Ruger Lightweight Commander Range Report

[oregon45]

I've been looking forward to the Ruger Lightweight Commander 1911 since I bought my first 5" steel SR1911 back in '11. I got the first one through the door at my local shop this afternoon, and I'm happy and impressed. The fit and finish out of the box are excellent: no burrs or sharp edges where they're not supposed to be, and the machining is crisp and the finish tasteful. Barrel to slide lockup is tight, and barrel to frame fit is smooth with just a bit of sideways wobble when the slide is down which is just fine by me.

It was nice weather this afternoon so I went to the range. I dry fired the gun a few dozen times, sprayed it with Ballistol (it came from Ruger pretty dry) and loaded up the two 7-round magazines Ruger had included. Long story short, 100 rounds of 230gr FMJ (Winchester white box) went down the pipe and there were no failures of any kind. The sights are right on at 10 yards, and once I adapted my hold to the very slim factory grips I was able to hold pretty decent groups given the sights (three dot Novak's: quality pieces but I can't stand dots on a rear sight). The only bobble from the gun was a slight loosening of the grip panels, but a quick twist with a hex bit solved that issue. The grooves on the front strap, while not as grabby as checkering, are pretty good at settling the gun down and by the end of the range session they'd worn a bit of a welt on the third finger of my right (gun) hand.

All in all a nice lightweight Commander at an afforable price. If you're in the market for one, it'll be hard to beat. Unlike comparable Kimbers, it has the standard guide rod and the Series 70 fire control system, both of which I prefer over the Kimber/Swartz and full-length guide rods of the Kimber Commanders.

[Fowler]

I want to try one baddly, I think they look to be a super value for the money.

[taffin]

Feb 20, 2015 20:35:57 GMT -5 oregon45 said:

I've been looking forward to the Ruger Lightweight Commander 1911 since I bought my first 5" steel SR1911 back in '11. I got the first one through the door at my local shop this afternoon, and I'm happy and impressed. The fit and finish out of the box are excellent: no burrs or sharp edges where they're not supposed to be, and the machining is crisp and the finish tasteful. Barrel to slide lockup is tight, and barrel to frame fit is smooth with just a bit of sideways wobble when the slide is down which is just fine by me.

It was nice weather this afternoon so I went to the range. I dry fired the gun a few dozen times, sprayed it with Ballistol (it came from Ruger pretty dry) and loaded up the two 7-round magazines Ruger had included. Long story short, 100 rounds of 230gr FMJ (Winchester white box) went down the pipe and there were no failures of any kind. The sights are right on at 10 yards, and once I adapted my hold to the very slim factory grips I was able to hold pretty decent groups given the sights (three dot Novak's: quality pieces but I can't stand dots on a rear sight). The only bobble from the gun was a slight loosening of the grip panels, but a quick twist with a hex bit solved that issue. The grooves on the front strap, while not as grabby as checkering, are pretty good at settling the gun down and by the end of the range session they'd worn a bit of a welt on the third finger of my right (gun) hand.

All in all a nice lightweight Commander at an afforable price. If you're in the market for one, it'll be hard to beat. Unlike comparable Kimbers, it has the standard guide rod and the Series 70 fire control system, both of which I prefer over the Kimber/Swartz and full-length guide rods of the Kimber Commanders.

MINE IS AN EXCELLENT SHOOTER AND TOTALLY DEPENDABLE. MY GRIPS ALSO LOOSENED BUT I REPLACED THEM WITH FANCY ENGLISH WALNUT BY JOHN CULINA.

[Ken O'Neill]

Mine arrived Thursday, and I was able to take it to the range yesterday, shooting a bit over 60 rounds through it on falling plates at 20 yds. The sights were essentially dead on at that distance with both 230 hardball and my 200 gr. SWC / 231 reloads. The gun came from the factory blemish-free. The vertical grooves on the front strap as mentioned by oregon45 were just sharp enough to suit me, giving my hand a good purchase.

I'm usually a short trigger guy because of my short fingers, but the Lightweight's thin grip panels gave me a "perfect" grip to allow use of the Ruger long trigger. I didn't weigh it yet, but the trigger pull feels like 4-4.5 lbs. mostly creep free. I won't require much of a trigger job on this one.

I had 2 failures to feed, and one failure to fully chamber with the 200 SWC's, although the gun was well oiled. I'm guessing it was the ammo, but will require more shooting and testing to determine the facts and corrective action. The hardball ran perfectly, as would be expected. My titanium feed ramp insert was polished a bit, but not the "high polish" referred to by others like Jeff Quinn.
My grip screws also loosened a bit, as they do on my 4 year old 5" steel version. An easy fix. That's what they make fingernail polish for.

I've owned over a dozen 1911's made by Colt, Remington-Rand, Springfield, and Ruger since 1960, and have shot and cleaned dozens of others and hundreds of times while I was a Marine, but this Ruger has presented me with a most confusing and vexing situation: The thing neither wants to come apart nor go back together. By that, I mean that when the disassembly notch is properly aligned, the slide stop doesn't want to / can't be pushed out. Varying the position of the disassembly notch eventually results in success. Similarly, when properly aligned again, and the slide stop inserted through the barrel link, it may take 4 or 5 tries to get the slide stop to push in and fully seat. None of this would be good in a foxhole. Obviously there is a tolerance or alignment problem somewhere, but I haven't found its source. I plan to get to the bottom of it this weekend.

Either I or Ruger will have to do some refining on this particular gun, but I like the platform and feel confident it can become first rate.

UPDATE:
Another lengthy range session and a couple more disassembly / reassembly sessions over the weekend looking for problems, have corrected whatever apparent burr or goober situations were present. I never found the offending problem, but there are now some shiny spots on the slide stop and barrel link, perhaps revealing where the problem was. Now with just a very small bit of trigger tuning, I believe this one will run as well as my 5" steel version. Incidentally, any felt recoil difference between the 2 is negligible.

[gunman1966]

I also have the LW Commander, and could not be more happy.  In fact, it is my daily carry gun.