Unless you are planning on shooting tens of thousands of rounds through it, I would leave it original.

 

Only if it makes you feel good.

 

The broken collet bushing has been hyped up via the internet. Not to say it will never eventually happen, but I personally wouldn’t be worried about it. I own several Government Models with collet bushings and shoot them all.

 

Bought a series 70 satin nickel govt model used, back in the 80s. It was WELL used when I got it. I put an additional 6000 rounds through it (yes I keep track). Original bushing still was fine. Sold it off a decade ago and as far as I know from the guy I sold it to it is still going strong.

 

The barrel would have to be changed as well, they are a set. Accurosy would suffer. I think an old addage applies here "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

 

Great, the above is what i was thinking, just wondered what you guys thought. Didn't realize I would have to change the barrel also, makes sense because the barrel is tapered.

 

The barrel is colloquially known as "dog-dicked".

An aside to what Rick said about "If it ain't broke don't fix it"...the converse to that is you don't want follow the car guy dictum "If it ain't broke fix it 'til it is." BTDT and didn't get the T-shirt.

 

We've had a couple of failures with these collet bushings over the years, but both pistols were and have been shot alot. Somtimes one of the fingers might break off, this will jam the gun up, but once cleared the bushing it still usable. But like I said these gun were shot extensively over a period of many years.
I destroyed two of them by using a full length guide rod back when I thought they were the thing to have, by using a barrel bushing wrench. In order to properly disassemble a Colt's MKIV/Series70 barrel the slide must be retracted slightly to relive the pressure on the collet bushing.

Unless you're going to shoot thousands of rounds I'd not worry too much.

 

Here is a link to another discussion on the subject. Check out post #5 by dsk where he says:

"A standard solid bushing will fit a Series 70/80 barrel with the belled end meant for use with the collet bushing, but you cannot use a collet bushing on a straight non-S70 barrel. The best setup for accuracy is to measure the OD of the muzzle of your barrel and the ID of your slide, and get a solid bushing that has .001" clearance on each dimension. Collet bushings are okay for a gun that's a collectible, but not something meant for hard use."

https://forums.1911forum.com/showthread.php?t=728513

I have installed solid bushings (mostly EGW fitted bushings) on several 70 Series guns with no problems.

 

The Series 70 barrel is probably a good candidate for the EGW Angle Bored Bushing. I put one in my LWT XSE Gov't no problem, but when I put them in my 01992 .38 Supers, the barrels actually got slightly larger in diameter to the rear of the muzzle causing a bind. The Series 70 barrel being tapered they should work out just fine, I just might try it.

 

I remember back in the pre intergoogle 1970s the "old knowing ones" at the ranges and gun stores said never to take them off the barrel and push the barrel back out of battery before one turned the bushing. They also talked about testing them when out of the gun by pushing the bushing all the way back then rotating the barrel down so the bushing would drop. If it came off the barrel it was time for a new bushing. The barrel on the left has a lot more rounds through it than the one on the right. Still the bushing is still hanging on with the end of the barrel and the end of the bushing being the same.



The most rounds I know I have through one is over 40K through a 1978 Gov I bought new that year and although it is semi retired now it is still fine.

Colt used them from 69 (in the BB marked Govs) till 89 I think. I have two MkIV Series 80 GCNMs made in 1988 that have them. If I wanted to replace one I think I would measure carefully and then call EGW for one of their bushings.

 

When I acquire a MkIV that still has the collet bushing I routinely replace the that bushing with a standard version. I have not seen any reduction in accuracy compared to the collet version.

Of course I save the collet bushing for that gun so it is available for future use.

FWIW

Chuck

 

Do you use the original barrel?

 

Yes, just change the bushing.

 

One way to make a decision is to inspect the gun and determine if it's one that might suffer a broken collet bushing.

Jerry Kuhnhausen said that the breakage of a collet finger was due to a miss-fitted slide-barrel-collet assembly.
The problem is if the fit between the collet, barrel, and slide doesn't have enough room, the collet may not have enough space for the fingers to open when the barrel drops down to unlock.
This causes the collet to be so tightly squeezed against the slide that the collet fingers can't open and they tend to buckle instead of flex.
This buckling over stresses the fingers and they can break.

To inspect remove the slide and leave the barrel and collet in place. Hand test by dropping the rear of the barrel out of lock and press it back up.
If the barrel has a springy feel like a leaf spring when pushed up into the locking lugs the collet may break.
The fix is remove any high spots inside the area of the slide where the collet fits, and to put a slight bevel on the top-rear edges of the collet fingers to give added clearance.

All this is very well illustrated in the Kuhnhausen Shop Manual on the Colt .45 Automatics, available from Brownell's.

 

Thanks for the good information. I'll pick up a copy of the shop manual.

 

Back in the 70s when he inherited it my dad installed a series 70 barrel with a collet bushing in his granddad's M1911. This along with a trigger job and a ramp job has made for a good shooter over the past forty odd years. It has probably had ten thousand rounds through in that time.

 

If the spring-finger collet bushing was any good , Colt , and others would still be using it!

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery , and the reason for patents and copyrights. But in this case , it probably wasn't even necessary.

NO ONE has ever offered a copy of that silly idea.

 

Considering that a standard bushing can be pretty much made on a lathe, the cuts to make the collet fingers require additional milling operations, etc. Colt used it for well over 10 years so I doubt if it was that bad.
I don't who's came first but Bar Sto use to use a collet bushing also, I have a Commander with a Bar Sto .38 Super barrel in it and it has a collet bushing.

 

I purchased a new Gold Cup in 1976, one of several I bought back in the '70s. I had the gun hard chromed back in the day, and a few other modifications have been made along the way to suit the current owner, a member of my family. It still has the original barrel and collet bushing after, I don't know how many, thousands of rounds in the last 40+ years. I never broke a collet bushing, but was with a guy back in the '70s shooting his recently purchased S70 Government Model. After a shot, I noticed the slide remained half way open, and he was standing there with a confused look on his face. We found that the collet finger which has the lug that secures the bushing in the slide had broken off, launching bushing, recoil spring plug, and recoil spring down range.

I did sometimes replace the collet bushing with a standard Colt drop-in solid bushing, but accuracy suffered. Since the barrel OD near the muzzle is same as a non S70 barrel, all functioned normally. I found the COLT "Accurizer" collet bushing actually did what Colt designed it to do, i.e., provide the accuracy of a fitted bushing without actually fitting a bushing to each and every new Colt Government and Gold Cup during the assembly process. I fitted a solid bushing to some of the S70 guns, which restored the factory S70 accuracy. But did not better the accuracy of the stock collet bushing.....ymmv



BTW, the first BarSto barrel I bought for a Colt, had Irv Stone's own version of a collet bushing. Superb accuracy and reliability, and never an issue with that bushing...

 

OK , Bar-sto used it for a short while. It was a trend or fad. But as I said , no one uses it today. Added manufacturing cost along with reputation (deserved or not) for breakage , put this in the failed improvement catagory.

Other wonder-bushings have come and gone too.

Besides , John M Browning didn't design it that way!

 

I've never changed or replaced one. Mine have always remained tight on the barrel and I never take them off when cleaning.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

Colt wasn't trying to revolutionize the bushing of the Government Model but was looking for a good way to retain the accuracy of their Government Model National Match on the New Series 70 GCNM without the hand fitting of their original Gold Cup National Match. The collet bushing did this. After many thousands of rounds my '78 model GCNM with the original collet bushing shoots as well today as it did back then, except for my bad days.

 

Bought this Gold Cup new in 1981 or 1982. Serial number indicates it is a few years older than that. Though it's not been shot extensively, the collet bushing has hung in there. If it breaks I'll deal with it then.

 

There was nothing wrong with the collet bushing. It was a massive improvement in accuracy without all of the hand fitting. I believe that Irv Stone at Bar-Sto came up with it first. His version actually has a large full width lower end with two prongs on top. Colt then came out with the 4 pronged collet. To say that if it was any good it would still be in use is to disregard all the negative publicity it received after Cooper had one fail at Gunsite in a class. He couldn't say anything good about it after that simply because a collet failed. Pretty soon the press he was putting out about it would make one think that wheneven he saw a series 70 collet, it failed. That of course wasn't the case. No one knows how many collets failed at Gunsite in classes but we can be sure it was at least one. I have a close friend who used to teach there years ago and in our discussions he never saw any fail. Back in those days I operated a business on the side from my LE career customizing and rebuilding Colts. A friend of mine who worked for a local magazine brought me his series 70. It was blown up with what we believe was a double load of bullseye, based on my investigations. The collet had lost a prong. The barrel had expanded around the chamber and up and into the port area. The expanding gas had detonated the top round in the magazine but the bullet was still present with the ruptured case. The magazine was expanded and of course ruined. The grips had split in the middle into 2 pieces each...which I assumed was due to escaping gas. That was the first series 70 collet that I saw broken. I've seen a another since then. But no where near what I would expect based upon the verbal speech of Jeff Cooper. I listened to him rail against the collet once when I had a chance to listen to him at a meet locally. To hear him tell it, we would think that there would be barrels of broken collets at every range in the country.

However this is simply no so. It's a good design and does what it is supposed to. However, it is more fragile than a standard bushing. I've never seen a standard bushing broken or split in any way in a pistol that was brought to me. I've worked on thousands of Colts. Most who sent me guns for work were more than satisfied to keep their collets. A few were wanting the collet replaced with a standard bushing during the work and I did it. I think that in those days the columns in the firearms magazines were somewhat like social media of today i.e. twitter and the like.
They could destroy a product very easily just because someone of high repute such as Cooper didn't like the product. I think that is why the collet isn't in Colts anymore. Granted it was more expensive to make because of the machining, tempering and the raw material being a spring steel instead of simple tool grade steel. Sooner or later with a company like Colt it might have gone by the wayside anyway in order to save costs. But the fact that a gun writer and instructor like Cooper came down on it hard hurt it far more than anything that might have happened naturally.

 

Closer manufacturing tolerances are much easier to maintain today some 50 years after Colt first used used the collet bushing, and that is the primary reason the collet bushing is no longer used. It did what it was suppose to do when iintroduced, but is no longer needed.

Everything changes; some for the better and some not so good.