Figured I'd ask here before joining a 1911 forum.

I'm finally jumping into the 1911 realm with a TLR RL II. As of now it seems I found a good one considering the owner held on to it for 7-8yrs, but I'll know for sure once I run it myself.

There is not much I'm really considering changing as of now with the exception of Wilson's 80 to 70 series slide conversion, or alternatively a 70 series firing pin swap to do away with the Swartz system.

I don't have any particular affinity for Kimber or this particular model, it just checked most of the boxes of the features I wanted and I got it nearly for the cost of a common polymer pistol (in today's market).

But I 'am curious about aftermarket upgrades like MIM parts replacements, slide machining and different things of that nature and generally rather a Kimber is worth building upon? I've looked at the 1911 genre loosely for a while and noticed that some smiths/custom shops wont even bother servicing some brands and some are just not worth investing in.

Thanks

First of all, there is nothing inherently good or bad about the TLE RL.  I have one circa 2004, with the dreaded external extractor and chocked full of MIM.  It always ran well, so I never changed anything.  Assuming yours does the same, it's a perfectly fine pistol.  

If you want to replace MIM parts, I imagine most smiths will do that for you without any hesitation.  In fact, as long as you are willing to write the check, I imagine most will do just about anything you want, including slide machining.  There is nothing substandard or unsuitable about the Kimber slide and frame, and they are certainly suitable for use in a custom gun.

But you asked if it was 'worth' building upon, and whether it is worth investing in.  And the answer to both of those questions is probably 'no'.  

If what you want is a Kimber, specifically customized to your taste, money will certainly get you there.  And it won't be any more money than would need to be applied to a Colt, a Sig, or any other 1911 manufacturer.  But you will end up with a gun 'worth' far less than the amount of money you have in it.  

In a sense, it would be like pouring money into a 2008 Ford Focus; a perfect functional and practical four door sedan.  You could make it the fastest, prettiest, most expensive Ford Focus possible, it could be perfectly tailored to your tastes, and it could fill you with personal happiness that was totally worth the $60k you poured into it.  But the rest of the world would still see it as a 2008 Ford Focus worth a lot less than $60K, unless you were lucky enough to find that one other guy who always wanted a Ford Focus tricked out exactly like yours.

If you want a 1911 that is going to be 'worth' some significant percentage of the money you put into it when you want to sell it, you have two choices:  You can buy a fancy 1911 to begin with, or you can customize a Colt. That's it.  And even then, it is a crap-shoot as to how much of your money you will get back.  This is the reality of the 1911 market.  If you want to swap the MIM out of your Kimber and it will make you feel better about it, you should absolutely do that.  But you should do it with the understanding that you will never get any of that money back.  A Kimber with custom work and all the MIM removed commands very little premium over a bone stock Kimber.

I say these things having been where you are.  Here is my Kimber TLE:


Here is a Kimber Pro Carry I poured a bunch of money into and sold for very little premium over what I purchased it for, let alone the custom work:


Here is a Colt I had fully gutted and rebuilt by Nighthawk.  I might be able to get $2500 for it, because it is a Colt.  I paid about $1k for the gun and it has $3k for the work.


Here is a Dan Wesson I had customized.  Dan Wessons are great guns that are priced above comparable Colts in stock form.  This is a $3600 gun in terms of replacement cost.  I might get half that if I had to sell it.  Was it worth doing to me?  Absolutely.  Worth $3600 to anyone else?  Nope.

I had one back around 2004 with the external extractor.  It worked fine for the very limited shooting it saw. Like all things Kimber it was full of MIM, and rusted easily.

They are like Ford Taurus from the same time period.  Functional but not sexy.

If you like it and it works reliably / durably then that’s all that matters.  

Forgot to add ...

I wouldn’t spend ANY money upgrading or customizing a Kimber.  If you want to have custom work done then buy a Colt.

If you want a decent factory 1911 that won’t need upgrades then find a first generation Dan Wesson Valor or Specialist.

@JohnnyEgo what IWB holster is that in your first pic? I'd like to give one of those a try.

Excellent post though, very well put with the Focus example. Beautiful guns you have, I'm not sure I would ever consider selling those in the first place if they were mine haha.
But hat's pretty much exactly the perspective I was looking for. Replacing the MIM parts isn't an absolute must, I just thought of it as a further "bullet proofing" or "updating" of the gun.
I kind of looked at this project as a gun equivalent to a sort of a resto-mod. I'm a tinkerer and gear-head, just my nature I suppose. But building up a Focus wouldn't really appeal to me lol.

Now that I understand the hierarchy a bit more I completely agree.

As of now I intend to just run it, learn to maintain it and be proficient with it. If I notice any degradation of any particular parts then I'll just go from there with upgrading or simply replacing.

For the most part I'm just going to use this Kimber as my gateway drug to my next 1911.

OP, I had a TLE-RLII circa ~2010 with the internal extractor.  I carried it for a few years and finally sold it for a little less than I originally paid, because I had about a dozen malfs with the schwartz safety.  Deleting that feature would have made it right for me.  The gun was accurate and reliable (other than the hammer dropping on a pulled trigger without a round going off).  No failures to feed/fire, no stovepipes, nothing; it shot tight and put rounds where I wanted them to go.

If they offered the same gun today without the stupid extra safety, I would be looking at it.  A blight on a nice pistol.

That's not necessary true. I remember back when I was researching smiths when I was considering having a Colt S70 done up and saw that some smiths flat out refuse to work on Kimbers. You have to remember that any smith worth a damn is plenty busy so waving cash in front of them to do work they don't want to do probably isn't going to work.


For a number of reasons I'd say Kimbers do not make good base guns but either way I would heed JohnnyEgo's advice. Full customs are not cheap and you will loose a large percentage of the money you spent on it if you decide to sell later.

I would look for a gun that is already built the way you want (or close to it) and save the mods to small, easy to do yourself changes. That's what I did, sold the Colt S70 and bought a DW Valor which is a quality gun with no MIM and most of the features I was looking for for less then half of what it would have cost me to have the Colt built similarly.

I would spend at least a few years shooting various 1911's and learning first hand what features you like and don't like and only then, if you can't find a factory model that floats your boat and still want a custom gun knowing its something you will keep and use forever then get good base gun like a Colt and have at it.

Just my $.02

That's exactly why I plan on doing the conversion. I don't see the necessity for extra moving parts that could possibly hinder the function of the gun in the future for one. Secondly I've learned it's a fairly cheap and simple process to bypass it. But otherwise it's great you had a fairly good experience with yours until the swartz issue.

Kinbers are good guns for guys that want to own a 1911 and likely won’t put a lot of rounds through it. I’ve owned and carried a few but I don’t anymore. They didn’t hold up to high round counts or hard use.

Some of the very early ones were great and last but I think those are the clacamas or something. Once they moved plants quality dropped off.

Also don’t buy a colt. They haven’t made a decent gun since 1973. I shot matches with the colt team at the colt range and they didn’t even use colts for their matches.

Don't feel like you need to replace MIM just because it's MIM. Powdered metal parts are very successful across many industries including firearms. I wonder how many powdered metal parts are in a Glock... hmmm. Kimber gave MIM a bad wrap years ago. They fixed they seemed to have learned from their problem. I'd be more worried about if the gun will run well out of the box.

Unless you know what you're doing, don't replace 1911 parts just to get a 'stronger' part. You might create more problems when you fit them to the gun. I think a lot of 1911 problems are user induced.

If you do have problems that need fixing and you're not willing to send back to Kimber, send it out to a reputable 1911 smith. Write them a big check and have them run through it. It should run fine after that.

If you don't have problems out of the box, shoot it until you do, then send it to a smith for work. If you don't shoot it that often, you may never need to send it out. Most people don't wear out guns.

Can you define "high round counts"? Tactical Considerations is a channel owned by a LEO who carried his TLE for duty. He reported 25k rounds with two spring set changes over a span of 5-10yrs or so and still going.

Considering the ammo market and the fact that I have so many other guns I enjoy running I doubt I'd reach that number within 5yrs on this pistol alone.

One persons story doesn’t make it a trend. I saw this myself with competition shooters. By and large almost no Kimbers are used by serious competitors at state or national matches. They publish breakdowns of brands used and when I was following these things Kimber never made the list.

Does that mean it’s not a good gun? No. I pulled one in a potential SD setting and was glad to have it.

Does it mean it’s not worth sinking a bunch of money into? I’m more in that camp

Complete and total bullshit.

Well to clarify, when I hear of high rounds counts I think 40k+. 25k over a span of 5-10yrs is not a staggering amount, so I don't see it as a massive accomplishment on the part of TC's duty TLE. That's why I asked what you defined as "high round counts".

Practically everything I've either heard or read has been anecdotal. Your example, was in fact anecdotal. I think 1911s being reliable at low AND high round counts are hit and miss period, and it's not exclusive to Kimber.

Unless we're talking about some type of stock out of the box competition class, I'm not sure how this info correlates to a stock/duty intended gun. From what I've seen, comp guns are less reliable than their factory counterparts. Unless we're talking about some factory competition gun that cost $1k-$3k more and is going to get far more attention on the builders bench anyways; which at this point it's not even comparable here.

At the end of the day I'm not expecting the same out of it than I would my HK45, or USP.

At least with the stats from match shooters it’s an aggregate of everyone in that particular match. I haven’t looked at the stats in a while for SS but did see that CZ/tangfolio are beating out all other makes by a wide margin. Crazy.

I have a Les baer that’s coming up on 100k rounds with no issues to speak of besides loose grip screw bushings. That is 100% anecdotal but I was there for it, so it resonates with me.


This is from just a few years ago. USPSA results show kimber at 4% of usage in the SS division
Attached File


https://www.ssusa.org/articles/2017/6/27/top-handguns-for-uspsa/

That's a pretty interesting report. Definitely not surprised by STI and CZ though. Not sure why, but I would've assumed there would be a far more diverse lineup with more makes.

Looks like Kimber is used just as much as Sig, Caspian and Colt for the most part though.

I wouldn't say that.  The frame and slide are decent and that's what most people keep with a full custom build anyway.  The barrel fit can range from meh to pretty good, so that can wait until later IMO.  

I would start out by replacing the bushing, hammer and sear, firing pin stop and extractor.   That should set you up pretty well for a dependable 1911.

Phase 2 would be replacing the barrel with a match gunsmith fit Kart or similar, replacing the slide stop, and ditching the Swartz components.

The reason almost no competitors use Kimbers is that they don't see the point in paying a premium price for the gun and then immediately throwing away 50% of it.   Better to start with a cheaper base gun if you're going to install a bunch of comp parts.

Those all seem pretty practical and reasonable. I probably wont be replacing the barrel anytime soon but the swartz delete is definitely a phase 1 plan.

Match shooters congregate to what works for the game. I started shooting 3 gun with a bushnell dot on a 16” dpms. I ended with a comped JP 18” with rifle gas and a 1-4. Just like damn near everyone else towards the top of the pack, because they work for the game.

Kimber spends money on the finish. They are better finished than a Springfield. But in competition that doesn’t super matter.

Reliable, relatively accurate, budget. Probably that order.

Says a lot how few colts are used, doesn’t it? ;-)

Don’t be afraid to get something nice or built to the way you want it and then beat the hell out of it. When it breaks, fix it. Repeat Attached File

It is a Blade Tech kydex holster.  Their take on what is known as a Bruce Nelson Summer Special pattern.  It's a good design, which is why so many companies have a flavor of it.  The Blade Tech version that I have was relatively inexpensive, good at what it does, and has held up very well over 15 years.  I like Kydex a lot, because it doesn't retain moisture or sweat, which was a really useful feature when I lived on the Florida coast.  I have many holsters of assorted degrees of fanciness, but I keep coming back to this design as a quality work-a-day option.



Whatever path you take with your Kimber, I am sure you will enjoy it.  It was my gateway drug to the abyss of 1911 obsession, and even now I still enjoy shooting mine alongside it's more high-born brethren.

I think Kimbers serve as the gateway for a lot of people.  They look nice and (arguably) started the trend of producing factory 1911s with (previously) custom features so many gun stores have them on the shelf.

In the 90's when they first hit the shelf a friend (that owned the largest gun store in his state ... had 6,000 guns on the floor) really pushed Kimbers on me.  Back then they were the "pre II" guns made in Clacakamas.  Those were nice production guns.  Its been all down hill since then.

I won't wade into the MIM vs Cast vs Tool Steel debate.  I'll just say that if my life is in the balance I don't care about $1000 so my carry guns are all tool steel.  If it is just something to use at the range .. who cares whats in it or if it breaks.  Worse case is your range trip is cut short.

Thanks for that. I wasn't initially considering carrying it right away but that holster does make the thought seem much more appealing. And I agree and I'm pretty positive this is going to be favorite gun to shoot. Even if it does have issue or needs some attention, it's going to be an enjoyable experience for me learning this platform.

Beautiful combo, I'm a watch guy so I think it was inevitable that I'd find my way into the 1911 market. Before I get a Wesson or Baer I'll have to remind myself to put some money away for a nice Omega to go with it haha.



I agree with that ideology; if your life is dependent on it, why not just get the best you can. As of now I'm planning to just run the crap out of it, at least run it as much as I can under these ammo market circumstances. Once I become truly proficient with it I will likely revisit the MIM debates and archives again. But input here has definitely help me become more familiar with what I have.

Is that why the company is doing so well they got bought by some europeans?

Thanks. I see glocks like screwdrivers. They work and do the job, but there's nothing really interesting about them and I'm sure as shit not gonna make 10k posts on a forum devoted to screwdrivers

People that like watches seem to like 1911s. Not sure if it's the engineering, classic appeal, or what. Honestly I know that modern guns are "better" than 1911s, but I don't care. I'm comfy with 9 rounds of a decent round, and if I'm going to spend my life with something I want it to be something I actually like. Same with the watch. It doesn't get text messages or emails, but it tells me the time. It's been on my wrist in some form or another for the better part of a decade. The 1911 is coming up on 6 years.

Enjoy your TLE and post pictures of your next 1911 because they seem to be addictive.  In a world filled with sameness (I'm looking at you Gaston Block) the uniqueness of different 1911 options will eventually weaken your resolve and you'll likely end up with several.

Screw drivers that spit the screw onto your forehead.  As much as I want to be a bandwagon fan that regurgitates what he's read on the errornet, I simply cannot say "Glocks work" because in my 25 years of owning and shooting them I've had plenty of issues.  I've probably owned at least four dozen of them.  I've fired tens-of-thousands of rounds through them.  A 500 round day (every week) wasn't uncommon for me.  They dribble brass, eject brass-to-forehead, and the accuracy is sub-par compared to other polymer guns I've owned (HKs, S&Ws, Kahrs, even XDs ... gag).

I own Glocks, but they are in my not-so-humble-opinion-on-this-particular-topic WAY over rated.

At one time I had ten 9mm Glocks and everyone of them developed the BTH issue with use.

At this point, I'm considering just being done with Glock and posting for sale what I have left.  I carry my 1911s daily. I shoot my 1911s better than any other handgun I've owned.  I like the craftsmanship of a hand fitted 1911. I like the pride-of-ownership associated with 1911s.  A Glock is a lot like a tampon .... plus you don't have to get a special holster for it if you want hard chrome

I probably have more rounds though a Kimber than anyone on this forum. I think I’ve broke a thumb safety and an ejector. A Kimber tactical ambi safety runs like $60 and it’ll drop in. 98% chance that if I break a Kimber part I’ve got 10k plus rounds on it and I’ll replace it with a kimber part and keep on going.

I’d replace the factory sights with a Novak style like what’s on my Warrior. The DET-1 is wearing Novak sights I prefer the profile of the Warriors a little better. But that’s a personal thing. Other than that a trigger of your choice (if you want, I swapped out an aftermarket trigger for a stock Kimber in my DET-1 with a little polish work) maybe a Stan Chen SI magwell, multiple sets of grips and ammo!

ETA:
I’d like to throw it out there that my Warrior still has the Kimber mim sear still nicely coated in the KimPro finish. Slight wear marks where the hammer hooks have come into contact thousands of times. The edge has held up very well and it’s a fantastic trigger. I think about refinishing it, texturing the front strap and a new Kart barrel for the hell of it but I can buy another Warrior for the cost of the work and I really like the look and feel of this gun. I’d hate to mess that up.

@Infidel4life11 Love the look of your Warrior. The slide wear makes it look even more badass and it's easy to see she's no safe queen. I have some black grips on the way, but I think I'm going to give some coyote/fde Loks a try. Glad to hear your experiences at that round count though, that's great performance.

I may end up replacing the sights also since the gun still has it's originals. May go for a set with a blacked out rear and a high visibility front with tritium. Seems Kimber cut sights are a bit limited compared to the traditional 1911 style. I haven't done a whole lot of searching though.

ETA: I run these on my PPQ and they're my favorite irons. May have to grab some for the Kimber.


My next will probably be something more for EDC. I really like the Dan Wesson Vigil.
It's already begun, I haven't even received my first 1911 and I'm already looking at which one I will buy next

Just be careful when it comes to sights as 1911s are a little different and Kimber 1911s are different from other 1911s.

Stereotypically for a “Government” 5” 1911 you want a .325” high rear and a .180”-.185” high front. Kimbers are shorter than this and front usually run about .150-.160. I have .160 on both of mine. Shorter 1911s (commanders, officers, colt. Carry and Pro for kimber) require different height sights. You don’t want to mix a set of sights on the wrong length gun

^I'll be replacing the originals with a complete Kimber specific set. I definitely don't want to open a can of worms by trying to mix and match sights, that's for sure.

How many rounds do you have through Kimbers?

I've got just under 50k on an early gen1 kimber.  I've got right at 8k on a tle pro.  The old kimber still has original sear and hammer....oh noes!  The tle pro has a bulletproof wc disco, bulletproof slide stop, bulletproof flat bottom fp stop, and I pulled the fp safety plunger out of slide.  Is it as nice as my nh or cqb, no, but its a 725.00 pistol.

In the very late 90's I was running about 5k a month through a 3 digit serial number Clackamas Classic. I'd reload 1000-1500 during the week and shoot it all on the weekends.  I sold the Clackamas I and bought a Royal II.  The slide stop notch rounded out of the slide in short order.  Kimber replaced.  Then more problems ensued.  I've owned a ton of them since but never ran high round counts through the "II" series guns.

ETA: The first "II" might of been a Gold Combat or similar.  That was 20 years ago, but I very clearly remember the slide stop notch completely rounding out quickly.

Out of the box colts have been the most reliable 1911s i have owned. If you want a base gun for a build i would get a plane jane series 80 or 70.

If it runs run it. But I wouldn’t pour a lot of money into one. I would bypass the Schwartz.