Compact 40 to 9mm Conversion

[rhart]

I put my 9mm top end on my steel frame compact 40 just now. She fits pretty good and it cycled 15 rounds of 147 grain Remington Golden Saber SD ammo easily. The 9mm top end is off an Israeli Massada Semi- Compact CZ which is very accurate. With the snug fit on the steel 40 compact frame, I expect accuracy to hold. The only thing is cosmetic - the upper from the Semi-Compact is slimmer than a P01 or the upper off the railed 40 and so there is some gap, when looking at the muzzle of the gun, between the slide and the railed steel lower. My P01 slide would not go onto the 40 frame since the channel on the slide for the ejector is shallower and it hangs up at that point. I thought about filing the ejector down so it would fit, but was concerned about potential ejection problems.

Next step is to take her out and actually shoot her - maybe as early as tomorrow. If there's any interest I'll post the results here afterwards.

[rhart]

OK, I took the Frankenstein gun to the indoor range and loaded her up. It fired the first round no problem, but I could not get it to ignite another round even after multiple tries. I think the problem is that I have a 13lb hammer spring in the 40 frame, but the 9mm slide most likely does not have an extended firing pin (I have not customized it at all). Each of the rounds that would not fire had decent looking strikes on the primer (but each had multiple strikes from trying to get them to fire so each hit probably made the indentation a little deeper) and all subsequently fired with no problems in my pre-B 75 (which I also have not customized at all).

A poster on this forum announced that he had found a railed steel compact 9mm with manual safeties for sale (essentially a steel frame P01 without a decocker), which is what I was trying to accomplish with this experiment so I ordered one. I'll probably put the two guns back together since I will have what I want when the new cutie arrives.