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PeteCamp wrote:Excaliber....Sorry I am late posting this thought. I have a Kimber 5" TLE RL II and got to thinking about your problem. I am under the impression that on Kimbers the II designation has to do with the fact that these weapons do not have the safety that John Browning designed for the 1911, but have a different design safety. (Some research might be in order to verify that.)

I have never experienced the problem as you described it on my Kimber, but it has the factory grips. On the other hand, I have the exact same Hogue grips as you on a Springfield and I tried like the dickens to make it fail as you describe and it simply fires every time - no matter how little (or much) the grip safety is depressed. As long as it is depressed, the weapon fires. I believe the Springfield has the original 1911 design safety.

Perhaps the issue is not strictly related to the grips, but might be a combination of the grips and the different design safety? Just food for thought. I carry my Kimber at times during the winter months and the thought of needing it and having it fail to fire is disturbing. I think a discussion with a gunsmith at Kimber (or a real 1911 expert 'smith) might be telling. True, we should discover these kinds of issues on the range. But...IF it is an issue with the design of the safety in the Kimber, I want to know it for sure. Good luck.
-Pete

Kimbers with the II designation have John Browning's original grip safety, with the addition of a firing pin block safety that is released by the movement of the grip safety. It's not a replacement - it's an addition, and it operates differently than the firing pin block in the series 80 Colt design.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the issue I encountered is not due to either the grips or the safety. A unique combination of the way the grips interact with my individual hand results in unreliable release of the grip safety on my gun because the area below my thumb doesn't have enough extra meat to overcome the additional grip opening that the thick Hogue grips create behind the backstrap.

Please don't take my post as a suggestion that there's anything wrong with the design of either the Kimber pistol or the Hogue grips. The combination of those items with the individual characteristics of my hand is needed to produce the problem, and using thinner grips completely resolves it for me.

The point of my post is that combinations like this can produce issues that are hard to anticipate. It's important to thoroughly test the gun again after any modification, even if you can't see any way that change could affect function.

rbrecount wrote:Thank you for your story. You oughta make detective.

You're welcome.

I hope it helps others avoid a similar issue.

And, once upon a time in a land far away, I did make detective.

KFP wrote:

Excaliber wrote:

KFP wrote:Excaliber do you have a palm swell on your grip safety?

Yes.

I put an aftermarket Kimber or Wilson part with the "hump" on all my 1911's to make the grip safety operation more positive. It worked fine until I changed the grips.

I was thinking that could be a solution for you, if you wanted to keep the grips. You're ahead of me as usual!

Thanks for the suggestion anyway. It was a good one, and might well have been one I hadn't thought of, but in this case I had.

I'm always grateful when someone comes up with a solution I haven't thought of for something I'm trying to fix, and I've adopted a whole bunch of great ideas I've gotten from this Forum.

In this case, I'm not so infatuated with the grips that I'm willing to take the chance of diminishing reliability by using them. When it comes to carry guns, I try to make decisions based on achieving the highest degree of reliability and effectiveness as my first priority. Everything else falls in line behind that.

KFP wrote:Excaliber do you have a palm swell on your grip safety?

Yes.

I put an aftermarket Kimber or Wilson part with the "hump" on all my 1911's to make the grip safety operation more positive. It worked fine until I changed the grips.

Abraham wrote:Excaliber,

"before the CNC machining was refined" - This is something I'm completely ignorant about...

All the 1911's I have experience with were pre-CNC - thus/maybe that was their major malfunction. (apologies to "Full Metal Jacket", the movie)

You may have started a new interest in me to own a post-CNC 1911, if they have at least equal dependability of say a Glock, Sig, etal.

However, I've read more than one thread regarding post-CNC Kimbers and other 1911 manufacturers regarding a variety of problems requiring sending back to the factory or having to change out springs regularly or fill in the blank... No doubt, as you pointed out, recalls and other problems plague all gun makers, but it seems (and maybe I'm wrong, at least I hope so...) that there's a greater number of problems, comparative to more modern firearm design, even with post-CNC 1911 pistols in general.

I haven't a clue where I can find out how post-CNC 1911's problems can be compared to so called "Tupperware guns"? That is, if the overall number and kind of problems essentially stack up equally or approximately equally between them...?

The chief reason, certainly not beauty, for my now owning Glocks is their inherent overall dependability. If I had the same confidence in a 1911 I'd one or more...

Perhaps, this is now so, but the 1911 threads referencing problems discourage me.

CNC stands for "computer number controlled" machining processes. These machines use computerized instructors to perform multiple operations on a part very rapidly without the need for an operator to touch it between steps, and can execute those operations with much greater precision than is possible with manually controlled techniques.

Prior to CNC machining, guns were roughly machined and parts were final fitted by hand. Tolerances were relatively large to accommodate this process. With CNC machining, tolerances are much closer and there is far less need for the hand fitting that introduces variances in the finished product. This means guns can come off the line with fewer faults and with more features like lowered ejection ports, high cuts at the top of the front strap, beveled magazine wells, and other similar items as part of the regular manufacturing process and without the expensive post purchase customization previously required to get these features. This is the thing that catapulted Kimber to the top of the volume 1911 producers and dropped Colt into the has beens.

Glocks are designed with tolerances that require no hand fitting at all. In fact, you can disassemble a bunch of those guns and reassemble them with parts randomly selected from the batch and they will all work just fine. They are incredibly durable and all around fine guns if you are OK with their thick grips, odd grip angle and the characteristics of their triggers.

My personal taste finds those things not to my liking, but that's no knock on the guns. I just have a strong preference for the 1911 grip angle and trigger. Both feel very natural to me and the grip angle makes the gun point just where I want it without having to think about it. I can hit what I want to hit with reliability and consistency, so it works for me and there's enough history behind it that I'm confident it won't let me down when it counts.

The Annoyed Man wrote:Excaliber, that is an interesting experience, as I have those same Hogue wraparound grips on my Kimber Ultra. I have not had the issue you mention, but I have been thinking about going back to the original grips anyway, or possibly a CT grip set. The Hogue grips definitely make the pistol fatter in the hand, and while this doesn't make it any harder to shoot, it does actually make it a tiny bit less concealable. With the original grips, the pistol was quite slim. Not so much anymore.

My reason for using the Hogue grips is that I am left handed, and the front strap of the stainless Ultra is very slick. So maintaining a good grip while shooting is harder because the gun wants to slip in my strong hand under recoil. I wouldn't be so bothered by this, but it causes my wedding band to come in contact with the metal of the front strap, and it leaves a small mark there. So I'm going to put the original flat rubber grips back on, and try to make some grip tape work on that front strap.

You might try this Pachmayr product. It's a wraparound design but much flatter than the Hogues I used. I've used them on other guns and liked them a lot. The only reason I'm not using them on my 5" Kimber Eclipse II is because the front strap is very nicely checkered and I don't need anything else to prevent slipping there.

I don't want to imply that there's anything wrong with the Hogue grips - there isn't. They are thick and do have a marginal impact on concealability, but that hasn't been an issue for me. The problem I experienced is a product of the unique combination of those grips, my thumb on the safety technique, and the individual characteristics of my hand. If my hand had just a little more meat in the right place, the grip safety would depress just fine. It's just easier to replace the grips than it is to replace my hand.

Abraham wrote:Excaliber,

As your response proved, you took my post for the tongue in cheek it was...

No doubt, there are no foolproof firearms as yet made and your customizing was the culprit for the problem you experienced - Obviously not the guns fault.

I've owned and shot a number of different 1911's and experienced many FTF or FTE which ultimately drove me to buy a more modern designed pistol. With them, I've not experienced any of the problems plaguing the 1911's I shot. Overall, my experience with the 1911 is dismal regarding dependability.

Perhaps, not all the 1911's I shot were to blame for their problems. That is, maybe they weren't properly cleaned, lubed or who knows what...? The ones I've owned though, were properly cared for and I still had many problems.

How many tales regarding a lack of dependability in 1911's do we read of on this forum?

The answer: Far, far in excess of modern day pistol design.

Well, there are 1911's and there are 1911's.

Those manufactured before the CNC machining was refined have much more variability in their tolerances than newer ones.

Some new guns will still have problems - witness the recalls we've seen from virtually every major manufacturer. I had a Glock with a frame issue that required construction of a new frame. No brand is immune.

My 1911's are not at all finicky - they eat anything I feed them, and are not fussy about just how and what I lube them with - any reasonable level of care works just fine.

If I were one of those folks who wants to see if he can shoot thousands of rounds without cleaning or lubrication and leave the gun in the drawer for years until the 3 AM moment when he really needs it, I'd go with a Glock which is more tolerant of this level of maintenance negligence.

Since I'm not one of those folks, I'll stick with my 1911 which has been saving good guys' lives by stopping bad guys for a century - a claim none of the others can make.

Abraham wrote:Excaliber,

Please, consider getting a Glock or a Sig or choose one of the many modern designed pistols available on the market.

1911's belong in a museum along with the other beautiful and ancient firearms like wheellocks, flintlocks and such...

No doubt 1911's are splendid looking, but so are swords.

Hhmmm, maybe trade in your 1911 for a good Japanese katana, they never fail.

Interesting comment - I have a Katana. She's my 105 lb. German Shepherd Dog.

I've owned and extensively carried several Glocks and fired a number of Sigs. The fat grips and long, relatively heavy Sig trigger pull, and the irritating grooved trigger safety lever on the Glock are not for me, although both are fine guns and if I had to use either one I would not consider myself disadvantaged.

Glocks and Sigs are not foolproof. If you have a chance, look up some of New York City PD's annual firearms discharge reports and read about some of the ways you can manage to get a Glock to do what it's not supposed to do.

There are a couple of good reasons why many special forces operators and elite police teams choose the time proven 1911 design over all others. While this would not be a good choice for everyone, it is the one I make for times when my life might be on the line and I don't make that decision lightly.

The surprise failure to fire incident I described was clearly my fault because I installed one of the many thousands of available customizing options on my pistol and didn't thoroughly wring it out on the range before using it for score.

My bad - not the gun's.

WARNING: Long Post

The time for my annual LEOSA requalification had rolled around again, so I brought my S&W revolver and Kimber .45 over to Greybeard's Denton County Sports Association range in Argyle to take care of that chore.

I usually qualify with the 4" Kimber Pro Carry that is my most frequent EDC, but I had just changed the recoil spring and hadn't tested it yet, and it's my practice not to use a gun I've modified for either carry or qualification until I have verified proper function with a couple of boxes of ammo.

I know changing one Kimber original spring for another of the same specs shouldn't affect anything, but I'm not one to take such things for granted, so I brought along a 5" Kimber to maintain the same operational parameters during the qualification run. I hadn't made any changes to that gun other than swapping out the hard grips for a nice comfortable set of Hogue wraparound rubber grips with finger grooves that felt really good in the hand. I had only shot it once or twice since then, but figured I was good to go because I hadn't changed anything that could affect operation. That turned out to be an unwarranted assumption.

Greybeard gave me the signal for the first shot on the first target with the .45. When I pressed the trigger it didn't move and the hammer didn't fall.

Not good.

A quick check showed the slide was in battery, the thumb safety was off (I rest my strong hand thumb on it during shooting to make sure it stays that way), and the grip safety appeared to be depressed.

While I was puzzling over the cause, Greybeard dutifully confiscated one of my remaining rounds to make sure I didn't squeak in a shot I wasn't entitled to somewhere, guaranteeing the only point I've lost in a qualification in years.

I checked the gun over and couldn't find anything wrong with it, and finished the qualification with no further issues. I then ran a bunch of mixed ammo through the Pro Carry to test the recoil spring, and it worked just fine.

The incident bugged me that night and all the next day, and by the time I went to clean the guns about 24 hours later I had determined that grip safety operation was the most likely culprit. Again, I couldn't find any mechanical issue with it. I compared its operation to the function of the one on the 4" gun which was equipped with a thin set of wraparound Crimson Trace Lasergrips, and they appeared identical. Then I tried picking up each unloaded gun alternately a few times and dry firing.

Sure enough, after a few tries, I duplicated the issue on the 5". I didn't move anything and examined everything as it was right then. The grip safety appeared to be depressed, but by some infinitesimal fraction of an inch it wasn't down far enough to fully clear the movement of the trigger bar. Why? Because the extra thick rubber grips and thick finger grooves on the front strap had opened up the way my hand grips the gun just enough to make proper operation of the grip safety unreliable.

When I carefully adjusted my grip to make the grip safety work, I discovered that when the grip safety was depressed enough to allow the gun to fire, it wasn't down the full distance of its travel and there was no margin for error at all. The size and shape of the grips combined with the size and shape of my hand was simply a bad combination.

To verify that was the problem, I swapped out the finger groove grips for a flat set of hard rubber ones and did the alternating gun dry fire exercise again. Using repeated hasty grips, I couldn't get the problem to recur.

Lesson learned:

Do repeated dry fire and range testing after any change to a gun before trusting it for carry or qualification, even if you can't see any way that it could affect operation.

Although this experience irked me no end because of the lost point (I'm a perfectionist), I was very happy it had occurred where it did.

Failure to get off a shot you intend to fire is on the range.

That sure beats on the street.