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Wonder if there are any po-po's still carrying the gen1?
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I know of one at the PD I work for. Serial prefix is CCXXX. Guy is part time and has worked for the PD since the PD bought the guns in 1987. In fact, he used the original magazines up till a couple years ago, when the springs finally gave up the ghost. 3 new mags and the gun is still good to go. I've been one of the firearms instructors since 1994 and an armorer since about then and, aside from a couple good detail cleanings, he's only had 1 issue that wasn't the gun but was stupidity.
The Chief at the time hated guns (and, in fact, once told me that if he could get away with it, we wouldn't be carrying guns at all
), so naturally he hated cleaning guns. He bought a case of some kind of spray brake cleaner and approved it for cleaning guns. The idea was to lock the action open, spray the gun down, lube a little and voila!, a clean gun in about 5 minutes. The above Officer used the brake cleaner right before qualifications one day, then complained that his trigger pull was getting heavier and heavier over the course of an hour or so, then his trigger wouldn't pull at all. The gun was checked and it was discovered that the polymer trigger had melted to the polymer frame. The gun was sent back to Glock, who fixed it and the gun has never had another problem. Needless to say, the brake cleaner was pulled and was not approved for gun cleaning.
I have one of the other guns bought by the PD at the same time. Mine is only 4 serial numbers away from the above Officer's. Mine was having sporadic FTExtract and FTEject issues. Extractor and ejector look fine, so I think the extractor depressor plunger spring finally packed it in. I finally got another one and compared it to the original, original was compressed to almost 2 coils shorter than the new one. I haven't been to the range yet with the gun since replacing the spring, we'll see if it took care of it when I get to the range. Should have, but the only way to make sure is to shoot it.
I was almost another Officer carrying a 1st Gen G17. The PD I work for used to have a policy allowing you to carry personally owned guns. A new Chief a couple years ago changed this and went to issued guns only, Gen4 G22s. He was hired as City manager a few months later and we got another new Chief, who is slowly going back to the policy of allowing personally owned guns. I despise .40, so I was deciding between using my new 3rd Gen G19 or my G17. It was a tough choice, but I finally decided on my G19, mainly due to the fact that the Chief only allows us to qualify with and carry only 1 backup/off duty gun and using the G19 allows me to carry it off duty when I can wear heavy enough clothes to effectively conceal it or use my 9mm S&W Shield for backup on duty and off duty carry during the warmer months (I recently got to shoot a G42 for the first time; if the G43 is truly only fractionally larger than the G42, then the Shield may soon be replaced by a G43, especially since there are now +1 magazine base plates that only add a fraction of an inch to the butt, and +2 base plates for spare mags). Now that I'm the head instructor, that policy is starting to go away, too, so I'm again considering carrying my G17. I have posted pics of it before and it is beat to HELL. Still shoots well, though, but the stippling is so worn that the butt is practically smooth, so it would need something like a stick on rubber grip, so we'll see.
Bub75