SIG Trailside Owners are you satisfied??

M

Master Blaster

New member
I know that some folks here have purchased SIG Trailsides a while back. How do you like them after some use? I am thinking about buying one but they seem expensive. Are thay worth the price?
5.5" standard model 399.00
4.5" target model 479.00
Can you get spare mags.
What is the frame made out of is it a forging or a casting.

Thanks
 
MB,
I love my Trailside but please feed it good ammo. My 4.5" Plane Jane Trailside didn't like the cheap stuff as much as it likes Match grade ammo. I recommend the longer barrel if you have the cash to spend. SIGARMS had extra mags for sale (I bought some from them) but it'll be a while before they start showing up on your local dealer's shelves.
The only bad things I can say are 1) the SIGARMS logo screwdriver doesn't fit the Trailsides and 2) SIG won't sell their custom ergonomic grips separately for those dummies like myself who didn't buy the competition model in the first place.
You prices seem a little higher than what I've seen in NJ.
--Daniel
P.S. Get a Bore Stix cleaning rod for it. It works much better than the cheapo one I got from WalMart.

[This message has been edited by Circlesqr (edited July 12, 2000).]
 
Circlesqr, what do you mean the gun doesnt like the cheap stuff only match grade?

Does it jam with remmington 10.00 a brick ammo or spit burning powder chunks?


It seems very difficult to find one in my immediate area.

I have two ruger mkII which will function and group pretty well with any ammo I feed them.

The fact that the trailside only shoots well with extremely expensive ammo makes me leary.

My KMK512 will shoot a .35" 5 shot group from a rest at 25 yards with the 8.99 for 50 green tag ammo or pistol match. With remmington cheapo groups are about 1".

What happens when you shoot 100 rounds in a session. How are the groups with remmington or cci blazer .22lr?

thanks

[This message has been edited by Master Blaster (edited July 12, 2000).]
 
I just got my new Trailside 2 weeks ago. It's the 4.5in. Target model. I gave 425.00 in Des Moines for it. I also have a Ruger slabside target model(KMK-678GC - about 325.00), with a Volquartson trigger group.

The Trailside has had some problems, which I'm hoping will go away as it breaks in some more. So far I've shot about a 700 rounds through it. It has trouble on the last round, sometimes jamming as it loads it and other times it ejects it with the previous spent round. It sounded like a magazine problem, so I called SIG but they said to send it in(with me paying the shipping), so I'm gonna keep trying to shoot it for a while. The problem has gone from happening every magazine to every fifth or sixth. I asked my dealer about some spare magazines, but he said he has had 12 on order for several months now.

I've tried as many different kinds of ammo that I could find. As for accuracy, it seems to like the more expensive ammo the best(it jams on all of the ammo about the same). The trigger, the sights, and overall feel is great. It's really easy to take down and clean. It just plain feels like a quality piece.

I find myself shooting the Ruger a bit more. It's reliable as a rock and if I feed it Federal Target Gold($2.25 - 50), I can shoot it about as accurately.

In the final analysis, I'd have to say it's about a toss-up between the 2. If I had it to do over again, I think I would have saved up another $200.00 and bought another Kimber.
 
BadShot:

How is Jack Smith? I went in to buy his last 4.5 Target Trailside 2 weeks ago, & came out w/ a slabside Ruger. It shoots Rem. golden bullets into a pencil eraser @ 25 yds (with Ulra Dot sight & a rest at NLSI.{well, ok it shot 3, once.}) I loved the feel of the trialside, but one look at that mag & the fact the last one he had, had the rear sight on crooked- pushed me to the Ruger- Your frank post makes me glad I did.
 
MB,
I may have given you the wrong impression about the Trailside. If so, I apologize--I was posting from work so I had to hurry.
The Trailside is the most accurate weapon I have ever fired. I have seen it equal and even outshoot some rifles at 25 yards!
I've never had it jam, nosedive a round or eject a live round like Badshot described. Sometimes I get a failure to fire -- the round has an indentation on the primer but the primer didn't ignite. This was happening 1-2 rounds out of 20 for the cheap ammo (the stuff costing less than $5 a brick). I got into the <bad> habit of saving all these FTF rounds and putting them into my last magazine of the range session. 99.9% of these rounds fired on the second attempt. So maybe 1-2 rounds out of a thousand do not ignite. This happens less frequently with match grade ammo. that's what I was trying to say in my earlier post.
All 5 mags feed perfectly with no jams or ejection problems. Round nose lead, jacketed and hollowpoints all feed w/o any problems. I recently tried subsonic and something like a homemade Nyclad round and they both worked fine. Even tracers are OK.
I haven't polished or tweaked anything on the pistol. I just drown it with Militec-1 after a range session.
The Trailside took about 1,000 rounds to wear in -- the groups tightened up and the trigger felt even better than when it was new. Actually, maybe I was the one who got broken in...or maybe I just got good at cleaning all the crap left in the barrel from the Blazer & handloaded ammo.
Maintenance for the Trailside is easy now that I have the right size screwdriver. I usually drown it in Militec-1 and put a little Tetra grease on the slide rails when I'm done cleaning it.
Somebody mentioned groupings well I guess you could call it a problem that sometimes it's hard to count the holes in the Target cause bullets will often go through the same hole. Again, this happens more often with match grade ammo than with the cheap stuff.
All in all, I had the the largest groups and most number of FTF's with Winchester Super-X.
I just finished shooting 250 rounds of Remington 22 Thunderbolt and 250 rounds of American Eagle LR ammo. They're the closest I could get to Remington or CCI ammo on short notice. I had 1 FTF in my first 10 rounds and then none thereafter. Groups were under .65" for 25 yard from a rest. With Federal Ultramatch ($12 for 50 rounds) the groups shrunk to under .31" for rested shots at 25 yards. [That was four groups of 10 rounds each!] I gave a guy in the next lane 10 rounds of the Ultramatch to put through his Bull-Barreled 10/22 Target and he only grouped .62" from rest at 25 yards.
Sorry to ramble on like this but I wanted to correct any misconceptions I may have given you. The Trailside is my favorite 22 pistol bar none.
 
FTF is the problem with using .22 as a defense round in addition to it's small power. I don't have a Trailside yet but I find that the cheaper .22 isn't so hot in my Buckmark. I'll have to recock and hit the primer 2-3 times on some rounds. I experienced this a lot in my last session with Blazer .22. I don't have that problem with Winchester or Federal.
 
My local gun dealer (also a pistol range) has sold four Trailsides, and has had to send all four back to the factory for refinement. One common problem has been feeding -- plastic magazines that don't feed.

Several of the ones coming back have been drastically improved by SIG, with better grips and adjustable sights (when they didn't have them going back to the factory); seems to be SIGS way of making good. One of them still didn't function right.

I think I'll either keep my Ruger Government Competition (Slabside)or look for a used S&W 51... (The S&W seems to be the class act of the bunch.)
 
"Does it jam with remmington 10.00 a brick ammo or spit burning powder chunks?"

Master Blaster, it sounds like you have been shooting my Trailside (4.5" with plastic competition grips). It is a sharp looking gun, but I regularly experience both the problems you mention. The burning carbon flung out at me is especially bothersome because I am left-handed and feel the effects more so than a righty would. The FTF is also annoying and happens about one every 50 rounds or so. The accuracy is good, but not awe-inspiring. I have to say overall I am a little disappointed with the gun. One reason I got a .22 was because I thought it would be cheap to shoot, but if I have to spend as much on ammo as I would for my big-bores, what's the point?

Give me a few more months to work with it and I may change my review, but for now (after 700-800 rounds through it), I have to say I am less than impressed with the famed Swiss craftmanship.

As far as mags, I haven't really had a problem. They are hard to find; hoever, I picked up a new spare at a Houston gun show last month, and then proceeded to leave at the range two weeks later, where it promptly disappeared. I guess there is some irony in there somewhere.
 
Walt, when you say "substantially improved" grips, are they getting the wood grips or the neat ergonomic adjustable ones???
Also, has anything beside the grips or sights been changed on the refurb'd Trailsides?
thanks
--daniel
 
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