Taurus, the name makes most cring as we seperate ourselves from hard earned cash. The reviews by the magazines are usually complementary and many user comments are nothing but bad. However everyone that I've talked to that actually owns on had nothing bad to say about them. So I went ahead and purchased one for my daughter's first pistol and here is our report after its first range session.
My initial impression was "wow that looks horrible" taking it out of its wrapper. Then I realized the whole gun was covered in some kind of grease making it look poor. So myself and the gun counter guy took the whole thing apart and cleaned each piece. The internal pieces are not of Ed Brown quality for sure. The frame is based on an 80 series and the internals appear to be mostly cast, something I'm sure to remedy at a later date. They fit and opperated well once cleaned. It was like a whole new gun with out all that goo inside. I honestly wonder how many people take it out and shoot the gun before cleaning it and end up wondering what they got into. I can't imagine them functioning with out a good cleaning. We tried to put a spare kimber trigger in, but its going to need some fitting to get it right so we abandoned the task for times sake. The hammer has a weird lawyer lock on it. I don't care for it and will replace the hammer later to get rid of it. I personally don't want anything additional on the gun that can render it useless. That is why guns stay in safes IMHO.
After getting it home and seeing how it fit into a standard 1911 holster and doing some drills we notices a few things of interest. The front checkering is a little sharp right where the mag goes in the well. Not bad, just a little sharp and easy to fix. Another sharp spot was some checkering under the trigger, the edge was actually cutting at the leather holster. Again an easy fix but something to be aware of before that Galco holster gets chewed up.
On to the first range date with my daughter. She got first dibs on some run of the mill white box Winchester 115 9mm ammo. Ran flawlessly through the gun, several mags worth. One of the mags is a bit tight to get all 8 in for my daughter. We made a few reloads, they all ran through flawlessly too. Everything shot today was 115 gr ammo and it all seemed to shoot a bit low and to the right at 10 yards. The sights leave a little to be desired, but aren't aweful and certainly will do the job.
Accuracy seemed to be pretty good. I'm not an expert shooter and these results were taken from a 5 gallon paint bucket used as a rest at 10 yards. Take them for what they are worth.
Winchester Whitebox 115FMJ - 1 1/4" (about 1-1.25" low .75" to the right)
115 Berry FMJ / 8.5 BlueDot / CCI500 - 1 11/16"
115 Berry FMJ / 8.0 BlueDot / CCI500 - 1 7/16" (about 2.5" low to center of group)
115 Berry FMJ / 4.6 Bullseye / CCI500 - 1 1/4" (about 2.0" low .75" to right)
Unknown Commercial Reloads 115 FMJ - 1 1/4" (about 2.0" low .75 to the right)
About 150 rounds fired total. Zero failures to feed. Zero stove pipes. 1 failure to lock slide back on last shoot but that seemed to be due to a light reload because it didn't happen before with factory ammo, nor after with factory ammo.
My initial impression was "wow that looks horrible" taking it out of its wrapper. Then I realized the whole gun was covered in some kind of grease making it look poor. So myself and the gun counter guy took the whole thing apart and cleaned each piece. The internal pieces are not of Ed Brown quality for sure. The frame is based on an 80 series and the internals appear to be mostly cast, something I'm sure to remedy at a later date. They fit and opperated well once cleaned. It was like a whole new gun with out all that goo inside. I honestly wonder how many people take it out and shoot the gun before cleaning it and end up wondering what they got into. I can't imagine them functioning with out a good cleaning. We tried to put a spare kimber trigger in, but its going to need some fitting to get it right so we abandoned the task for times sake. The hammer has a weird lawyer lock on it. I don't care for it and will replace the hammer later to get rid of it. I personally don't want anything additional on the gun that can render it useless. That is why guns stay in safes IMHO.
After getting it home and seeing how it fit into a standard 1911 holster and doing some drills we notices a few things of interest. The front checkering is a little sharp right where the mag goes in the well. Not bad, just a little sharp and easy to fix. Another sharp spot was some checkering under the trigger, the edge was actually cutting at the leather holster. Again an easy fix but something to be aware of before that Galco holster gets chewed up.
On to the first range date with my daughter. She got first dibs on some run of the mill white box Winchester 115 9mm ammo. Ran flawlessly through the gun, several mags worth. One of the mags is a bit tight to get all 8 in for my daughter. We made a few reloads, they all ran through flawlessly too. Everything shot today was 115 gr ammo and it all seemed to shoot a bit low and to the right at 10 yards. The sights leave a little to be desired, but aren't aweful and certainly will do the job.
Accuracy seemed to be pretty good. I'm not an expert shooter and these results were taken from a 5 gallon paint bucket used as a rest at 10 yards. Take them for what they are worth.
Winchester Whitebox 115FMJ - 1 1/4" (about 1-1.25" low .75" to the right)
115 Berry FMJ / 8.5 BlueDot / CCI500 - 1 11/16"
115 Berry FMJ / 8.0 BlueDot / CCI500 - 1 7/16" (about 2.5" low to center of group)
115 Berry FMJ / 4.6 Bullseye / CCI500 - 1 1/4" (about 2.0" low .75" to right)
Unknown Commercial Reloads 115 FMJ - 1 1/4" (about 2.0" low .75 to the right)
About 150 rounds fired total. Zero failures to feed. Zero stove pipes. 1 failure to lock slide back on last shoot but that seemed to be due to a light reload because it didn't happen before with factory ammo, nor after with factory ammo.
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