Thanks for the replies.
I have owned a Para-14 before and now a fully customized Colt Gubmint. My best shootin buddy of 15 years is a Colt 1911 phreak and has owned more than a few of all styles. Between the two of us and a myriad of other people we shoot with, we have never had a single part malf on our 1911's of any kind. We shoot a lot, like every other day or more when we can, and have been for well over a decade.
On these forums I keep hearing about how fragile the 1911's are and how "they break a lot". I don't get it, this is not consistent with what I have seen.
I have a theory: Many, if not most, serious (really serious) shooters use the 1911. These shooters shoot a LOT. Like ten, twenty or one hundred times more rounds a month than the average shooter. Go to an IPSC match and you have dozens of shooters that all put thousands of rounds a month through their guns, and of course you are going to hear about broken parts among them. Because of the abundance of serious shooters putting a lot of rounds through one kind of gun, you hear an inordinate amount of bad stories, purely due to the amount of use that style of gun gets.
Anyway, that is my theory. It is the only one I can think of to explain all the mysterious stories of the 1911 being prone to broken parts, because I have just never seen it, and I shoot a lot with a fair amount of people that use all guns including 1911's.
Then there is the other theory that there are too many people out there trying to do shoddy "custom" work on their guns, and that is why they fail.
Anyway, I am just a little befuddled because I keep hearing about how "tempermental" and "prone to parts breakage" the 1911 is, and yet I have never seen it happen.
Thanks all. Now I am going to go enjoy this stainless beauty...
thaddeus