Hi folks! New poster here and by way of introduction here's my piece:
I bought this brand new in 1985 as a survival weapon. I was flying F-14s at the time and the Navy gave us two choices in survival weapons (besides a knife) that we could carry with us. Nothing was the preferred choice as everyone knows you may trust a Naval Aviator with a $35 million plane, eight missiles and a 20mm cannon but heaven forbid you give him a handgun! The second choice (to be issued in only rare instances) was a WWII era government 1911. These guns were so bad that they sounded like baby rattles when you shook them. I chose the unofficial third option which was to purchase my own piece and the Randall was perfect being stainless (the only one around at the time) and the CL4Star was just the right size to fit in the front pouch on my survival vest.
So, this brings us to the problems.
A couple of years after I got the gun (and Randall went out of business) the recoil spring guide broke:
Also, before the guide broke it wouldn't feed reliably. It was OK with FMJ but jammed about every 10th round with unjacketed ball and hollowpoint (Winchester Silvertip). The smitty polished the feed ramp and breech. Inside the breech he found tool marks that are probably the cause of the unreliable feed but he could not polish the marks completely out without opening the breech too much. He replaced the broken guide with a spring kit but I don't recall who made it. This kit has three recoil springs, a smaller diameter guide rod with triple laminated flange, and a stronger firing pin spring. The flange's two outer plates are steel and the inner piece appears to be a very hard rubber which serves as an impact buffer. These fixes improved the reliability and, when there's an occasional feed failure a simple rap on the slide seats it home. I'm figuring this is about average with .45's when it comes to HP or ball ammo.
Here's the replacement guide rod:
Complete recoil spring assembly:
The gun's been in my dresser as a home defense gun for ages and I've only occasionally fired it (probably less than a 100 rnds through it). A friend at work found out I had a Randall and thought they were pretty rare so I started doing some looking around and then went over my piece to see exactly what I had. While doing this I noticed something unusual. The end of guide rod doesn't sit square in the plug tunnel, it's angled up toward the barrel:
That got me thinking and looking and I realized that the inside portion of the frame where the guide rod flange sits isn't machined square, the bottom edge (in yellow) is too far forward which angles the guide rod up:
This is also the reason I suspect that the original guide rod broke. The rod was held straight by the plug which means the flange was sitting at an angle resulting in the breakage when the slide hit it on recoil. You can see in the previous picture of the broken part just how much force is exerted on the flange. Both the front and back are similarly mangled.
So, new parts in, gun works fine, where's the problem? Well, I'm concerned about the slide cracking. All of this stress comes together at the impact point on the back of the slide plug tunnel, the point where it appears several Randalls have failed. I can't be sure but there may be the beginnings of a very, very tiny crack at that juncture of my slide so I'm going to get the slide NDIed before shooting it again. Of course it could just be my old eyes fooling me but I'd rather be safe than one-eyed. This is what I'd like to avoid:
There are still a number of questions. Has anyone else noticed their guide rod similarly misangled? Can the frame be machined to square the impact point up? Can anyone identify the spring kit that's in my gun and know if it's good or, since the flange is thicker (by about 25%), can it contribute to slide failure? Last, it appears that the plug tunnel is the only thing that restrains the slide during recoil, if it catastrophically fails does the slide stay on the gun or come flying off to hit you in the face? Last, since the barrel still has some machine marks that can't be removed does anyone have a recommendation for a replacement barrel? Thanks!
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