Went to a gun show over the weekend with no thought of getting anything. Was just hoping to get lucky and maybe run across some interesting items. But you all know what the gun shows are like now. Inside of an hour I was all pissed off at all the bullshit I was hearing and the insane prices (on vintage guns) and ready to leave. On my way out I saw this MC P35 on a big dealer's table for $479. I love Hi Powers and I have my fair share of FN examples and some clones. The last thing I needed was another Hi Power clone but what the ****. My old lady was out of town and I needed a project. I got the pistol and 1,000 rounds of ammo from home and headed up to the club to shoot the shit out of this thing.
I have no agenda here. I didn't plan on carrying this pistol or using it for home defense. I was just curious if it was a decent clone or not and had some time to kill. But I was kinda blown away after spending a couple of days shooting this thing.
Fit and finish I think is very good. The slide fits well to the frame and the barrel fits very snug to the slide. The fit is better than my FEG and FM clones but not as good as my FN MK II or MK III. All of this led to some really good accuracy. I could easily hold everything inside of the 9 ring on a standard silhouette target out to 15 yards. So practical accuracy gets a solid A grade.
Sights suck. I hate them. I mean they work OK as you can see from the accuracy but the least Girsan could have done was put some plain 3-dot sights on it. This front ramp with the two white dashes on the rear sight just makes for a weird sight picture. So sights get a C-.
Reliability was really great. I got through 1,000 rounds in two days with only two failures to feed. Both related to an old Israeli surplus mag I have. In fairness I did allow the gun to cool off from time to time when it started running really hot. I'd notice the brass start to eject with much less authority and figured if I kept pushing I'd wind up with a FTE eventually. But in the course of normal shooting I would give reliability an easy A.
The other thing I like about the MC P35 is that it's an exact BHP clone. They even left the shitty magazine disconnect but even so the trigger is not bad at all. I got out the calipers and everything is pretty much identical to my MK III. But if you want to see a real comparison to the FN check out the videos by the guys at BHSpringSolutions. They go deep into a comparison including steel hardness. The Girsan that they tested had a couple of problems that mine didn't show however. Their test gun had a loose fitting barrel and didn't shoot to point of aim. I had no such issue. And their MC P35 magazine rode a little too high in the mag well which would periodically affect the slide closure. Again I did not experience this.
I know I have just a sample of one here but I couldn't be more pleased with this cheap Hi Power clone.
Stay safe
Heavyweight
Sent from my Pixel 5 using Tapatalk
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Corse
Bookmarks