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For the last few months I have been looking at .22LR conversion
kits for my Glock 22C. I became interested in these
conversions when I was showing my gun collection to a lady
friend, and she expressed dismay at the weight of all of my
handguns, even the Ruger Mark II which I would have liked to have
her try out. Also, she had trouble pulling back the slides on my
.40 S&W semi-autos.
So I thought that the combination of my lightweight plastic Glock 22C with a conversion kit would be a nice way to introduce smaller or more timid people to shooting. Besides that, of course, they provide a cheaper way to practice shooting your Glock. I looked at two manufacturers: The biggest difference between the two products is that with the Advantage Arms unit the slide remains open when the magazine is empty. This may account for the difference in price, with the Ciener kit going for $200, while the Advantage kit is $250. Since I liked the open slide on empty feature, I sent for the Advantage kit, plus an extra magazine. Advantage has two models of slide: a "law enforcement" version which looks similar to the Glock's slide; and a "target" version which looks strange. I got the "law enforcement" version.
When I took my new kit to the range to test it, however, I was very disappointed. I shot about six magazines through the kit. In no case was I able to fire more than seven or eight rounds out of the magazine of ten. The unfired rounds (Winchester Super-X, as per Advantage's recommendation) were dimpled, but they did not go off. The nature of the failures was curious: firing normally, the gun would go off when the trigger was pulled back to a certain point. When it failed, however, the trigger could be pulled back slightly further before the striker would be released. In other words, while pulling the trigger I would know before the striker was released that the shot was going to be a dud, because I could feel the difference in the trigger. So I called Steve at Advantage, hoping he had a quick fix. In fact, he had never heard of such a problem, but conceded immediatly the kit must have been defective. He asked me to return the kit for replacement. They were very fast about turning the replacement around. It took me a couple weeks before I got a chance to try it out, but I did so last week in the desert. On the second shot the round failed to load in the chamber, and you can bet some choice language echoed in the canyons when that happened. But I kept at it and for the rest of the session the gun and kit performed flawlessly, even during some rapid fire. Moreover, while I don't have any bullseyes to show, I was able to hit a 4" metal target 50 yards away nine shots out of ten, so the kit can certainly shoot as accurately as I can. In short, I really love shooting my Glock in .22LR, and the Advantage Arms kit seems to be a good solution for that. As for value, that's a personal judgement. Obviously, you can buy a .22 handgun for the price of the kit, but I felt it was worth it to get the advantage of an extremely lightweight target pistol and also practice in .22 on the Glock's unique trigger. Your mileage may vary. |
As you can guess, a conversion kit is simply a new slide and
barrel assembly, plus new magazine. The Advantage slide is
anodized aluminum, with some white identification markings. With
a Glock, you can install the conversion in less than 30 seconds.
Someday I'll get a scale to measure it, but a converted Glock is
*very* lightweight. It feels like a toy! I really like it,
actually.
| This page last changed 28 January 2002 at 08:42. magnum@employees.org |