Colt Series 80 Trigger Work

Hey guys, Im new to the Colt 1911 family of firearms and just purchased a used Series 80 stainless that has had some sort of trigger work done to it. I noticed that the firing pin plunger and spring are gone underneath the slide. I emailed the gentleman that I purchased the gun from and he said that those parts would ruin the trigger job that had been done to the pistol. I can see from the scematics that the plunger puts some pressure on the sear via the plunger lever and the trigger bar lever. I guess that my question is why is it necessary to remove factory Colt parts leaving a hole under the slide to collect powder and brass shavings in and around the firing pin and spring to have a trigger job?

Some owner/ gunsmiths believe you couldn't get a quality trigger job with the series 80 safety parts installed, they are wrong and there are a number of ways to get good trigger response and feel with the parts installed. The gunsmith who did the work was being lazy. You can contact Colt directly or one of the major custom shops that know how to do it properly. Brownell's catalog has all the parts to do it right.

Series 80 guns have a few more parts to polish so rather than polish more parts they pull out the extra parts and install a spacer in the right hand side of the frame. Id much rather have the series 70 guns but good trigger jobs can be done on the 80 series without removing parts.

I found out the hard way that you don't take those part out of a series 80 without also installing a series 70 or custom-equivalent hammer. I was shooting an indoor PPC match at my club several years ago with a series 80 govt. model I'd done the trigger work on. As we were loading for the next string of fire, I dropped the slide on a fresh magazine, and blam!!! - three shots went down range in the blink of an eye. I was so shook that the range master didn't have to ask me to remove myself & my pistol from the line - I'd had it for the evening. The series 80 hammer doesn't have the same so-called "half-cock" notch that all earlier 1911s have, so it's possible for it to bounce over what passes for a half-cock on the 80 hammer if a sear with marginal engagement releases the hammer when the slide is dropped.

There is an art to doing safe light trigger jobs on a 1911 - I've had a couple of 38 Super IPSC raceguns built by Nowlin Custom in Oklahoma with extremely crisp & safe trigger pulls of well under 2lbs., and in over 35,000 rounds of match & practice, neither trigger ever gave me any problems. Do yourself a favor and don't send the pistol back to Colt - find a reputable pistolsmith who specializes in 1911s, and have him work it over. You'll come out way ahead in both safety and utility with your pistol.

As an old 1911 smith, I used to do a lot of guns for NRA Bulleyseye shooting, where it is against the rules to remove any safety function origionally built into the gun, it is harder to do a good trigger job but it can be done. Either get a Series 70 slide or get the parts and restore them to the pistol.
Steve

Thanks guys. I ordered the proper parts to complete my slide and also am eyeballing a trigger pull kit from Brownells that utilizes titanium retaining pins and ultra smooth mahcined parts to get it down to a possible 1.5 lbs.

What happened to D.Selfridge is the reason that I always, always, always have my thumb holding the hammer back when I drop the slide. Jim