tisas 1911 part(s) breakage

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bamaranger

New member
Had the Tisas 1911 out today and had a part break.

After round #32 in this informal practice session, the pistol failed to lock open. By coincidence, it was the last round from that string/magazine. The slide could not be retracted sufficiently to engage the takedown notch. Fieldstrip was possible and yielded that a 1/4" or so of the flange on the recoil spring guide rod had sheared off. Fortunately there does not appear to be any further damage. A replacement guide rod will effect the repair.

There does not appear to be excessive battering on the frame or the guide rod itself. I have kept a close count on rounds fired with this Turk pistol and #32 equated to 1468 rds total. Ammo has been a mix of factory 230 gr ball, my reload LRN bullet equivalent, or a 200 LSWC driven to 900 fps. I do not see any of those loads excessive. In the future, I will employ a recoil buffer, the rubber horseshoe gizmo, provided reliability does not suffer.

Somewhere around 800 rds the firing pin retaining plate fractured. Around 1200, a grip panel developed a fracture. Pretty soon I will have enough US parts on the thing to relabel it "Made in USA".

Aside from breakage, the Tisas has been acceptably reliable with ball ammo and accurate as well due to a EAB barrel installed after another calamity.
 
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Aside from breakage, the Tisas has been acceptably accurate with ball ammo and accurate as well due to a EAB barrel installed after another calamity.
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What may I ask was this?

I have a couple Tisas awaiting a shooting session myself.
 
calamity

Oh yeah, near disaster.

Bamaboy (26? at the time), was running the gun and had a squib with one of my reloads (which does not happen all that often I might add). Before I could react, he performed a tack/rack/bang and drove a live round down the tube into the stuck squibbed projectile. The stuck slug had stopped at the muzzle. Said location was fortunately contained by the barrel bushing, which I believe acted as a sort of reinforcement against what happened next.

When the live bullet struck the base of the stuck bullet, both left the barrel, but the barrel was jugged, and the barrel bushing deformed slightly. We had to use a drift and mallet to get the bushing and barrel out of the slide, but the slide survived. I expect the barrel would have burst had the bushing not been there to strengthen the obstructed spot . We were lucky.

A new EAB drop in barrel and bushing, requiring only a wee bit of fitting, had the Tisas up and running. This whole affair was the result of bad ammo and failure to do right upon having a squib. In his defense, 'boy said he thought the gun had failed to chamber a round as it was the first round up from the mag in that shot string.

No fault on the Tisas of any kind, in fact, I thought it held up quite well considering what it had been through.
 
Before I could react, he performed a tack/rack/bang and drove a live round down the tube into the stuck squibbed projectile.
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This is an excellent example of why I oppose the "tap, rack, bang" drill as part of training. A fine thing to do when someone is actually shooting at you, but a dumb thing to do automatically when training (formal or informal).

Whenever there is an off normal event, such as a different sounding report, difference in recoil, no bullet strike observed, any and everything like that should instantly STOP the practice /training, until the actual cause is determined, and possible damage assessed.

I suppose the "calamity" was "training as real as it gets, because had the same thing happened in a shootout, the results to the gun would have been the same.

"Tap Rack Bang" is something that works MOST of the time, but when it fails it can fail catastrophically, as you found out.

Tisas isn't known as a high end brand, so I would expect a higher rate of parts breakage than from a more costly gun. Recoil spring guide breaking? Firingpin cracking? These are also things the expensive guns sometimes suffer from, but the frequency of them happening is very low, and that's why they're considered higher quality.

Any and everything sometimes breaks when it shouldn't. How often this happens is what matters more.

while it doesn't apply to everything in life, I've found the old saying "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time is ...enemy action" to be a sound guideline.

with guns, a part may break for no good reason (that we can see), two parts breaking for no good reason makes me suspicious, and three means someone intentionally sold you crap. Broken parts with a good reason, I excuse, but parts that just fail too soon, or too often is not what your money is supposed to be buying.
 
tap/rack.......calamity

Bamaboy felt so bad about his catastrophic tap /rack that then and there, on the spot, in the pretty much middle of nowhere, ordered the EAB premium barrel with his space phone. He realized his speedy tactical reaction was inappropriate for the circumstances, but he did indeed react as he had been trained.

Usually, you get what you pay for, and I got the Tisas for a song, used but as new, several years back before the brand became as widespread and popular as they are now. I bought it as a hobby gun, accept it as such, and have tweaked and ironed kinks out of the thing the whole time. I had a genuine Colt Commander that was less reliable and it broke an extractor amongst its other faults. Spent a fortune on mags and factory ammo trying to iron that gun out and was glad to sell it off years ago. I will keep shooting (and tweaking if necessary) and enjoying the Tisas for now anyhow.
 
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I was hopeful TISAS was building guns as good as you can get from other makers. I'm not sure if you can blame the squib on the gun but the broken guide rod definitely sounds like a defect.

I can say that my 90's colt 1991 broke the nub on the slide stop. The gun would still function but would not lock back the slide. A used slide stop from a Springfield got me back to normal. I have fired thousands of reloads through the gun. It had a bur in the chamber when new that had to be addressed before it started feeding reliably.

Even Colts can have problems but if the gun has quality parts, breakage should be very, very, very rare.
 
The guide rod flange seems like a part that's over-engineered; it's squeezed between frame and slide with each shot, but there's no bending or off-axis forces applied, so it seems thicker than necessary for impact resistance (see plastic guide rods).
The guide would be way down on my list of parts likely to break.
 
Isn't it the part that interact with the frame to stop the rearwards motion of the slide? It has been decades since I had guide rod 1911. A bit rusty on the mechanism.

-TL

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 
The guide rod flange seems like a part that's over-engineered; it's squeezed between frame and slide with each shot, but there's no bending or off-axis forces applied, so it seems thicker than necessary for impact resistance (see plastic guide rods).
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Over engineered and seeming thicker than it needs to be are the reasons they almost never break and don't wear out. PROVIDED they are made to the original Colt/Browning specs.

The 1911 design is, perhaps, the most "tinkered with" and probably most widely copied pistol in history.

Are the internal parts all made of good "ordnance steel"? The way the guns that made the 1911's reputation were? Or, are, perhaps, some of them made of other, less expensive alloys?? Are the original specs for the parts (sizes, materials, etc) used, or is something else used? Have things been tweaked somewhere(s) to make the gun a little cheaper to built, or for some perceived advantage, or to make it something proprietary?

I know of one (and I'm sure there are others) "1911" pattern gun, made by a known quality company that takes the standard GI magazines just fine, but will not take the standard grips. The spacing of the grip screws is just enough different regular grips won't fit, and you must use grips specially made for that make & model gun.
 
I hope to get a look at the offending recoil spring guide next Wednesday at Lunchtime Show and Tell.
It does not seem to be a likely candidate for MIM to me.
In 1942 they were made out of SAE 1045 steel on an automatic screw lathe.
I have a guide takeoff from somewhere that is fabricated, a tube through a plate.
 
JustJake said:
Solution: replace all MIM junk parts with proper tool steel. :rolleyes:

No more shaky breaky episodes.
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The current Tisas 1911s have only one MIM part and that is the recoil spring cap. But my experience has been that well made MIM parts are as reliable as well made forged steel parts.

Being MIM is NOT the issue.
 
...replace all MIM junk parts with proper tool steel.
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Due to high carbide content, tool steel tends to be abrasion resistant, but also significantly more brittle (less tough/more likely to fracture) than steels more commonly used for firearm parts.
In the future, I will employ a recoil buffer, the rubber horseshoe gizmo, provided reliability does not suffer.
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If you take it out before the gun goes on self-defense duty then you can use it at the range to cut down on wear and still not have to worry about reliability issues.
 
Due to high carbide content, tool steel tends to be abrasion resistant, but also significantly more brittle (less tough/more likely to fracture) than steels more commonly used for firearm parts.
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Right, the term "tool steel" gets thrown around casually.
 
This is an excellent example of why I oppose the "tap, rack, bang" drill as part of training. A fine thing to do when someone is actually shooting at you, but a dumb thing to do automatically when training (formal or informal).
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So I completely understand this, and why you feel this way. In fact, there has been an opportunity for me to have a similar experience as bamaranger and bamaboy. I've had a squib (primer only, no powder charge) in one of my reloads before. I've since placed QC checks in my reloading process to prevent this. When I put the bullet on to seat, I've made a point to confirm whether I've checked for powder. When I put the loaded round in the tray, I do the same thing. Either way, my squib was fortunate in that the projectile stuck in the barrel close enough to the chamber to prevent a fresh round from fully chambering and going into battery during "tap, rack, bang." Whew, I said, that could have been ugly.

For the civilian, I agree with your advice. It's rare to hear ANY kind of pop, or anything other than a "click," when you have a primer only squib. There will be little or no slide travel or recoil. It will feel like pulling the trigger on a complete dud or an empty chamber.

For those that earn their paychecks carrying a gun, that automatic "tap, rack, bang" drill on hearing the loudest sound in a gunfight should be an automatic response. Up to the point of damaging an issued gun in training is acceptable to train to this automatic response. And it should be automatic because it should be muscle memory to the point that you don't even think about it. Most LE agencies and the military even randomly introduce dummy rounds to simulate a malfunction to teach this automatic response. Of course, those who earn paychecks to carry a gun usually train with factory ammo. And personally, I've never experienced a squib with factory ammo. I know it happens... it's just never happened to me. And I would be afraid to guess how many rounds of factory (or military loaded) ammo I've pulled the trigger on. We're talking 6 figures easily.
 
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I saw the offending part at Show and Tell.
It is the tubular guide riveted into a flat flange, no MIM.
One corner of the flange is broken off.
Flawed plate? Uneven bearing surface in frame?
 
One corner of the flange is broken off.
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In all my years of shooting and handling 1911's I have never seen a recoil spring guide with a broken flange. A lot of beat up one's and the like but not broken.
 
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