I've noticed some negetive comments on this pistol here and there. Is there a problem with this handgun I'm unaware of? I've always heard good things about the SIG. But you guys on here are alot more knowledgable about this stuff than me, and I see the P220 stuff crop up every once in a while.
If there is a thread on it, I can't seem to find it.
rubberneck
06-26-08, 22:50
I've noticed some negetive comments on this pistol here and there. Is there a problem with this handgun I'm unaware of? I've always heard good things about the SIG. But you guys on here are alot more knowledgable about this stuff than me, and I see the P220 stuff crop up every once in a while.
If there is a thread on it, I can't seem to find it.
Good gun but not as durable long term as other guns chambered in 45ACP.
Good gun but not as durable long term as other guns chambered in 45ACP.
In what way?? not being a smart ass, just wanting to know...
Which .45?
https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=13541
https://www.m4carbine.net/showpost.php?p=152627&postcount=78
As has been discussed numerous times, the .45 ACP P220 is a somewhat problematic and not very durable platform-there are better choices.
Here are some quotes from LE agency armorers re. the P220:
"My PD issues SIG pistols; P-220s in .45, the 226, 228,and 239 in 9MM. The dept split is about 35% .45ACP and 65% 9MM. I have been the
lead full-time firearms instructor/armorer for the past 12 years. As a LEO,I carried my Colt Govt or Commander from 78-90, switched to P-220 from 90-93, and carried a P-228 from then to present. With all that in mind, here are a few of my observations:
1. The P-220 is probably the most accurate service pistol right out of the box.
2. The P-220 is much more finicky about duty ammo than any of the SIG 9MMs. Winchester RA45T work just fine.
3. I see 10 times more parts break in P-220s than any of the SIG 9MMs. The 9MMs are just much more reliable. That's the reason I have carried one as a trainer and as a SWAT officer.
4. P-220 magazines have experienced several changes. The early "small zipper seam" mags had poor top welds and were prone to splitting. We replaced all of those with the later "trapezoidal seam" mags and have not split and of those. Heavily used mags may develop small cracks from the rear feed rail cut, causing the mag lips to lose a certain amount of tension. We have not seen very many of these but they do occur and the mag should be replaced. (the SIG 8 rounders are trash, stay away) The newest stainless, made by Mec-Gar for SIG, seem to work alright but we have only been using them for about 3 years.
5. Early P-220s, without the hammer reset spring, were surplused out as a safety hazard, relating to the decocking lever vs thumb relax issue.
6. All of our SIGs are surplussed out after 10 years of in inventory. This is done primarily due to the constant changes made to SIG pistols by SIG and the failure of SIG to communicate these changes to their SIG certified armorers.
Overall, SIGs are pretty darn good service pistols for LE use, but the 9MMs will prove to be much more reliable and durable than the P-220 .45. I would not use a P-220 .45 in any demanding military role which required the pistol to be fired ALOT. If you are going to fire this P-220 pistol ALOT then you'll need spare roll pins, trigger bar springs, trigger bars, slide catch springs, locking pieces, trigger pivot pins, and hammer reset springs. Or, you could just carry a P-226 or P-228 in 9MM, know that your pistol will work, pay attention to shot placement, and have a wonderful life."
Another:
"I am a factory trained Sig armorer and worked at an agency where we issued the p226 and p220. I did most of the preventative maintenance on the guns, they came in once a year. At about 3-5K rounds we began to notice the P220s were having more parts break including trigger bars,and reset springs. A few craked locking pieces and the roll pins seemed to walk out regardless of how and who put them in the pistols. Magazines fed and functioned fine however each different style had problems the best were the later Mec-Gar units but they did sometimes crack at the rear edge. The P226 pistols just kept on going mine has over 53,000 though it with just changing the springs. A frequent P220 problem was the trigger return spring coming off during recoil forcing you to reset the trigger by hand each time you pulled it. This could be a fatal problem in a lethal force encounter and it happened enough that some shooters were pretty good at finishing the course of fire with a broken or missing spring on the trigger return. For concealed carry or as a police issue sidearm with a rigorous maintenance program The P220 is a very accurate handy platform. You pay the price for the alloy frame with more battering to the parts. We had to replace the frame on a SWAT 220 with Surfire attached due to cracks. SWAT later switched to the H&K USP45 and did not have any parts breakage but did get some problem magazines that were eventually sorted out to be the wrong lot number for our pistols.(the lot we received was slated for destruction but was shipped instead) I wonder if the good mags were thrashed... And yes Sig is bad about getting updates to armorers thats why they want you to go back to school every few years they do want to make money too."
Every agency I am aware of that issues both the P220 and P226 has substantially more reliability and durability issues with the P220.
https://www.m4carbine.net/showpost.php?p=152802&postcount=86
For those who don't know already, as background I was the fed/mil guy at SIG for five years (2002-2007). During that time, I carried a P220 on and off, total of probably 18 months or so.
It's hard for me to say that one model or design was the "most" problematic, primarily because I had, for instance, tens of thousands of customers using the P229R-40-DAK and only maybe a thousand using the P220 in any variant. However, I was usually privy to what other major LE agencies were going through, and certainly when major agencies dropped their P220s or SIGs in general.
These are my thoughts, take them for what they're worth:
The P220, as the oldest SIG P22x-series gun, has been through a number of revisions. The frame was beefed up considerably in the 90's. The slide design was completely changed a few years ago. Many of the internal parts have been updated over time, too. (it's worth noting that none of this is particularly unusual in the industry)
No one should be surprised that two essentially identical guns, one in 9mm and one in 45 Auto, would have different lifecycles. The 45 is putting much more stress on the gun. (see, e.g., the recent thread on .40-cal Glocks as compared to their 9mm brethren)
Some P220s now come with the "competition" takedown lever, which is substantially beefed up over the regular one. The "competition" version is identifiable by having a dot inside a circle on the side opposite the paddel; standard ones are flat. I examined a number of P220 variants at a local gun shop the other day and there didn't seem to be any consistency in how the parts are assigned to various models. One exception is the P220 Combat, which have always come with the competition takedown lever. In my experience, the standard version breaks anywhere from 15-25k and renders the gun completely dead. I never put that many rounds through a competition version but based on what the engineering department told me, they survived 30k tests for the Combat.
For the old style slides with the roll pins, it's important to replace the pins at least every 5k rounds. This is true for all SIG P22x-series guns with two-part slides. Otherwise, over time, the breech block will get loose, the slide will lose stiffness, and the steel slide will flex against the aluminum frame. This frequently results in frame cracks. Plenty of people have gone tens of thousands of rounds with their SIGs by replacing these pins.
For the new style one-piece stainless slides (identifiable by the solid firing pin positioning pin instead of the dual roll pins in the slide), the biggest gremlin has been the extractor. There have been problems since day one. I was actually one of the last people to believe there was a problem (mea culpa) because my personal P220ST -- the first model to use this slide and extractor -- went over 18,500 rounds before it suffered its first extraction failure. But many people had problems much earlier. Ernest Langdon used to put extractors in his kitchen oven to heat treat them better, and even then he was replacing them every 3k or so to maintain reliability. SIG lost some major and minor LE contracts over the problem. Various fixes have been tried over the years (better heat treat QC, better dimensional QC, etc) but recently SIG finally switched to an external extractor like the ones found on all other stainless slide P22x-series guns. I haven't even handled one in person but hopefully this will put the extraction issues to bed.
The second P220ST I got (in 2006) had multiple failures to go into battery. After 550 rounds, I sent it back. I instead began using a P220R (which had the same type slide) and had two stoppages in about 4,500 rounds. If not for costs of ammo and mag capacity, I probably would have kept carrying it. It ran very well and was, of course, as accurate as I could ever hope to be with a handgun.
My personal experience with the SAO mechanism was negative; I personally wouldn't use one.
The P220, as many have said, is an almost magically accurate pistol.
The mags have also gone through some changes. The original 7rd mags were fine. Then there was a demand for 8rd, so the first bandaid was to shove eight rounds into the 7rd tube; that was a disaster. Then a slightly extended genuine 8rd magazine was created. It worked fine for standard pressure ammo and some (not all) +p ammo. The real problem was that the top round would move forward under recoil, and the mags would not drop free if the gun had been fired. SIG didn't think this was important enough to change when Ernest Langdon and I raised the issue in early 2003. Once the JCP program (SOCOM .45) picked up speed, some military people commented to SIG that the failure of the mags to drop free might be a problem and so suddenly everyone was running around screaming "Why didn't someone warn us about this sooner!" :rolleyes: SIG then redesigned the 8rd mags with a little dimple below the feed lips to keep the top round in place. This also resolved issues that some departments, such as Henricho Co. VA, were having (Henricho still switched to .40-cal Glocks, though, as the fix didn't happen soon enough).
FWIW, I've found the factory 10rd magazines to be as reliable and durable as the 8rd.
Prior to the HK45 and M&P45, the P220 would have been my first pic in a forty-five. A random box-stock P220 is certainly more reliable than a random box-stock 1911. While it may need more attention and TLC than a P226 in 9mm, it requires less than a 1911.
When I test-fired the first M&P45 prototype in the summer of '06, I immediately sent my boss at SIG an email from my Blackberry that ended with, "We're in big trouble." :cool:
I would have to say that I've probably seen more P220-carrying agencies switch to another brand over the past six years, though, than have switched away from any other SIG model. I don't think that's all because of reliability/durability issues, but certainly that was the case in some instances.
Reading back through this, I realized I forgot to mention the first P220 I ever owned, which was bought years before I got into the firearms industry. I don't have the records in front of me, but that gun (which used the old style slide with the new upgraded frame and hammer) failed at around 2,500 rounds I want to say (give or take maybe 1k). The hammer rebound spring broke and dislodged itself, shutting the gun down. It was a quick fix for an armorer (which I was not, at the time).
My old agency issued the Sig P226, P225 and P239 in 9mm, the P229 in 40S&W and the P220 in 45ACP. I do not believe there was a gun in the department's inventory that was less than 10 years old. I received my P220 in 2004 and it was date coded 1992. I would say roughly 80% carried the P229, 10% carried the P226, 8% carried the P220 and the remaining 2% were split between the P239 and P225 (about 300 officers).
We had a fairly progressive firearms training policy and shot about six times a year with 500+ handgun rounds going downrange for each officer each time we shot. I cannot recall seeing a single non operator induced malfunction out of the P226's or P229's in three years. Those of us that carried the P220 had issues. I had to keep my personal weapon clean or it would fail to feed (oh the horror! ;) ). Several officers complained that it was sensitive to limp-wristing (causing failures to feed), but I never found that to be the case. We were issued the old 7-round mags (with the zipper seam) and they were crap. They constantly broke at the seem. Of course the mags were as old as the guns. I ran the ACT/Novak 8-rounders for a time but the feed lips would crack on me before too long. I used the current production Sig 7 rounders for my remaining time there. I have recently switched to the new "combat" Sig 8 rounders (black mags with the dimples) and have not had trouble out of them.
I only knew one other guy there that put more rounds through his P220 than me. I shot about 12,000 rounds a year and I believe he was probably closer to 20,000. The only problems I experienced were:
1. If it got dirty, it would fail to feed. Any more than 700 rounds (give or take) in a single session and I would start having problems.
2. My roll pin started to walk out on me (probably the original roll pin from 1992). I took the weapon to one of our armorers and he tapped it back in. I asked him if that was a part that needed to be replaced every now and then. He said, "Nah, just tap it back in when it starts to walk out." I said "OK, thanks." and went home and replaced the pin myself.
The other guy that shot the snot out of his old P220 had the trigger bar break. I have no idea how many rounds he had put through the gun, but it was a lot.
I know my casual observation of a handful of guns and limited time frame do not make for a robust statistical study, but my experience seems to echo what others out there are saying about the P220.
When I left that agency I immediately purchased an "old school" P220 that has the updated hammer but still has the roll-pinned slide. It was a single owner safe queen, but I re-sprung it and replaced the roll pin anyway just to be safe. I would not hesitate to carry it, but I feel the P220 has been eclipsed by newer designs such as the Smith and Wesson M&P. It (the P220) is a great gun. I have an emotional attachment to it so I am bit biased. You need to know the platform's weaknesses and keep an eye on it, just like any other weapon system.
I will always own a Sig P220, but if I were looking for a single stack sized weapon to carry into harms way today, I would take a hard look at Smith's M&P line and the HK45. FWIW I can now carry just about anything I want and I carry an M&P 40.
Negative. But it is very slim. It actually feels thinner than my P220 with Hogue wraparounds.
Steve in PA
06-28-08, 10:10
I'll stick with my P220's.
I've had a take down lever and trigger bar spring break on one of my pistols (bought used) but I should have changed the recoil spring and trigger bar spring when I bought it. But I didn't. My fault, not the guns. All springs should be changed in the 3-5k range anyway.
Both of my Sig's have fed and fired every type of round that I've ever put into it. I know several other officers that carry the P220's and they've never had a problem or issue either.
I'm also a Sig Armorer and I've never seen the issues that some people are reporting.
30 seconds and the Search function at SIGforum will turn up countless detailed discussions of the P220 extractor issues.
I looked at a bunch of handguns today, the HK45USP, P220, and FNP-45 stood out as fitting my hands nicely. I tried to like the M&P .45, but I don't like that hinged trigger, and I've never really been a fan of S&W. Except their revolvers.
Line Rider
06-29-08, 21:04
The only problem I've ever had with my P-220 is that 7 round magazines at a tactical shooting class. I was doing a lot more reloading than others with wonder 9's and 40's.
SIGforum search 220 extractor issues (http://sigforum.com/eve/forums?a=search&reqWords=220+extractor+issues&exactPhrase=&optWords=¬Words=&f=430601935&subjectOnly=N&afterDate=&beforeDate=&authorName=&exactAuthor=Y&sortType=0&ptyp_poll=Y&ptyp_album=Y&ptyp_msg=Y&ptyp_count=3&x_display_post_details=1&groupType=1&search=Search)
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