I guess you get what you pay for. Logan's comments reminded me that mine had an extractor problem too. I owned one for a year, 4000+ rounds through it, and while it was fun to shoot it was not 100% reliable and therefore not a serious weapon. Bear in mind I bought a Commander length gun, everybody seems to be happy with the full size, but few have shot theirs as much as I did mine. As far as the extractors being to brittle, they are. Mine functioned fine until it decided to break around 2000 rnds. A GI part did function after minor work. IMHO, the metallurgists at KBI are suspect, Besides the extractor, the barrel bushing cracked down the front center and the internal tang broke off that nice ambi safety. Other than that, even after polishing the ramp and chamber, and trying new springs, I could not get total feed reliability. It seems to be common for this gun, no stovepipes, but a failure for the slide to travel the last little bit into battery. I also tried about as many diff. mags as one can, no luck. Looking into this, I found the line-up between the barrel lugs and the slide was none too cool, I guess if I had wanted to waste money and time, I would have replaced the broken parts, bought some different size barrel links, and played w/ lapping in the lugs. Oh well, it sold for $100, Lay-away money on an old pre-series 70, US prop. marked 1911 that works correctly.