Sigh... I see lots of people giving opinions of OTHER products.. but no one answering the question.
Ok.. I have 3 Kimbers. One of them is the Polymer. Not been one of my better experiences. It has been picky in its ammo choice since day one. Would NOT feed Georgia Arms 230 grn FMJ. But it seemed to like S&B FMJ just fine. NONE of my reloads with a flat point would feed at all. Tried several different HPs from different vendors. Still lots of intermitent problems. All of the ammo described above feed fine in my Kimber Combat Carry and my Kimber Stainless Target. Sent the polymer back to Kimber at their suggestion. NO PROBLEM FOUND!. Sheesh.. I sent them 3 pages of detail on how to make it fail in several different ways. Not a happy camper. A local Tx SWAT team has standardized on the Polymer. They love them. But I suppose they don't have the ammo budget restraints that I do.
Yes, the 14 round mags are nice... and they are expensive. The Kimber can be modified with a different mag release to use the Para Hi-caps. I have not done this. I will say removing the mag release is a delicate job. It is very easy to score the polymer when the screw on the mag release is reset.
As for the Kimber Custom shop work, not impressed at all. While the Polymer was back in NY to work the feeding problem, I had them replace the standard issue safety with a Kimber ambi. This was the stiffest safety I have ever felt. Several grab spots. This is being RE-WORKED by my smith as we speak.
The Combat Carry was NOT compatible with Wilson mags.
I had to replace the slide stop with a Wilson slide stop in order to get the mags to work. A couple of my friends have actually had to modify the slide itself to make the Kimber reliable with Wilson mags.
The Stainless Target had been flawless.... until this morning. Exactly 23 hours before the start of the Republic of Texas IDPA Championships, the rear sight sheared off! Talk about being upset! My local range was kind enough to slip a new sight on for me in about 30 mins and I could resight the gun before tomorrow morning.
Ok... Now, I shoot about 700-800 rounds a month. If I didn't travel so much, that number would be closer to 1500. But dang, 3 different Kimbers... and three different sets of problems???? I use to be Kimber's biggest fan. I sang their praises all over the net. But I have had just about enough. I take meticulous care of my guns. There is no abuse here. I am very, VERY close to selling the lot of them and buying a couple of Wilsons.
Kimber does not seem to care about their reputation.. or their customers.
I had planned on wearing my Kimber cap at the match tomorrow... I'll find a cap for a mortuary now...
So Scratch... take my problems and plug them in as one data point in your search.
Regards,
Bubba
UPDATE: (11/02/99) See my update to the sight problem in this thread.. [Link to invalid post]
[This message has been edited by Bubba (edited November 02, 1999).]