The factory sights on my TriStar C-100 were horrible in my opinion. The rear was usable but the front sight dot was so low that it was nearly on the top of the slide, so I contacted Schmeky to see if he had anything that would fit. He directed me to the EZ Drift sight set and I ordered up a set, they arrived in just a couple of days and I went to the bench this evening.
First off, the sights are clearly well made, no doubt about it. There are good instructions included as well as a couple of allen wrenches and a nylon faced drift punch, which I thought was a nice touch even though it didn't work out for me (more on that later).
I did run into some minor hiccups, but not due to the sights or anything to do with CGW. It appears that the folks in Turkey that manufacture these guns do a complete polycoat AFTER the sights are installed, so there was some sticking.... The nice little nylon punch wouldn't budge the front sight after I removed the roll pin and I split the nylon while trying. So I graduated to one of my brass punches which, after some persuasion and a few choice words, did the trick and finally broke the sight free. A few taps later and the sight was out.
Anyway, on to the front sight install. Out of the package, the front sight wouldn't go into the dovetail at all (which I expected). Grabbed some 320 grit paper and laid it on my old surface plate, a few strokes of the sight bottom across the paper had things moving in the right direction. I noticed that the rear of the front sight might be hitting the top of the slide, so I gave a gentle tap and then removed the sight. Sure enough, I could see some lines where the top of the slide was hitting this overlap portion of the new sight. Again, a few strokes of abrasive paper got me closer. I used a Sharpie marker to color the bottom of this overlap portion and made another attempt, then inspected the Sharpie'd area for marks... a bit more work was required but the second round got me in there.
The sight slid in with about an 1/8" left to go and I used a different nylon punch to tap it home. Reinstalled the pin and proceeded to the rear sight.
Ok, the rear sight took a LOT more time. They must be training Olympic weight lifters at the factory in Turkey.... or maybe they use some big press machine to install, beats me. At any rate, the rear sight was absolutely the most difficult to remove sight I've ever dealt with. It was waaay tighter than it needed to be, then the polycoat on top of that of course. It was still tight at the halfway point... had to file the mushroomed brass punch 4 times before I got it out.
(No really, you should always clean those up....I have a scar in my left arm where a pretty large piece of a punch shot under the skin and traveled about an inch, did that 20 years ago and it's a lesson I haven't forgotten)
That had me thinking that the new sight would require a lot of sanding on the bottom to fit, but that wasn't the case. I was able to push it in with some firm pressure, installed the set screws and it's ready to sight in. I will likely add a couple drops of loctite back here too after I get the sight where I want it.
The sight picture is outstanding now! Nice product, I expect they'll improve my shooting with this gun.
If you decide to do a sight change on your TriStar, do yourself a favor and make sure you have a good set of soft jaws for your vise. The ones I have are around 1/4" thick red rubber and this would have been impossible without them, no way would card stock have put up with the rear sight removal. I'll try to get some shots thru it soon and post my opinion/results afterwards.
