Briley Drop-in fit 1911 Auto Spherical Bushing

This particular Elite Commander has made appearances on Real Guns before and will continue to do so as we sort out exactly what is to be accomplished. If you ever find yourself wondering why a company would put a black IonBond finish over an all stainless gun, this might be one perspective. It is sweat hot and drip humid here in Maine and acidic finger prints are the norm. Fortunately, this stainless Para-USA Elite Commander has a black Ionbond PVD Finish; no oxides, no oxidation, no lasting finger prints and a quick wipe off clean is all that is required. More like a plating process than a coating, it is much more durable than any of the current coating technologies. Anyway…

The Para’s factory installed plastic mainspring housing was replaced with steel and a longer one piece guide rod was installed. The grips are probably third or fourth generation… buckeye burl, I believe. They kind of remind me of a polyester disco shirt I owned briefly in the ’70s and some of my more serious Hustle moves… that my wife swears I never had. In any event, they need to go. In any event, these are all just the types of little things that get done, while still thinking about what really needs to get done… like deciding to tighten up the top end.

The Para Elite Commander is tight. There is next to no lateral movement between slide and frame, the slide lines up dead center in the frame’s dust cover and the breech face is cut cleanly and square. The radial lug reliefs in the slide are square, lug engagement is approximately 0.060″. The Elite has a ramped match grade barrel that fits this pistol closely. The slide will close on a 0.004″ feeler gauge placed between the barrel hood and the slide’s breech face and will not close on 0.005″. Barrel squat is barely perceptible. The barrel/bushing clearance, however, measured 0.004″.

Use of a Briley Spherical Bushing was a way to run tight bushing to barrel clearance without hampering functional reliability. The ring rotates within the bushing to follow the movement of the barrel as the pistol cycles. The bushing itself is made of 17-4 stainless steel, the ring is made of Fatigue-Proof® or StressProof® carbon steel which is TiN (Titanium Nitride) coated for hardness and lubricity. The hope was that tightening up the barrel bushing fit would tighten up group sizes.

The Briley selection instructions are to measure the pistol’s barrel diameter at the muzzle then add 0.001″ to determine rings size and order the appropriate part number. The Elite Commander’s barrel measures 0.579″, so Brownells  129-000-252WB 0.580″ Commander Drop-in Bushing & Ring $54.99 was ordered .

For folks who lack an affinity for stainless steel, bushings are also available in carbon steel with a black oxide coating, priced at $65. In addition to a drop in bushing/ring set, Briley sells the bushing/ring sets in oversize form for those who like finesse fitting. For folks who have a Briley spherical bushing and change barrels, Briley’s sells just the insert rings separately in sizes 0.563″ to 0.587″ for $26.

The drop in model WILL drop into the Para, it just won’t turn…

The flange thickness is irrelevant as it is a projection forward from the slide. The bushing bore fits the 0.579″ barrel as a close slip fit. The interference is at the “C” dimension where the gap between the flange and the front side of the lug must be tailored to suit the specific firearm. In this case 0.007″ needed to be removed.

I guess everyone has their own approaches. In this case it was a matter of painting the lug with Dykem Steel Blue, inserting the bushing in the slide, turning until interference was felt, then withdrawing the bushing and checking the location for lug/slide contact. I used an extra narrow pillar file, parallel, safe on two sides, checking frequently and be careful to keep the lug surface parallel to the flange. The final cut was with a Swiss file to contour the leading edge of the lug and to clean up the bottom edge.

Eventually, the bushing fit, went full swing with an even light drag. The fit was deliberately left snug enough to require the modest effort of a bushing wrench.

The pistol was reassembled, but the slide was not going cleanly into battery or and the locking lugs were not disengaging cleanly. Head scratch, head scratch… Pulling the gun apart again, I noticed the ring within the bushing was very tight and inserting the barrel into the ring, it took a great deal of effort to get the ring to pivot up and down. The ring appeared not to be seated squarely within the bushing.

Scrounging around for a punch to seat the ring, I found that an empty .416 Rigby was a perfect fit. The bushing was placed in the arbor press, the Rigby case was placed on top of the ring inside the bushing, and the two were compressed under the ram until squared, which seemed to do the trick. The pistol was reassembled, manually cycled, locking and unlocking cleanly, the spherical bushing moved freely.

OK, so the drop in Briley Spherical Bushing wasn’t a drop in, but it was easy to install with the use of common hand tools and it didn’t take much effort. Personally, I was glad that it could be tailored to the gun and that it did so well improving the Commander’s performance.

Prior to the bushing change, the Para Elite Commander put 2.5″ 25 yard groups with Remington Home Defense Golden Saber 230 grain ammo. With the new bushing in place the pistol shot consistently under 2″. Good pick up in accuracy, a relaxing project and a chance to think of what next. My goal is to end up with a gun that will shoot 1.5″ and be absolutely reliable.  Oh yeah, the grips had to go, so it’s back to the factory double diamond Cocobolo grips until something better comes along.