new colt 1911a1 govt series 70 model 0

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stuckinthe60s

New member
im confused. how can colt be making a series 70 in 2023?
i thought series 70's were discontinued and the series 80 took its place.
yet...i see NIB colt series 70's for sale everywhere.

help me on this.

my real colt govt has a C prefix as in commerical model.
the new ones i see are GV prefix.
 
Colt can call their models anything they want. The original Series 70 line was indeed discontinued and replaced by the Series 80. The original Series 70 was the last series that didn't have a firing pin safety (discounting the pre-WW2 Swartz safety, which Colt dropped when they switched to wartime production, and never brought back). The original Series 70 also had the often-discussed finger barrel bushing, for enhanced accuracy.

After the introduction of the Series 80 lines (including the M1991 and 1991 series), All Colt 1911s had the Series 80 firing pin safety.

However, despite the Series 80 firing pin safety being a significant improvement over the Swartz system and despite its having a negligible effect on trigger pull, some 1911 purists simply refused to buy any 1911 that had a firing pin safety. So, in order to compete against other makers who offered 1911 without a firing pin safety, Colt introduced a new model that didn't have the firing pin safety. This was in the very early 2000s, and they chose to call it the Series 70 because the original Series 70 had a good reputation, so Colt naturally wanted to leverage the name's market appeal.

The new Series 70 pistols don't have a firing pin safety, but they use a conventional barrel bushing, not the finger bushing.
 
My take on it is that the Mk IV Series 70 guns had the collet bushing. Period.
But that faded out in the 1980s and the Series 80 had come along. So people got started calling anything without a firing pin obstruction a "series 70" even Colt employees. Anything, doesn't even have to be a Colt, sometimes not even a 1911 design, just "lacking a firing pin obstruction."


And it isn't a 1911 unless the government bought it.
 
Jim Watson said:
But that faded out in the 1980s and the Series 80 had come along. So people got started calling anything without a firing pin obstruction a "series 70" even Colt employees. Anything, doesn't even have to be a Colt, sometimes not even a 1911 design, just "lacking a firing pin obstruction."
Click to expand...
Generically, many people tend to refer to any 1911 that doesn't have a firing pin safety as a "series 70." But in the early 2000s Colt did introduce a model that bears the name "Series 70." I have one. It was a Custom Shop pistol, in the blue Custom Shop box.

I don't know how many years they made this model. It's not listed on their web site as of today, but I think the "1911 Classic" is the same pistol, without the firing pin safety.
 
When I called Colt about one of my pistols with an NM-marked barrel, I was told that a few NM barrels were probably in a parts bin when a production run of NM guns was completed, so the barrels were put in regular guns.
 
stuckinthe60s said:
can a finger bushing be put in place of a conventional bushing on those new series 70's?
Click to expand...
The barrels used with the collet bushings were slightly larger in outside diameter at the muzzle end. In conjunction with the collet bushing, this was intended to enhance consistent location of the muzzle in the slide for every shot. If a barrel doesn't have the slightly enlarged muzzle area, changing to a collet bushing probably would not make much (if any) difference over a conventional National Match bushing.
 
stuckinthe60s said:
ah ha.
i will assume with normal bushings....not nm bushings?
Click to expand...

No NM bushing - only the barrel. And the box is not marked to indicate the NM barrel, lending credence to the Colt CSR's explanation of an impromptu substitution on the production line.
 
The "Series 70" designation was Colt's name for a particular run of pistols, the primary difference from previous pistols was the collet (finger) style bushing, and barrel to fit it.

IT was a good idea, on paper at least, but it turned out not to have any significant advantage over the regular bushing system, and the drawback that one (or more) of the collet fingers could break, and did often enough to get a bad reputation, as when one did, the gun was usually jammed and deadlined until repaired.

I don't know for certain, but heard that Colt dropped the collet bushing before the end of Series 70 production. I do know that a lot of people shooting the Series 70 guns replaced the collet bushing with solid ones, "just in case".

Colt makes the guns, Colt gets to name them what ever Colt wants, no matter what it is. They can make it out of paper mâché and pop tarts and call it a "series 70" if they want to, and its their right to do so.
 
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