RIA 1911 in 38 super...pros or cons?

C

crowtalks

New member
For some reason, I have been seriously thinking about getting a Rock Island 1911 chambered in 38 super...and I really don't know why, but the thought of a 1911 in 38 super has been intriguing to me, though.

I have owned tons of guns, but I have never owned anything in 38 super, even though I have a box of the ammo.

I also reload but I may have to get super dies if I can't adapt my 38 special dies for it.

Thoughts and/or experience?

Jim
 
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.38 Super is a great mid-bore round for the 1911, as it shares the OAL of .45 ACP, so doesn't suffer from functional issues that afflict a lot of 9mm 1911s.
I've never had any functional issues with the semi-rimmed brass, though some prefer rimless versions.
I use mine exclusively for competition, and download it from what it's capable of, but with the right powders you can get a 124 up to about 1400fps, if that floats your boat.
 
crowtalks said:
For some reason, I have been seriously thinking about getting a Rock Island 1911 chambered in 38 super...and I really don't know why, but the thought of a 1911 in 38 super has been intriguing to me, though.

I have owned tons of guns, but I have never owned anything in 38 super, even though I have a box of the ammo.

I also reload but I may have to get super dies if I can't adapt my 38 special dies for it.

Thoughts and/or experience?

Jim
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I have one of those M1911 A1 Cal.38SUPERs. I like it very much. It has a fully ramped barrel. That is not my first .38 Super. I also have a Circa '70s Colt Combat Commander.

I bought some .38 Super Comp. brass from Starline and shoot those in the RIA .38 Super. I load using a Dillon 550b and standard .38 Super shell plate... some people report having to go to a .38 Comp or .223 Shell plate to load the .38 Super Comp. brass, but I have not found a problem using the standard .38 Super shell plate.

It is a great gun, has not shown to have any issues. It is way easier on my hands than is my XSE Colt Combat Commander in .45 ACP.

In all, it is a very interesting gun to work with.
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I have the Metro Arms Llama in 38 Super. It is a superb piece for the money. It was built in the Philippines, and very high quality. Probably "kin" to the RIA somehow.
 
mcb66 said:
I have the Metro Arms Llama in 38 Super. It is a superb piece for the money. It was built in the Philippines, and very high quality. Probably "kin" to the RIA somehow.
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Metro Arms and RIA aren’t related. Was curious and checked to see if Metro Arms was still exporting the Llama. I do not see it listed at Tristar’s page (their new importer - Eagle Imports went out of business, but prior to going belly up, they were carrying Llama 1911s as products).


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.38 Super

I can understand your fascination with the Super, for reasons I can't explain either, I have been curious/fascinated with the cartridge as well. You get .357 mag ballistics, and you get in a 1911,.......what's not to like?

I've resisted buying one..........but if I did, the RIA pistols would be an affordable entry level pistol that has a good reputation.
 
reynolds357 said:
Definitely a stretch. Actually it's an impossibility. 38 Super was designed to make major power factor in competition.
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The ability of .38 Super to make major power factor in IDPA and IPSC may have contributed to a resurgence of interest in the .38 Super, but that is definitely NOT what the cartridge was designed for.

The .38 Super was introduced by Colt as a higher-powered version of the older .38 ACP in 1929 -- many decades before IDPA and IPSC existed. That's all we need to know to realize that the cartridge was not designed to make major power factor in competition.
 
I've had a .38 Super Colt slide and bbl. assembly for many years and used it initially on a Colt Combat Commander in 45 ACP , & later on my Ruger CMD also in 45 ACP. Converting back and forth has been no trouble, and I've left the .38 ejector in place for both calibers.

As a round, the Super is easy to reload and easier still to find accurate loads; more so than any 9mm I've ever run across. Both of my guns preferred 124 & 130 gr bullets and fairly warm loads to give me the accuracy I was looking for (2" groups or better at 25 yds). And I found that WSF, Unique, & Herco all did well. This was with Hornady, & Montana Gold FMJ's and JHP's.

The surprise was that the Colt bbl's also did very well indeed with cast LSWC's. With these, 231 & Unique did the trick. And they produced without significant leading issues.

As to velocities, most commercial 124 or 130 gr ammunition is just a bit hotter than the same weights in 9mm...nothing to crow about, but the case allows handloading to produce truly significant increases. I've seen 1350 fps from my guns with 124's without pressing the envelope. Note that I don't participate in the handgun games and am not interested in "major" factors...preferring instead accuracy out at 25+ yards and good dependable expansion...to each his own...

It's a good caliber for a 1911 gun...accurate with good bullets and those nickeled cases sure are easy to see in the grass here on my home range. Best Regards, Rod
Here's a Pic I've posted before...my Ruger 1911 CMD with the Colt slide and bbl. in place...

 
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close

Yeah, OK, close to .357 ballistics. A .35/130 at 1200 fps. A 115 at more. In a flat, easy shootig auto that 's been around 100 years, with 4-5 more rounds than a conventional wheel gun. In real gun fights on both sides of the badge since the gangster era. Again, what's not to like?

Oh yeah, appealed to gamers for a while.
 
I 100% agree, theres lots to like in a easy shooting, magazine fed 1911 platform. Im just saying I have Hornady factory 158g 357s going 1353fps....
 
Aguila Blanca said:
The ability of .38 Super to make major power factor in IDPA and IPSC may have contributed to a resurgence of interest in the .38 Super, but that is definitely NOT what the cartridge was designed for.

The .38 Super was introduced by Colt as a higher-powered version of the older .38 ACP in 1929 -- many decades before IDPA and IPSC existed. That's all we need to know to realize that the cartridge was not designed to make major power factor in competition.
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Thanks. I guess the more precise way I should have stated it was the .38 Super was an obsolete cartridge that had died out. It was brought back from extinction to make Major power factor in race guns.
 
Along with my full-size RIA .38 Super, I have a circa-seventies Combat Commander .38 Super that was out of spec. I ended up changing the slide to a Colt Commander 9mm slide (it was all that was available) and replaced the barrel. No longer having the correct slide, I also swapped out the barrel and bushing (NM), long trigger, Pachmayr rubber coated mainspring housing and wrap-around rubber grips, extended slide stop, extended safety, beaver-tail grip safety, White dot sights, extended mag release. It has so many non-factory parts, that I refer to it as a "Franken Colt". I do love the .38 Super.
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I've been debating adding a .38 Super to my gun safe for quite some time, and I have been looking hard at the Rock Islands.

If I could find myself an affordable Colt Commander Lightweight I might be very tempted to make it my CCW gun.

A little history of the .38 Super...

In the 1920s there was a spike in violent crime caused largely by prohibition. Police found that the typical sidearm of the time, chambering the .38 Special with a 158-gr. LRN bullet wasn't really up to the task of defeating the heavy sheet metal in car bodies, so they began to call for more powerful cartridge.

Colt responded by introducing the Colt Super .38, a 1911 chambered for an uploaded .38 ACP cartridge that became know as the .38 Super.

I'm not sure when the higher velocity loading became known as the .38 Super, but Peters was using that description by 1935 or 1936.

Remington was using the term .38 Super by 1933, but with this caveat -- Adapted to all .38 caliber Colt Automatic Pistols.

That makes me think that these were not high velocity rounds because even back then those rounds loaded to .38 Super levels would play hell on the Colt 1900.


AND, BONUS! I just found a wonderful typo in the 1930 Remington Catalog...

They're offering the .41 Russian cartridge... Yep, .41 instead of .44. :)



But, back to the story...

As it turns out, and despite a lot of the hype, adoption of the .38 Super and Smith & Wesson's .38-44 Heavy Duty, also designed to give a more powerful cartridge to defeat cars being used by the "auto bandits," as they were called, wasn't that widespread.

In part, that was due to the Great Depression making budgets for rearming police evaporate overnight and also because the ammo companies started offering cartridges like the .38 Special, .45 ACP, and others with specially hardened bullets that would also defeat the sheet metal in cars. Some versions were also offered with lighter bullets at higher velocities.

Remington's line was called the Highway Master, Peters offered the Highway Patrol, and off the top of my head I can't remember what Western called theirs,
 
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