I have to be honest this is the first time I've heard anyone say that Colt had accuracy issues on the Pre-70 Government models. My understanding was that costs were rising and Colt wanted to do something to save on labor which of course in turn saves money. How the collet bushing achieves this of course is as you said, rather than carefully hand fit the bushing to the barrel now it's just "spring loaded" as it were. The bushing still needs to be fit to the slide though and from what I gathered, the collets in the end required fitting of their own unique to them. So the problem as you stated was that the collet "fingers" could break and lock up the gun. It seems they issue that caused this was that the inside clearance of the slide where those fingers sit when assembled wasn't all that consistent, and neither were the thickness and OD of the collet fingers. So stacking tolerances led to fitment of the collet where basically the collet fingers were being squeezed by the barrel and the slide and in a war between those three... the collet loses. The fingers break and get stuck in the gun. Now I personally think that the collet system is a fantastic solution (when done right) to get a tight barrel bushing lockup on a mass produced gun. It's just that in the end for reasons I'm not privy to but most likely consumer demand, Colt abandoned it and went back to traditional bushings. Anyways, thanks for the video, it's not something that gets talked about much less so there being videos on it on youtube showing how it works. Also glad to see I'm not the only one who appreciates the collet bushing, flaws and all. Edit: So I forgot to mention the fitting that ended up need done on collets. It seems that they had to file down the outer diameter of the collets to give them enough room to flex while gripping the barrel. As I said this is just anecdotal stuff here, i never worked at Colt etc.
Learnin' stuff!
I had one in the mid seventies. It was super accurate and never failed.
Good explanation/ demonstration of a collet barrel bushing.
As always great information. Does anyone manufacturer collet bushing's today?
Hoopers G works might have them I'm not sure.
Thanks for watching
Great info J.W.I heard Ken Hackathorn talk about it in a another video. Thanks Slim.
I have to be honest this is the first time I've heard anyone say that Colt had accuracy issues on the Pre-70 Government models. My understanding was that costs were rising and Colt wanted to do something to save on labor which of course in turn saves money.
How the collet bushing achieves this of course is as you said, rather than carefully hand fit the bushing to the barrel now it's just "spring loaded" as it were. The bushing still needs to be fit to the slide though and from what I gathered, the collets in the end required fitting of their own unique to them.
So the problem as you stated was that the collet "fingers" could break and lock up the gun. It seems they issue that caused this was that the inside clearance of the slide where those fingers sit when assembled wasn't all that consistent, and neither were the thickness and OD of the collet fingers. So stacking tolerances led to fitment of the collet where basically the collet fingers were being squeezed by the barrel and the slide and in a war between those three... the collet loses. The fingers break and get stuck in the gun.
Now I personally think that the collet system is a fantastic solution (when done right) to get a tight barrel bushing lockup on a mass produced gun. It's just that in the end for reasons I'm not privy to but most likely consumer demand, Colt abandoned it and went back to traditional bushings.
Anyways, thanks for the video, it's not something that gets talked about much less so there being videos on it on youtube showing how it works. Also glad to see I'm not the only one who appreciates the collet bushing, flaws and all.
Edit: So I forgot to mention the fitting that ended up need done on collets. It seems that they had to file down the outer diameter of the collets to give them enough room to flex while gripping the barrel. As I said this is just anecdotal stuff here, i never worked at Colt etc.
I'm glad that you added this video!! I'm one of those people who are always asking "Does it have the collett bushing??!!😁👍
You bet!
Colt called it the "accurizer" bushing in '73 when I bought my 1911...