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RIA Officer Upgrade Questions
- Thread starter rcox
- Start date
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ewoodworth1
Marksman
when you decide what you want go to midwayusa.com and hunt around for parts, they are priced pretty well and have great customer service. i've put together 2 1911's using them, and they will always have my business
Pretty much any of the 1911 officers parts will work. There are a couple (at least) different RIA officers configurations, so it really depends on what you have already and what you want out of the gun.
The toughest for me was the sights, the mil-spec sights are difficult to replace with something adequate as the front sight is a narrow tenon and those are pretty hard to come by. The rear dovetail isn't quite true spec, so quite a bit of fitting is involved.
On mine, I changed the sights, trigger and worked on the sear/hammer to get a better trigger. I also changed out the factory recoil spring with Wolff unit as the slide was battering my ejector (I also replaced the ejector!). I left the mil-spec'ish thumb safety as I liked it for CC.
Hope that helps.
The toughest for me was the sights, the mil-spec sights are difficult to replace with something adequate as the front sight is a narrow tenon and those are pretty hard to come by. The rear dovetail isn't quite true spec, so quite a bit of fitting is involved.
On mine, I changed the sights, trigger and worked on the sear/hammer to get a better trigger. I also changed out the factory recoil spring with Wolff unit as the slide was battering my ejector (I also replaced the ejector!). I left the mil-spec'ish thumb safety as I liked it for CC.
Hope that helps.
Watch which one you order from Wolff, I ordered the wrong one at first. I think you need the one for standard factory guide rods. I ordered the 24lb spring as the factory spring that came with my RIA was mushy at best. I've not had any problems with mine not cycling correctly with it and me shooting rather lightly loaded 185gn reloads.
1911s can require some "fitting" even on drop in parts 
I redid my full size RIA with new sites (took some work just like mospeada said) changes springs, thumb safety (required some fitting), Trigger (twice, the drop in was too lose so i bought another and fitted it), hammer, beaver tail safety (i think I have a stainless one for a commander series I'm not using), and I made some grips. There was a little more to it than I thought it was going to be but I enjoyed learning the in's and out's of the 1911 (I'm a mechanical Engineer so there you have it ) and think it turned out OK.
I redid my full size RIA with new sites (took some work just like mospeada said) changes springs, thumb safety (required some fitting), Trigger (twice, the drop in was too lose so i bought another and fitted it), hammer, beaver tail safety (i think I have a stainless one for a commander series I'm not using), and I made some grips. There was a little more to it than I thought it was going to be but I enjoyed learning the in's and out's of the 1911 (I'm a mechanical Engineer so there you have it ) and think it turned out OK.
