Gunsmith Kimber TLE tuneup and paint

[AllenM]

Mark1911 posted about having dropped this pistol and putting it out of commission. After dropping it the hammer could be dropped with just a little effort.

A good trigger group that replaces all the MIM parts would have probably corrected the issue but Mark opted to basically gut the pistol and replace everything with Wilson parts.

The pistol as I received it. Didn't look to bad especially for a EDC piece.





It's a Wilson Christmas. This is what Mark left me along with the Pistol.
I was looking forward to this tune up.



There was a delay on the Wilson Firing pin stop So I ended up with 2 which allowed me to do some comparison.



Side note for the techies. The Wilson Firing pin stop was a drop in and required no fitting. But it also allowed a litttle movement in the extractor.

The EGW was an over sized stop and required fitting. I used the Wilson to tune the extractor but then decided to use the EGW so I could get a custom fit.

Measuring the tension with the Wilson I set it at 28oz After fitting the EGW stop and making no other changes the extractor tension increased to 32oz. Leading me to believe the Wilson was allowing the extractor to "clock" a little, I doubt it would have caused an issue but was nice to be able to measure a difference.









Fit a new Wilson Grip Safety:





Painted and done with clean 4.5 pound trigger pull and crisp reset.

 

[BrinNutz]

Looks good, I remember the original thread about him dropping it! Man, that is one hell of a tune up!

 

[Mark 1911]

I have to tell you folks who haven't seen Allen's work in person, the pics are beautiful, but as beautiful as they are, they really don't do justice to Allen's work. The finish is beautiful, but there is even more beauty in the details, Allen's skill at fitting parts is masterful. Allen really has a special skill.

I am going to take some more pics of my Kimber tomorrow and try to capture what a beautiful job he did fitting the Wilson grip safety to the Kimber frame. The gaps are uniform, and about as tight as you can get them without actually touching or binding. Same thing on the new Wilson Combat mainspring housing, the gap between the top of the mainspring housing and the bottom of the grip safety is perfect.

In addition to the trigger group and mainsping housing assembly, I also changed out the hammer, hammer strut, thumb safety, mag release, slide release, ejector, and sear spring plus a few more. I will post a complete list of the parts I changed out along with the pics hopefully tomorrow.

I also made two round trips from Munster to Avon, about 640 miles of driving total. It was well worth it.

Thanks again Allen, I wish you every success with your gunsmithing business. As was mentioned in another thread, your auto-body business is going to take a back seat once folks catch on. You sir, are an artist!

 

[AllenM]

Mark,
I really enjoyed doing this project for you and thanks for the kind words.

 

[edeekeos]

Looks very good!