So long story short I took a hiatus from 1911's as I became more serious with IDPA/2-Gun (I shoot plastic fantastics). I randomly came across this Colt Rail Gun on Gunbroker and had since started rebuilding the collection. I was looking for something that was decent enough quality but also cheap enough that I can learn/fit parts on my own without fear of ruining it. Luckily I snagged this guy for $700 and immediately started putting rounds through it. During that process I noticed some things that I wanted to change, got drunk one night, ANNDDDDDD bought a bunch of stuff from Brownells.

Pistol completely disassembled and parts inspected:


First part up was the S&A magazine well. I enjoy the level of forgiveness that these afford sloppy reloads and since I mostly shoot a Glock, I figured this help with my 1911 reloads which need to be much more precise.

It went it fine but the edges/points of the magwell stuck out some and this annoyed me to no end.


I raised the ends and gently beat them with a nyloy tipped hammer. Because they were raised this bent them down.


As a result the edges are tight with no more gap...




Next on the to do list was to "blend" the frame to match the mag well.


I used a #2 file since I didn't want to take too much off with each pass.


Slowly but surely I brought it in line


Mostly done and with some cold blue to darken it up. The gun will be cerakoted post beavertail and checkering but this will suffice for now. I wen't a little too deep and gouged the mag well in a couple spots. It's not readily noticeable and for a hard use/class gun I'm not losing sleep.


Next was the trigger, it's OEM but it had a lot of resistance in the frame against it. I slathered some Sharpie all over it and ran it through.


Rather than start removing material from the frame I used a stone and lightly grazed the area where the Sharpie was scuffed/removed:


The result? It glides super easily and there is no longer any resistance.

Next was the Ed Brown magazine release. After I installed it I could not seat magazines unless it was depressed. I tried and tried but couldn't get it. I took it out and found where the ledge was catching:


I was going to get out the file again but decided to just cut a spring coil. I figured it's cheaper to replace a spring than a magazine catch if it didn't work.


While it's still hard to seat mags, it's much better and I feel like overtime it will wear itself in. But drastic difference from what is was before.