHip McCormic Power Mags or Wilson Combat Mags, both in the 8 round version. And I've NEVER had a problem with either.

What you've described is not really a "common" problem & likely would not occur today on a non-altered factory gun.

The gun in question has likely had some level of mods done to the sear, hammer hooks & the sear spring or all three, in the interest of reducing trigger pull weight.

As someone pointed out previously, all of those elements have to work together & be correct or the situation with your gun can occur.

What your 'smith told you is is also correct; the slide should never be dropped hard on an empty chamber & especially so on a gun that has had a trigger job & it can definitely damage the sear face & /or the hammer hooks.

Softball match guns that have the hammers hooks cut as short as .017" sometimes need the hammer held back as the slide is dropped even on a loaded mag.

But again, you won't find this condition on a typical unaltered factory pistol today, again I say, it's not an unusual problem, but it's not "common" either with a stock gun.

MM

TLee,

The RIA that I carry these days is extremely reliable with all sorts of ammo, from all weights of HP to very old french surplus ball, and also the CCI shotshell.
They call it their gov't model. Is it's ramp configured differently than what the U.S. military 1911s were?

Sig 938 is very similar to an Astra A-70 or Star Model B where the trigger group is concerned.

Not TLEE, & I've only worked on a hundred or so, not "a few hundred" so take it for what it's worth, but the ramp may be slightly different, but the barrel is most assuredly throated vs the non-throated barrels of military 1911's & even commercial 1911's before the late '70's or thereabouts.

MM

Why doesn't that statement raise red flags

i always here how superior 1911s are--once they are set up as outlined above

But a Glock that goes from box to holster an will shoot a few thousand rounds with nary a problem is "tupperware junk"