It was with great sadness that Mad Oilman was forced to retire Mercury, his Kimber Ultra Carry II in stainless. Mad Oilman purchased this much heralded firearm with the sole intention of learning it, breaking it in, and obtaining his Concealed Carry License.
The Kimber manual indicated a 500 round break in period. It did not mention repeated jams and failure to chamber certain rounds. Fighting through the break in period, I managed to put over 1500 rounds through this gun over the course of a year. And during the course of this experiment, Mad Oilman did not have ONE jam free or failure to feed session. jammed.
Magazine issues you say! Bought a Wilson Combat magazine to test this case. Same problem. Jams, failure to feed with certain ammo, and failure to feed the last round of the magazine. Tried other magazines at the range. Didn't matter. Needless to say, EVERYONE who saw this performance or swapped magazines with Mad Oilman and saw the results are less than impressed with the Kimber Ultra Carry II.
As I can't fathom going to a concealed carry class with a firearm that is, for the most part a turd, I replaced it. Went to Collector's Firearms and spent a bit of time with a young but knowledgeable employee. I had him pull out the minimum .40 S&W calibers in medium frames for a variety of manufacturers. CZ, SIG, Glock, Ruger, Springfield, H&K. Wasn't interested in a 1911 clone given my recent problems. Price was a factor, but so was function, and most importantly fit. At the end of the survey, the HK USP Compact was the winner. It just felt the best in my hand. And had all of the features to boot.
Went to the range last week to test it. Six different rounds, three cheapie metal jackets of various bullet weights. Three JHP rounds of various bullet weights. Guess what? No jams. No failure to feeds. Final test was a random magazine of a sampling of each of my various choices for ammo. Kept putting them where I aimed. How about that.
Kimber experiment is over. Probably need to replace the recoil springs to be fair to the person this firearm ends up with, but once it's replaced, its out of here.
The 1911 experiment was interesting. Not saying it is over. But the decocking lever and DA/SA trigger have impressed Mad Oilman.
