ltwguns.com

A. Do any of you actually PREFER to carry a Colt series 80 custom for everyday carry?

B. Have you heard of real-life situations where a series 80 could've prevented an accidental discharge?

C. Have you heard of any series 80 malfunctions (neglected firearms aside of course)?

I'd especially like to hear from gunsmiths on the board!

hoser,

I'm not a smith but I do have two Series 80 customs by Joe Bonar and by Mike Bay. I also have non series 80 customs by Jim Hoag, Ted Yost, Mike Bay, and Dane Burns. My everyday carry gun is a Springfield LW Compact by Mike Bay, but I have to say my series 80 guns have triggers as good as any of my other 1911s and the reliability of the Colt firing pin safety has been flawless through about 3,000 rounds so far.

Because of where you live, the unfortunate fact of life is if your base gun has to have a pony on it, you'll have to go with a series 80 Colt unless you find a used one through a PPT.

Also for what it's worth, I've got a series 80 Colt which will be coming back from a full house build from Bob Rodgers in a month or two. When planning the build, Bob had no hesitation in using a series 80 Colt.

Also for what it's worth, Ned Christiansen once posted about one problem he had on his series 80 Colt that he carries. It might have been posted on this forum, but he said that he had been to the beach and a grain of sand locked up his firing pin safety.

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Ted

Hey Hoser, how have you been? Do you still have any of your Hoag customs or are they all gone. I have a few series 70 Colts in Cali with family that I might be selling. If you have any Hoag customs or anything else you might want to trade we can work out a PPT. We can get together at the range I used to work at for a transfer. I will be back in Cali to visit family in a month or so.

Elliott

Hello

I'm certainly not a gunsmith, but I can speak to C. I was at Pat Rogers' AK course April 27-29 and we had two Series 80s go down on the same day. The weapons (a Combat Commander and Colt Special Combat Government) were owned by separate shooters and had, apparently, never given any trouble. I'm aware of the pedigree of the latter, and it was lovingly maintained with a few thousand rounds through them. The failures in both weapons were identical: the fining pin safety mechanisms were frozen in the slides, locking the firing pins in place.

Buzz - are you sure the s80 mechanism failed first? The reason I ask is that I've recently had two Colts go down from soft firing pins. The FP mushroomed after about 1K rounds and the expanded head stuck in the FP stop. Happened in a NRM s80 blued 5" and a 5" blued XSE. I'm sure that Colt let a batch of soft firing pins get out.

If the FP was locked up in the stop then I could see the S80 mechanism jamming against it.

But it sounds like the guns you saw were pretty well shaken out. Just wanted to raise the possibility given my recent experience.

PS I'm not a smith - just play one in my garage from time to time.

Oh yeah, with regard to the quesiton about a S80 gun preventing an AD. It's hard to say in a given case what would have happened if the gun were a S70. But I did talk to a guy at an IDPA match who had lost control of his gun while drawing. As he watched it sail end over end out in front of him, he told me his thoughts instantly turned to the fact that the gun had a FP safety.

The gun in question was a Sig but I'm sure you'd take the same comfort as your S80 tumbled toward the concrete. A properly maintained S70 wouldn't go off, but if I had to be a bystander to such an event, I'd rather watch a S80 hit the pavement.

The firing pin in the first pistol to go down (the Combat Commander) was recovered and was intact. The Series 80 bits basically fell out.

We couldn't get the firing pin out of the other pistol despite using a punch to try and drive it out. However, I can find out from the shooter if the pin was intact. He was having a 'smith repair the pistol and eliminate any vestiges of the Series 80 system.

Not trying to defend the 80 or 70 for that matter but with the hundreds of thousands of guns out here and millions of various parts made for both, I am certain someplace some where something has failed and many, many, many, many, myths have permiated from one to another over the decades. Now a part failure from a "production" gun not rebuilt with top quality components is the starting point for many of those myths.

Now that aside, I do know two LEO's that are actually still allowed to carry a single action gun, and these two of the LEO's when I was very active IDPA, and still maintain contact, never had an issue with the 80. In fact one carries a Yost 80 at work still, (retired LEO from one dept and now a balif), and the other has changed career path after 20 years to another line of work.

One part failure when we shot IDPA was a slide stop braking, nothing with the safety system.

I do remember we had a couple of "Wally World Commando's" talking the usual and the LEO placed two guns side by side and several of the shooters, when blindfolded could not tell the difference in triggers from a Colt Combat Government 80 factory and a Colt 70 both older guns and untuned.

I know this does not answer the question but it is some food for thought.

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Be safe and keep the brass flying

Terry Peters

Do your research but you get what you pay for front end or back end
http://www.pt-partners.com
@ptpartners_tx

My 10mm Commander. Ted built it, I carry it.

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Common sense isn't so common

I've had a series 80 failure in a "tuned" Para. It went out of time and would no longer allow the firing pin to strike the primer. Pretty simple fix- replaced the "arm". I wouldn't hesitate to carry one that had proven itself reliable.

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