See solution below
ORIGINAL QUESTION:
I'm sure someone has run into this. My son's Para LTC (commander size) 1911 broke the PXT extractor. Yep just in time for Para to be bought out...long story made shorter, we tried the sleeve with a standard extractor that brownells sells...couldn't bend the extractor enough to get a tight fit and it seemed "long" not ever holding a case. Finally I got a hold of the PXT extractor EGW makes specifically for the Para, it too seems to long to bend to fit. SO THE QUESTION FOR ME BECOMES, Is it normal to have .040-.050 gap between the slide and the claw of the extractor even with a case in it before starting to tension/bend it? Or is there maybe a difference between a 5" 1911 & a 4" 1911 extractor?
See picture below
SOLUTION:
Well I have to eat a little crow here guys. When I went to do this extractor replacement I for some reason had it in my mind that the tension was held between the brass case and the breach face. WRONG! The tension is measured from the extractor claw to the opposite side where the brass case contacts a cut in the slide (on the inside). I was deep cleaning my Colt and so when I went to put the firing pin & extractor back in I noticed it seemed to have the same gap my son's para had. Put in an empty case and sure enough .39 inch gap from the case to the breach face.
So armed with that knowledge I went back to putting in the EGW PX extractor, tensioned it to 24 ounces with the weaver case tension gauge, and now it magically cycled dummy rounds just fine. Took it to the range today and the tension looks to be just a tad high since every so often we would get a round that wouldn't feed perfectly in the chamber. Tap the slide on the back and it would fire and eject fine. Since the cases all seemed to have a bigger than normal "nick" from the extractor we are going to try to "loosen up" the tension down to about 16-17 ounces to match the tension on my colt and see what happens.
Hope this helps some other wanna be "home smith" out there. It really isn't so hard once you know what your doing.
OTHER NOTES:
EGW - was great on sales help, but never responded to three separate emails requesting information on the extractor possibly being to long. Chances are they don't respond to that kind of thing because of the lawyers OR they just knew I was a bone head and their product was fine. Just wish they would have at least said "sorry can't talk about installation" or something like that. Still a great product.
PARA (now Remington) - well there customer service SUCKS something bad. No reply to any emails where I let them know they sent me the wrong part. When I called they had nothing to say and didn't even mention the possibility of getting the gun repaired. More like sorry we can't help type of info.
ORIGINAL QUESTION:
I'm sure someone has run into this. My son's Para LTC (commander size) 1911 broke the PXT extractor. Yep just in time for Para to be bought out...long story made shorter, we tried the sleeve with a standard extractor that brownells sells...couldn't bend the extractor enough to get a tight fit and it seemed "long" not ever holding a case. Finally I got a hold of the PXT extractor EGW makes specifically for the Para, it too seems to long to bend to fit. SO THE QUESTION FOR ME BECOMES, Is it normal to have .040-.050 gap between the slide and the claw of the extractor even with a case in it before starting to tension/bend it? Or is there maybe a difference between a 5" 1911 & a 4" 1911 extractor?
See picture below
SOLUTION:
Well I have to eat a little crow here guys. When I went to do this extractor replacement I for some reason had it in my mind that the tension was held between the brass case and the breach face. WRONG! The tension is measured from the extractor claw to the opposite side where the brass case contacts a cut in the slide (on the inside). I was deep cleaning my Colt and so when I went to put the firing pin & extractor back in I noticed it seemed to have the same gap my son's para had. Put in an empty case and sure enough .39 inch gap from the case to the breach face.
So armed with that knowledge I went back to putting in the EGW PX extractor, tensioned it to 24 ounces with the weaver case tension gauge, and now it magically cycled dummy rounds just fine. Took it to the range today and the tension looks to be just a tad high since every so often we would get a round that wouldn't feed perfectly in the chamber. Tap the slide on the back and it would fire and eject fine. Since the cases all seemed to have a bigger than normal "nick" from the extractor we are going to try to "loosen up" the tension down to about 16-17 ounces to match the tension on my colt and see what happens.
Hope this helps some other wanna be "home smith" out there. It really isn't so hard once you know what your doing.
OTHER NOTES:
EGW - was great on sales help, but never responded to three separate emails requesting information on the extractor possibly being to long. Chances are they don't respond to that kind of thing because of the lawyers OR they just knew I was a bone head and their product was fine. Just wish they would have at least said "sorry can't talk about installation" or something like that. Still a great product.
PARA (now Remington) - well there customer service SUCKS something bad. No reply to any emails where I let them know they sent me the wrong part. When I called they had nothing to say and didn't even mention the possibility of getting the gun repaired. More like sorry we can't help type of info.
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