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Ok I promised a full review of the Steyr M40 awhile back so here it is. Better grab a cold one cause you’ll be here awhile reading it.

[b]1. Availability:[/b]  The gun comes in 3 flavors, 9mm, .40S&W, and .357 Sig.  I chose the .40 because I already have a hi-cap 9mm (Beretta Elite II, review coming soon!) and I didn’t want to handload for .357 Sig (necked down pistol cartridge seemed a bit too advanced for my newbie reloading skills).  At CDNN Investments [url]http://www.cdnninvestments.com[/url] the 9mm and .40 versions go for $289 with standard sights and $339 with night sights, and the rarer .357 Sig will run you $369.  They only come with one ten-round magazine, there are no pre-ban or generic mags for the gun, and extra mags will cost you $30.  I put the .40 cal with standard sights in my hands with two spare mags for about $400 including tax, shipping, and transfer fees.  I had Aaron Coats (formerly known as Urodoji) order the gun for me through Castle Arms to show my support for him as a person.  He has taken it very personally that alot of people on this board want to throw him out of a job over a contoversy he had nothing to do with, so I supported him with my pocketbook as gunowners are wont to do.

[b]2.  Appearance:[/b]  Fit and finish is excellent!  There is NO play in the slide to frame contact or in the barrel to slide contact.  This sucker is built tight like a Kimber, I’m serious.  Pulling back the slide reveals the tolerances of the gun.  It’s a smooth experience, no grittiness at all: all in all, a smoother slide operation than my $1000 USP Tactical.  The Beretta slide compares favorably though, pulling back the slide on an Elite II is like feeling glass on glass.  Shaking the gun vigorously back and forth (the old 1911 test) revealed no rattles or clicking.  The polymer frame is well finished, there are no casting “flash” marks anywhere or rough edges showing an imperfection in the process.  The slide is finished in a tough looking black coating very similar looking to HK’s “Hostile Environment” finish on their USP series.  All mags dropped free.

[b]3.  Safeties and function:[/b]  This thing has safety features out the wazoo.  “Condition one,” ready to fire, means that only the Glock-esque trigger safety stands between you and a discharged round.  “Condition two” means the manual safety is engaged.  What looks like Glock take-down levers on each side of the frame actually engage the safety, which pops down into the trigger guard with white indicators on both sides, as such:

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The safety design reminds me a bit of the Garand/M-14 safety.  To disengage the safety you just push up with your trigger finger.  Morgan, my lovely testing assistant, had issues with this design.  Having immaculate range safety instincts, she didn’t like the idea of putting your trigger finger inside the trigger guard, so close to the trigger, just to deactivate the safety.  There is practically no chance of a negligent discharge but I think from a training standpoint she makes a very valid point.  Damn women, they are always right!

“Condition three” means the kiddie lock, located on the right side of the frame by the takedown lever, is engaged.  The firing pin is inert but the slide can still be moved.  

[img]http://photos.ar15.com/ImageGallery/Attachments/DownloadAttach.asp?iImageUnq=13877[/img]

There is a loaded chamber indicator that protrudes physically out the back of the slide, very similar to a Walther P38’s chamber indicator.

[b]4. Engineering:[/b]  I was impressed by the quality of the metal inserts into the polymer frame and the metal parts in general.  Absolutely top notch.  A Glock 19 provided a handy comparison in this respect:  

[img]http://photos.ar15.com/ImageGallery/Attachments/DownloadAttach.asp?iImageUnq=13858[/img]

[img]http://photos.ar15.com/ImageGallery/Attachments/DownloadAttach.asp?iImageUnq=13859[/img]

Hopefully you can tell that the insert is one solid piece of metal that runs through the length of the frame, instead of separate metal inserts front and rear.  The precision of the rails that the slide interfaces with should also be apparent—I’m sure that is why the slide action is so smooth and tight.  The slide release is fairly robust and makes the Glock release look fragile in comparison.  Of course the HK USP slide release dwarfs them both.  Field stripping the gun is easy, you just dry-fire, push down on the kiddie lock and rotate the large take-down lever past it to release the slide.  You can see the take-down lever in the second frame pic.

Steyr put the world’s biggest feed ramp on their barrel!  Unlike the Glock the M40 has a fully supported chamber, which means reloads are ok and will hopefully translate to fewer kabooms.  To facilitate loading of the snub-nosed .40 cartridge, check out this feed ramp in comparison to the Glock 19 feed ramp.  I know I’m comparing a 9mm to a .40 here but there wasn’t a .40 Glock lying around for me to compare with.  The feed ramp is already very smooth and polished from the factory, ready to go out of the box!

[img]http://photos.ar15.com/ImageGallery/Attachments/DownloadAttach.asp?iImageUnq=13860[/img]

[b]5.  Ergonomics:[/b]  As you can see, the M40 is almost the same dimensions at the medium size Glock series, with a similar grip angle.

[img]http://photos.ar15.com/ImageGallery/Attachments/DownloadAttach.asp?iImageUnq=13864[/img]

However, the Steyr grip feels less chunky—it’s thinner because the magazines are metal instead of polymer, and there is a large cut-out in the back where the web between your thumb and trigger finger goes, encouraging you to adopt a grip very near to the bore axis.  Speaking of which, the M40 has the lowest bore axis I’ve seen in a long long time.  Its difficult to tell from the photos but the bore axis is clearly even lower than on the Glock, its about as low as a P7M8 and certainly bests the relatively high bore axis of the HK USP or Walther P99.

When firing the gun, the low bore axis translates to the most controllable polymer .40 S&W I have ever shot.  Sure a Para-Ordnance full-size P14 is more controllable, but this gun comes in a close third to the Para and maybe the Glock 35 for controllability.  The gun kicks back towards you with minimal muzzle flip, although there is a bit.  It does not muzzle flip a lot like the Walther P99, nor torque around in your hand like the USP .40 Compact (I still have no idea why the Compact .40s do that, maybe the polygonal barrel?).  The sights take a bit of getting used to, I like them, the rear sights are a trapezoid and the front sight is a triangle, as shown:

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Because the photo was poorly taken with too much flash, you can’t see the white inserts in the rear sight, but they follow the contour of the slide and sight, pointing somewhat towards the tip of the front sight.  The night sights on these guns are standard, not triangular like these.

Rumor has it that Wayne Novak, when looking at the gun for the first time at the 1999 SHOT show, exclaimed “which idiot designed these f--king sights?”  Everyone has an opinion, so here’s mine:  How about the same idiot who designed the sights on the Mauser Gewehr 98 a hundred plus years ago?  Sighting through this pistol is just like sighting a Mauser: for fast combat shooting the front sight is big and fat and easily reacquired.  For accuracy shooting it is easy to use the tip of the front triangle as a very fine aiming point, as long as you keep it within the rear trapezoid for elevation purposes.  Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, and mark my words, another manufacturer is going to copy this design soon and put it on their top-of-the-line handgun and call it an innovative new feature.  You’ll see.

The trigger on this gun is better than a standard Glock trigger but a long way away from a match 1911 trigger or even the Beretta Elite II trigger (which is sweeet, and by sweet I mean totally cool).  It is a two stage design with the first stage being very light, such as a Walther P99 or a TZ99.  The second stage breaks very quickly with no stacking or mushiness.  To me the standard Glock trigger is unforgiveably mushy throughout its length of travel.  The trigger safety is also much more agreeable to me than the Glock trigger safety.  The Steyr trigger was a bit gritty at first but has already shown a big improvement after only a couple days of shooting and is much smoother already.  The manual says the trigger is rated at 4.8 pounds, but I’m going  to check my gun manually soon to see for sure.  Trigger travel is only 4mm through BOTH stages, with the second stage probably being less than half that.  There is some overtravel, and trigger reset is right where the second stage begins, so that’s not bad at all, better than the USP, worse than the P99.

[b]6. Range testing:[/b]  We put two hundred rounds through the M40 in two days.  I cleaned the gun thoroughly after the first hundred rounds.  Ammo was a mix of various plinking rounds, all FMJ.  Only two problems surfaced:  On day one, round number 98 of 100 was a light primer strike.  The gun will not re-strike if this happens, unlike the p99.  I had to clear the slide with a considerable amount of force to put the gun back in operation.  The cartridge, a UMC 155 grain FMJ, fired on the second strike.  I’m not sure why this happened.  The other problem was that one magazine twice locked the slide back with the last round still in the mag.  I attribute this to the super strong, thumb-killing magazine spring pushing up the follower too much.  Hopefully with time and use this gun will “break in” and these problems will not repeat themselves.  

The gun was very pleasurable to shoot, with manageable recoil, an agreeable trigger, and no frame “buzz” like I’ve experienced with some other polymer frame guns shooting this cartridge.  You could shoot it all day without fatigue, but someone else had better load the mags if you want to try that!  Accuracy got better with practice, I’m not really a Glock shooter (never could get used to that damn trigger safety) so the grip angle was funky, and the sights took some getting used to, as well as the trigger safety.  I still like the feel of a good Beretta or 1911 trigger best:  metal, with no moving parts.

Here is a typical group, shot the first day, at just over 10 meters, standing up, offhand:

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As you can see, there are several groups of holes with two or three shots touching.  I think reading this group reflects my lack of familiarity with the gun more than the accuracy potential of the gun itself.  The gun did shoot consistently to the left of point of aim by about one inch, so I’m thinking of bumping the rear sight over just a bit if better trigger discipline doesn’t result in a change in impact point.  On the other hand the Elite II shoots exactly to point of aim for me already, for what that’s worth.

I hope you folks enjoy this review, you don’t even want to know how long it took me to put it together.  In summary, I think that for $300 this gun is as much of a deal as the HS2000 was a couple of years ago.  Right now it is somewhat relegated to target shooting and novelty status because Steyr is having problems with their importer, Dyamit Nobel, which is why I can’t buy a tactical light to hang off of the rail which is cut into the frame.  Aside from extra 10-round mags, there are no accessories available, although at least two holster manufacturers are producing holsters for it.  Rumor has it that Steyr has produced a shoulder stock for the pistol that clips into the rear of the frame and pistol grip, but again it hasn’t been imported yet.

I’ll be happy to answer any specific questions about the gun or provide more photos to frustrate those of you still on dial-up.

-Duke-Nukem-

Steyr AUG, I already have well over 3000 rounds through this beauty, which is currently sleeping under my bed in the pictured configuration with two full mags of Speer Gold Dot keeping her warm and another one in her belly.

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However, she wouldn't be much of a conceal piece.  If we get CCW in Missouri and this gun goes another 500 rounds or so without any more problems, it might be a pretty decent conceal piece.  

Oh yeah, and the Glock wasn't mine.  I don't like Glocks in general and especialy the .40 cals, for reasons which are probably evident to most of you:

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Bystander what did the feed ramp look like on those guns, was it the same as mine? I wonder if they changed a couple of things like the feed ramp to help out reliability.  I'll add to the thread later if I encounter any other problems with the gun, but I've had no feeding problems whatsoever so far.  Also, I heard that the trigger on the early guns was not as good and was re-worked a couple of years ago, so they HAVE made some changes to the design.

Bump for the night shift.  Certainly I'm not the only guy on the AR boards who owns one of these.

M4 I just checked and in fact that IS the symbol.  And I thought the only disposable handguns were Lorcins and RavenArms!