Glock 17 gen4 Endurance Test: Week 18

The Gadget turned 21 today! Twenty-one thousand rounds, that is. To say that Tom Jones & I are happy would be a massive understatement. For the very first functional prototype to outlast a 20,000rd service life is a tremendous success. Add to that the serious abuse and practical force on force testing it is getting from Craig Douglas aka Southnarc of Shivworks and it looks like we might just have something here…

This week I decided to put a lot of time and work into my draw and, as mentioned previously, my press-out. In that vein, I first worked on raw draw speed with the NRA Range’s target system set to one second exposures. Out of fifty one-second draws, I hit an 8″ circle at 7yd thirty six times (72%) from concealment which is a significant improvement over last week. Then just to see how fast I was actually going I shot five on the timer:

1. 0.99
2. 0.97
3. 0.98
4. 0.93
5. 0.96

To say that I’m on the finest of edges trying to pull off sub-second draws would be no understatement.

Next I went to work on hitting low-probability targets. This began with a run at JodyH’s 99 Drill as a warm-up. I scored a relatively weak 88 out of 99 on the 3×5 cards but didn’t miss any on the first string (ten 3-shot draws in 2.5sec at 7yd). Then I tried fifty 2-shot draws from concealment in 1.8 seconds, scoring 81% hits. This is very similar to the results I was turning in with the HK45 last year. Given that the HK LEM trigger seems practically designed for press-outs and the effort I’ve had to put into getting my gun leveled out with the Glock grip angle, I’m happy to be on par with the HK finally.

To round out my “speed draw” work, I dialed the targets back to a 1.5 second exposure and took a run at two shots on the 3×5 again. I did not record the hits because candidly I didn’t think I’d get many… I missed half out of the first five runs. But as I kept at it, I was definitely seeing the hit ratio go way up. This proves once again that sometimes the fastest way to get fast is to go faster. (oooh… I should make that my signature line on the forum!)

Three things have made a real impact on my Glock shooting recently:

1. The time I spent using the Grip Force Adapter definitely helped me reset my hands and my brain in terms of leveling the gun during my press-out.
2. The dot connector is absolutely the best improvement Glock has made to the gen4 guns since they began production. I know it’s in vogue to criticize the ATF right now, but just remember that ATF was responsible for the creation of the uber dot connector for its own service guns.
3. Daily practice with my SIRT training pistol has given me a great visual indicator of how my pistol is pointed from the moment I begin pressing the trigger. I hope to put up an in-depth review of the SIRT in the next few weeks.

On a minor aside, I put another 100 rounds through the backup gun. It’s now gone 300rd without a stoppage of any kind, which I think is a record for gen4 9mm Glocks in my possession. I’ll put a couple hundred rounds of 124gr +p HST through it next to make sure everything works together and then odds are it’ll get a set of Trijicon HD sights and a Vickers slide stop to make it identical to the test gun.

Train hard & stay safe! ToddG

Previous Glock 17 gen4 Endurance Test posts at pistol-training.com:

• 25,000 Rounds with the G17 gen4
• Week 17
• Week 15
• Week 13
• Week 12
• Week 11
• Week 10
• Week 9
• Week 8
• Week 6
• Week 5
• Week 4
• Week 3
• Week 2
• Week 1
• 99.8%
• It Lives
• Week Zero
• When Will It Stop?
• Announcement