Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns AMT Hardballer

These AMT pistols were early stainless pioneers and I remember these when I was young. Never had one of their 1911's but did the Automag pistols in 22WMR and 45WIN MAG and they were awful. So are those AMT 1911's the same hot garbage or are they operable and worth the effort?

I had a .45 ACP Hardballer. It was somewhat of a piece of [bleep]. Fortunately I found someone that REALLY wanted it and traded it straight across for rifle chambered for .338 Win Mag.

The first semi auto pistol I ever bought was an AMT Hardballer Longslide 45. It was an absolute gob of jamming junk. Didn’t matter what ammo I fed it, or how much Break Free I slathered into it, it would jam. Bang, bang, jam. Bang, jam. Between the Army’s 1911 .45’s that I used and that AMT, I had a bad taste form for 1911’s that has never went away. Sold it and bought a Glock G20 and never looked back.

The HardGaller! I saw a pair of them multiple times each come into the gun shop I worked at. No matter how much grease was kept on the rails they’d gall and stick the slide to the frame. Saw a few more over the years that had a carbon steel slide of some type or another fitted to the frames, I assumed to get away from the galling issue. Horrible junk.

Step dads had gummy/sticky slide.

Quite a poor bit of kit by any sane standard. The only good thing to be said about them is that they're easy to find in LNIB shape. The one I had made it through a box of 50 ball once without jamming IIRC. That was after I'd cleaned it to crazy standards, then greased it up like a porn chick prepping for DVDA.

Had the 22 mag version years ago. First time I shot it it emptied the mag in one quick burst. Only time it ever got through a mag without jamming

An AMT Hardballer is the only 1911 I ever saw that was so far out of spec a Wilson grip safety wouldn't work. You couldn't run fast enough to give me one.

Mine showed no evidence of the slide sticking. It was very accurate with Speer 200 gn JHP and I don't recall a singe failure to feed or eject.
It had other issues that irritated me enough to get rid of it.
The trigger was awful and could not be improved until a gunsmith fitted a GI hammer, eliminating the stainless/stainless contact on the sear.
The last straw was that when the rear sight was lowered adequately the adjustment screw protruded into the firing pin tunnel and grabbed the firing pin.

A friend has an Automag III in .30 Carbine, it has functioned well the few times I have fired it and I don't recall him complaining about it jamming. Of course it may be the only reliable on ever made.

Harry Sanford, the AMT guy, was a real “character.” In the second half of the ‘80s, AMT produced an obvious knockoff of the Ruger Standard 22 auto pistol, and Ruger was understandably disturbed about it. Bill Ruger even reached out personally to Harry in an attempt to resolve the matter short of trial. Using different words (of the four letter kind), Harry told Bill to attempt asexual reproduction. Following the $2 million jury verdict against Harry, Bill again personally reached out in an attempt lessen the financial impact. But, Harry remained belligerent, a true jackass to the end.

Try as he might, Harry never seemed able to come up with a follow-on design worthy of his reputation as the genius designer of the 44 Auto Mag pistol. Maybe that’s what made him so grumpy.

Sounds like a good thing to run from then

Owned one for a few months. Traded it off for a rifle.....any rifle.

I used to work in an indoor range, and I shot IPSC and NRA Action shooting for many years. I saw an awful lot of various pistols in use over the years. I can only think of ONE AMT pistol that worked, a compensated 7" Longslide !!, but the owner was a pretty smart fellow, and kept it slathered in lithium grease,and he'd lightened the slide so it would have less weight to cycle (he'd opened up the slide almost like a 92 Beretta, it was certainly a unique pistol). He'd also put in a pivoting trigger, so it's pull was VERY, VERY light. He did all the work himself.

I can still see old Norm hauling that thing out of this holster and shooting it pretty well, to be honest, but he was pretty slow, and that knackered his scores. (Point score divided by the amount of time it took to do it).
No matter, it's still the only AMT of any type I've ever seen that actually worked, and there was nothing stock left on the thing.

I ran across one for sale, and not knowing much about them, asked a friend who is a manager of a gun store and has a lot of personal experience with a large number of guns. He said "They jam".

I asked what percentage and how often.

"All of them. All the time".

A good one to stay away from?

"Yup".

Sounds like they maintained their quality level across the line; I had a Backup .380 that was a jamming POS.

My first 1911 was a new AMT Hardballer. After a little break in, it worked fine but I was shooting ball ammo out of it. Can't speak to how it would do with SWC rounds. Anyway I wanted to "move up" and bought a Colt 80s series Gold Cup. It was more problematic than the Hardballer and no more accurate. Can't really complain much about my experience.

I was smart enough to have never had one....................

MM

👍 Mine worked perfectly most of the time.

My late brother bought one very early in their production. It worked, but had to be kept well-greased. It took a while for manufacturers to figure out how to prevent galling with SS, dissimilar alloys being one way, just like with camera lens threads.