Side Project #1 - Kimber style MEU

So after looking around at my armory, I realized I missed a gun that I think everyone had at some point, an M1911.  Now there are tons of variations with different colors and styles, so everyone can find one to fit their style.  Since most are TM compatible, parts are easy to come by as well.  If you have ever met me in person, I love OD.  All my gear is OD, my guns have at least a small speck of OD somewhere, so when someone posted up a WE MEU with an OD slide and frame on my local forum for sale, I had to grab it.  It didn't come with magazines, but for the price I paid for it I wasn't complaining.

I played around with it a little bit and it was neat for sure.  It wasn't what I wanted though.  I have two full sized pistols, a KWA USP and a KSC GLock 17.  I have to admit, the compact guns are nice and handy for secondaries.  I was browsing around different ways to make a custom gun when I came across this picture:

http://www.dawsonprecision.com/images/534-009.jpg

I looked at it, and thought to myself, "I never owned a compact M1911".  I looked around and saw all sorts of brand new slides and other fancy parts, but I wanted to keep it simple.  I put together a simple shopping list and went to town.  About a week later, I built this piece in about an hour.  I think it turned out quite good.

Externally, I swapped out the slide with a CQB Master 3.8 M1911 slide.  The picture is a 4.3, but they were out of stock where I bought the parts.  What is nice about that is it is a true drop in replacement.  It has the outer barrel, inner barrel, hop up unit, and blowback unit that comes with stock WE M1911s.  I think the contrast between the OD and the black with the subtle accents of silver make it a unique piece.

Internally, I changed a few things as well.  All I really did was buy a CQB Master Upgrade Kit.  It comes with an enhanced polycarbonate loading nozzle, CNC'd piston head ported with 8 holes for a better seal, a CNC'd cylinder bulb for more gas flow, and 160% recoil and hammer springs.  Doesn't take long to install as long as you know how to disassemble the TM based M1911.

New nozzle compared to the stock one. (new one is the lower, greyer one)

The loading nozzle as a better feeding tang on it so it feeds more reliably.  The polycarbonate is much stronger than the plastic made from the stock one.

New Piston vs. Old
(Sorry, I accidentally deleted the picture I had and I already installed it)
The new piston has a better design to maintain a better seal.  When I actually took the blow back unit apart to replace this, the screw was halfway out already!  Nothing a little blue locktite didn't fix though.

Springs (newer one is red)

This is where it got interesting.  The hammer spring I already installed on the gun, it was about 20% longer than the stock spring, and the coils were thicker.  Pretty easy to do.  Where the fun came in was the recoil spring.  The kit is designed to be a drop in replacement for 5.1 and 4.3 guns.  Since this is a 3.8, the recoil spring is even shorter.  In the picture above, you can see the 3.8 compared to the 5.1 spring and the 160% upgrade.  I decided to trim it down to be about 20% longer than the stock 3.8 one, since it is 20% longer for the 5.1.  Unfortunately, due to the increased wire diameter, the slide would not lock back on an empty magazine.  So I had to due a little bit more trimming.....

Took about an 15 minutes of fitting the slide, but you can see the results.  The spring ended up shorter than the standard one.  It was just long enough to fully reset the slide, and just short enough to allow the slide to lock.  I haven't had a chance to test to see if it is still more powerful than the original.  A mistake I think I made was not trimming the spring at both ends.  There are coils at the ends that do not add power to the spring, and take up space when it contracts.  I will probably be buying a replacement to see if I can get it to fit better for more consistency.  Right now, it occasionally doesn't fully close, but it is a simple fix.

All in all, it was a neat little project.  I missed having an M1911, so now i have something a little bit unique.  Time to go and get a holster, and a few more extra magazines.  An interesting side project to say the least.  This will be the first of many in my ever expanding arsenal of gas blowback guns.

Thanks for tuning in once again, I know this blog is much slower than others I've seen, but hang in there.  I always seem to have neat ideas popping randomly in my head.  I hope everyone has a happy new year, and here are a few extra pictures I took.