Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Get It On

 



Get it on, well yes, quite, but what exactly. A Burris Fastfire 3 RDS onto a Glock 45 Compact Crossfire. Should be easy, right? Just buy Glock's cheap adapter kit and away you go, but not so fast. Everything goes swimmingly well until you notice the slide adapter plate's canted up at an angle towards the rear sight as opposed to flush with the slide.


Bad Error

Bad error. Why would this be? Two reasons. 1: You over-torqued the screws affixing adapter to slide. 2: The screws which you've handily set aside from the gun's original slide plate, the same screws which Burris tells you in its wisdom to fasten sight to slide, are too long. They protrude from the bottom of the adapter plate onto the slide and raise the thing up. Useless.




So what's the fix. Burris tells you to go to Burris and buy their special, proprietary lock washers, which will act as a kind of shim to lift the offending screw (s, there's two) by about a millimeter and hence flush with the adapter plate. Huh. Why not include M3 .50 x 7 in the adapter kit, you tightwad cash heads.




Solution? Go to the hardware store, buy some fresh M3 .50 x 8 screws and some toothed lock washers, it'll cost around 2 bucks if that. Then take them home, file or clip off the teeth of the washers. Then fix the adapter plate to the slide using Glock's provided 6 mm length screws, being careful not to overtorque, "hand tight" says the manual. 

This Locktite accomplished, fix the sight to the adapter/slide by way of custom washers. And there you go, one RDS topped pistol ready to hit the range with all of its compact fury. Will it perform? Let's find out. More anon.

#2A,

LSP

9 comments:

Dad of Six said...

"A good hardware store is a thing of beauty." Or something like that.

RHT447 said...

Well done.

My recent similar saga. I have a Benelli Super 90 M1 12GA that I bought around 1995. It is no longer made. The small pin that retains the firing pin is itself retained by a small rubber O-ring. Oddly, the O-ring is not listed as a separate part in the owner's manual.

Recently that little O-ring gave it's last, having become hard and brittle. I did actually find an outfit online that sold Benelli parts. O-ring, $5. Shipping, $5. Right. Not faulting the outfit, that's likely fair market. Ace Hardware to the rescue. Found an identical size O-ring (at least to the naked eye) and was up and running, for 79 cents. Yes, I bought a spare.

As I remarked to my Army buddy, in a single stroke, I honored the Scot blood in my veins, and pissed off the Italians.

Wild, wild west said...

Adapt, improvise, overcome. Your old First Sergeant or whatever they call those in the Glosters would be proud of you!

Old NFO said...

I'm amazed that in this day and age, the mfgr's don't just PUT the screws in with the RDS... sigh

RHT447 said...

Don't know anything about this brand, but the price is right--

https://www.midwayusa.com/s?promotionid=1658842

LSP said...

Most definitely, DOS. And my local's not bad, way better than getting a psychic beat down at Lowes, and it's got a lumber yard too.

LSP said...

Nice one, RHT, and thanks for the link, looks like value.

LSP said...

Wild, I think he might be a little surprised!

LSP said...

It's a bit odd, NFO. You'd think Burris, which recognizes the issue would include washers in the RDS kit or Glock, which also gets it, would include the right length screws in its adapter kit. But neither do. Useless.