Colt Special Combat

[Jaendel]

What do you know about this gun? How good is it?
Are there any satisfied owners of one of these here that can convince me to get myself one?

Cold greetings from Sweden!

[citizen carrier]

Bought one in January shortly after returning home from Iraq. I wanted a high end M1911 pistol, but didn't feel like waiting 3-6 months for Les Baer or RRA to make one up for me without the hated, hated front slide serrations.

The Colt SCGM was sitting in a display case and I rolled the dice and took it home. I had the money to spend for improvements on it.

First of all, I discovered that I couldn't disengage the ambidextrous safety with my left hand and thumb. Another poster on this forum commented on that problem with his SCGM and sent it back to Colt to be corrected. I took mine to a local gunsmith.

He removed a bit of wood from behind the right grip panel and polished the stems or connecting pins on the thumb safety to remove any potential burrs. Took about 5 minutes and the safety was clicking on and off perfectly.

The Bomar rear sight had almost scary sharp edges on it. You will draw blood if you run your hand over it in a hurry after racking the slide. I didn't want to contemplate what that edge would do to my shirts and jackets when I carried it in my shoulder rig. If Colt would just make the SCGM with a quality fixed sight I think they'd have a real winner.

The gunsmith stoned the sharp edges off and touched it up with cold blue.

Barrel to slide fit was perfectly tight at the barrel hood/ejection port. Barrel to bushing and bushing to slide were both "factory" tight, with noticeable play. Gunsmith tightened that up. Slide to frame fit was also just "factory" and no attempt to make it tight beyond what the machining process provided seems to have been made. Gunsmith removed 99% of the lateral and vertical play in the slide.

Gunsmith and a few bystanders at the shop inspected the pistol and advised throating the barrel and polishing the feed ramp, as it was less than perfect coming from the factory. I agreed.

He also did a trigger job, but I don't think the trigger was bad at all from the factory.

In all, I paid $133 for the modifications. The gunsmith said he gave me a soldier's discount.

There were two slightly nagging, but ultimately unimportant cosmetic blemishes as well. The "Special Combat Government" rollmark on the slide was sharp and defined at the top, but barely readable at the bottom. Somebody at the factory unevenly polished the slide. The slide release lever had ineptly machined serrations on it. They were uneven and had large "flats" at the bottom because somebody with a grinding wheel did more than they should've.

But it works. Colt could certainly have done a better job than this, considering the SCGM costs more than a Gold Cup.

I didn't shoot the pistol before the gunsmith modified it, so I cannot offer you an assessment of how a stock, unmodified SCGM would perform. Mine has so far functioned perfectly with hardball and plated SWC factory ammunition and creates one hole groups at 25 feet. Sorry, you Europeans can convert that to metric if you want!

My first range session can be found here:

http://www.gunboards.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=153162

A few pictures of the gun and some targets I shot along with reports on the different magazines I used.

Hope this is useful to you.

[Jaendel]

Thank you for an excellent report. I guess I should be prepared to have some work done on it then. It will be used in competition bullseye and Swedish Field shooting, to begin with.