Colt Defender Reviews

[St8Shooter]

very nice Bill.. and wow I also like the woodgrips..

LOL HMMMMMM

Fired again today as an after thought and well I just continue to love this weapon.

[BillB]

Fired the Talo Night Defender for the first time yesterday. It's great with my big hands, and EXTREMELY accurate. I do have a problem, though. The gun will not rack/chamber the top round in either factory mag if there are more than four rounds in the mag. I tried this with three different ammo types with the same results. I have to pull the slide back three or four times to get the round chambered, and in two cases the round was severely compressed before it was chambered. In the worse case of the two, the exposed bullet in the round cleared the casing by only 5/32 of an inch when chambered. Normal exposure on the Winchester SXZ is 5/16, meaning that chambering pushed the bullet into the casing an extra 5/32 of an inch! See Photo #7 for standard and compressed SXZ Training rounds, and note that you can see a line where the bullets were pushed deep into the casings when the rounds were chambered.

Even though I purchased the pistol new and unfired, I am not "the original retail purchaser" so the Colt warranty doesn't apply. Guess I need to find a good 1911 gunsmith in the San Antonio area to do the fix and also to do a couple of mods for me. Any suggestions or recommendations?

[St8Shooter]

Wow thats ugly Bill!!! I would definately get ito in to a smith soon b4 trusting it to carry!!!!

[BillB]

I cleaned it, checked it again (still doing the same thing) and locked it in the safe until I find a decent gunsmith for it.

[BillB]

I spoke with a gunsmith friend of mine (not a 1911 guy) this morning, and he seemed to think that my magazines might be the cause of the feeding problem, so I picked up a brand new Colt 7-round mag and tried it out. Same problem. I stripped the gun and polished the ramp and barrel throat myself, then tried it again. A slight improvement -- now it will feed with 6 rounds loaded in the 7-round magazines. I think my next step is to try a Wilson Combat magazine and see if that helps. In the meantime, I'm still looking for a 1911 gunsmith in the San Antonio area. Has anyone had a similar problem with the factory mags?

[St8Shooter]

I have wilson mags and factory and no prob with either. Unfortunately I'm in conro/the woodlands areaand don't know any good smith's in your's. I'll ask mine and see what he says...

[BillB]

Thanks for your interest. I have relatives all over your area, including a cousin in The Woodlands, but it's a bit too far to drive for a gun repair. We have a large gunsmith shop here, Dury's, but I try to avoid doing business with them. I've faxed Colt Customer Service (they don't seem to have an email address) and hope to hear back from them soon. In the meantime the gun that I hoped would be my primary carry is a safe queen.

[BillB]

The Fix?? This is going to sound simplistic and maybe even stupid, but I think I found the fix, and IMHO it's something that should have never happened. As I mentioned earlier, polishing the ramp seemed to help. I used a paste type stainless steel polish and a buffing wheel on my drill press to bring the rear face of the barrel to a nice gloss, and it helped. Polishing done, I could now feed from a mag with 6 rounds in it. This afternoon I disassembled one mag, then wiped the interior and the spring lightly with some Rem oil, and reassembled it. It now fed from a full 7-round mag! I did the same with the other two mags with the same results. My only guess is that the mags, new and unfired for probably 18 months, just needed a bit of lube to shake out the cobwebs. It's back to the range this week to test the gun again.

[St8Shooter]

?? should have come polished already... but it sounds likes you may be on to something with the mags also.. my ramp is bright and shines after cleaning.. let us know...

[BillB]

Feed ramp on the Night Defender was rough and dull -- but not any more . . .