I want to share with you my 99% complete Gucci Polymer 80 build. I say 99% complete because I’m waiting on one part that’s made to order and it’s possibly still weeks away. In this post, I want to go over the various parts of this build and my initial impressions of them.
Alright, let’s get started on this P80 build. First off, the lower. The foundation of this build started with a serialized P80 lower. For those unaware, yes, Polymer 80 has the 80% lowers that we all come to know but they also sell 100% completed serialized frames and they actually sell completed firearms, out of the box ready to go. Those firearms are marketed as the PFS9 for the full-sized version and the PFC9 for the compact. This is how my lower started its life. It was a PFC9 complete firearm.
I personally knew that I only wanted the serialized lower. I wanted something that I can carry without trouble. The legality of carrying an un-serialized firearm is going to be dependent on location. Even in places where it’s legal, an un-serialized gun can just be one of those things that you can be harassed for if law enforcement happens to disarm you for whatever reason. At the end of the day you may not get charged for it, but it can just make life a bit more difficult and waste some time. For a carry firearm, which I do intend to carry this thing once in a while, I’ll just stick with the serialized version.
So, why did I buy the fully assembled PFC9 instead of just the lower? The biggest reason is that the lower only just wasn’t available to me locally and the complete was. This made buying the complete a no-brainer but before doing so, I made sure to have a buyer lined up for everything but the frame. I made that happen and the lower ended up costing me less than half the price of the 80%.
Now that I have the lower, the next task was to get a slide. For this, I went with the Norsso Piranha EDC. I’ve been eyeing this slide forever and it is possibly my favorite looking slide of all time. It just looks super aggressive. This thing has a bunch of angular slide cuts which equates to front and rear serrations. Then you have the knurling on top of the slide. Put all that together and you get a one really detailed, well milled slide.
Norsso actually also makes a Piranha Ported slide and it looks exactly like the EDC but the Ported has a window cut between the top knurling. I was and am still kind of considering buying the Ported Piranha slide but I’ll explain why that is in a bit.
This slide also features an RMR cut and that’s important to me because I red dot everything now. If a Norsso slide is in stock, it usually comes with the RMR cut because that’s the most popular footprint but there are other options if you don’t mind special ordering a custom slide. The RMR cut is fine for me because, on this slide, I have the Trijicon SRO mounted, which has an RMR footprint. I actually had a Holosun 507C on here for a bit but come on, I’m building a Gucci Glock here and what’s more Gucci and in your face than the SRO? Aside from the hype, this thing is just great. Massive sight picture and it fixes my biggest gripe with the RMR and that is the bottom loading battery. Here, the battery tray is up top and batteries can be changed without taking the entire optic off and possibly throwing off zero. However, one thing that kept me from buying this optic for so long is just its general design. As you can see, the SRO overhangs the footprint and moves closer to the ejection port. The problem with this is that, very often when brass ejects and because the SRO is so close to the ejection port, brass will hit the optic then bounce elsewhere. I haven’t fired this gun yet so I don’t know my situation but there are a few different things that I included in this build to help alleviate the problem.
First, I got a gen 5 47021 ejector. If you’re unfamiliar with Glocks and building Glocks, what’s important to know is that gen 3, 4, and 5 9mm Glocks all have different ejectors. Gen 3s come with a 336 ejector, Gen 4s come with a 30274 ejector, and Gen 5s come with 47021 ejectors. The Gen 3 336 ejectors are the worst. They are extremely inconsistent and eject spent shells in all directions including left and back at the shooter. That’s obviously not ideal so just stay clear of that. The Gen 4 30274 ejectors improve upon this and are much better with a lot of shells ejected towards 4 to 5 o’clock. Normally, this would be fine but because I’m running the SRO, the gen 4 ejector would most definitely fling shells at the optic. So, I’m running a Gen 5 ejector because it more often ejects at 3 o’clock which gives me the best chance of clearing the SRO.
Then to take it one step further, I’m also running the Apex Tactical Failure Resistant Extractor. If you didn’t know, the stock Glock extractor is a major contributor to failures in P80 builds. It’s a cheap part that’s not designed all that well. Apex noticed this, went to the drawing board, and designed something that gets the job done. The claw is milled at a better angle which more effectively grips the spent shells, pulls them back, and gets them to the ejector. So if you build some sort of Glock and are have failures to eject, combine this extractor with a Gen 4 or 5 ejector and that should take care of most issues.
Finally, the last thing that can be done to help protect the SRO from ejected brass is to get the B.R.O.S. from Jagerwerks. This is essentially a steel shroud that adds extra protection for the SRO. If you’re unfamiliar with this optic, a quick search would show that the general opinion of it is good. The only potential negative is that because of the big round design, the optic loses structural integrity and is not as durable. If dropped, there’s a much greater risk of the optic failing than many other well-known options. Well, the B.R.O.S. is hopefully the answer to that problem. It should add a lot of protection for the major points of impact and actually has an extended section at the lower corner to help deflect those spent shells. At the beginning of this video, I said that this build is 99% complete and that’s because the B.R.O.S. is the only part that I’m waiting on. I placed my order about 5 weeks ago and the processing time is 4-6 weeks so I’m hoping to get it soon.
For the sights, I went with the 10-8 Performance Glock Tall Sights. .315H for the fronts and .395H with a .140 notch in the rear. 10-8 offers other taller heights for the fronts but that just comes down to preference. For the rear, there is an option for a larger rear notch and that would’ve been ideal as the irons are meant as a backup so having that larger notch would help with faster acquisition but this was the only option available when I ordered and they still do the job. The notch sizes aren’t that dramatically different anyway.
With backup irons, I personally like about a lower fourth co-witness when running a red dot and this combination provides that when I had a Holosun 507C on this slide. Since switching to the SRO, these sights are pretty low. They’re like lower 10th co-witness now. Is it still usable? Yes, but it definitely takes me longer to adjust and find them. This is definitely not ideal in my opinion. I thought about switching the sights out but I’m just not sure yet because I don’t know how permanent some of the parts of this build are yet. There are some things that may be moving around so I’ll just have to wait and see. Besides, at this point, I’m pretty comfortable with red dots and realistically never use irons anymore so for something that’s a last-ditch effort, these work.
Next, let’s talk about the barrel. For this, I went with the LanTac 9ine match grade barrel and I have to say, this thing is a work of art. The milling on this barrel is very well done from tip to tip. As you can see, this is a fluted barrel but it has a much different fluting design than the typical straight or spiral lines that’s on the market. I don’t know if there’s a specific name for this pattern but it reminds me of a water dropper pipette from science class and apparently, this is a proprietary patent-pending flute pattern. If you didn’t know, barrel fluting lessens the weight of a barrel but can actually increase its rigidity. The fluting can also help to dissipate heat. That’s all great but I’m going to be honest and say that I bought this barrel purely for aesthetic reasons. The milling just looks so good. I bought this barrel after the slide and this is what made me regret not getting the Piranha Ported slide because to me, if I’m going to buy a fancy fluted barrel, I want to show it off with some slide cuts. The ported slide would’ve been perfect for this barrel because it runs front to back and would’ve shown off this fluting which also runs front to back. The two would’ve just been a good match. But not showing off the barrel can also be a good thing because the barrel is eventually going to start showing some wear in the finish. This particular one has a black DLC (Diamond Like Carbon) coating and I’ve had a few barrels with something similar and the coating tends to wear pretty quickly. This gun has not been live fired, only dry fired to check for function and there’s already wear developing on the hood. That started happening within the first hand full of slide racks even though I made sure to heavily oil the hood. It’s just something that happens with this type of coating and it’s just going to get worse. So again, having a slide without the window cuts might be a good thing because the barrel may look good new, but it’s one of the parts that gets beat up a lot.
Moving down from the barrel, I’m running a stainless steel guide rod with a stock weight 18# spring. Because this build is such a mix of different parts and so far away from stock, I thought that it’d be a good idea to run a recoil spring assembly that I can switch the springs out on because that may be something that I’ll have to do. There’s going to be a lot of testing necessary for this build and a lot of trial and error.
Finally, the last visible thing on the slide, the rear plate. For this, I went with the Tyrant Design plate and as you can see, it has a chevron arrow design which I thought matched very well with the front serrations. This is also why I went with the matching Tyrant extended slide release. Again, chevrons, and in this instance, it faces the same directions as the front serrations. These are the little details that really add up.
Now, Tyrant does also make a matching extended mag release but I went against it because it’s a typically narrow gen 3 mag release design. I don’t hate that, but it’s definitely not preferred. The Tyrant mag release is also full aluminum. This is a problem for me because the Glock mags are polymer. Polymer mag release on polymer mag is ok, metal mag release on metal mag is ok, but when you mix the two, the metal mag release will eventually chew up the polymer mags. It just depends on the design of the mag release but this is usually a case of not if but when because it will happen eventually. It may take one use. It may take one hundred uses. You just don’t know until it happens and this is not something I want to gamble with on a carry pistol. Instead, I found another extended mag release on eBay which gives the larger area of a gen 4/5 mag release and I have to say, this is the best mag release I’ve ever used. With others, I’ve always had to reposition my hand to activate the mag release. This is the first instance where I don’t have to do that. I can drop the mag without any major changes to my grip and that’s a complete win. On top of that, this release gives me the look of an aluminum release at the button, but that button is held on by two screws to a polymer catch. So, I will have no issues with the mag release eating up my mags. As of right now, this is hands down my favorite mag release for Gen 3 Glocks. I would like more options than just the straight lines but I’ll take it. This is a very well-designed mag release.
Next, the trigger. For this, I went with the Johnny Custom Glocks Legacy Series Univeral Hybrid. This is a drop-in kit so it came with the entire trigger assembly meaning, the shoe, trigger bar, connector, trigger spring, ejector, and trigger housing. In addition, I also picked up the Johnny Glocks upgraded striker and safety plunger. This is my first Johnny Glocks trigger so I can’t say too much about it. I’ve only dry-fired with it so I don’t have too much of an opinion. I’ll make an update in the future once I’ve run some live rounds through this setup.
I should mention that the Legacy comes with 4 different weight striker springs and two trigger springs. The various combination allows you to get quite a wide spread of trigger pulls weights and feels. I’m currently running the 5.5# striker spring and 5# trigger spring. This combination gets me about a 3.75# break. I’m good with that for now but will definitely be playing with the springs to get my perfect setup.
Now, the main reason why I purchased this trigger is because it is actually compatible with all generation Glocks and will fit any Glock-like frames such as the P80, Nomads, Shadow Systems, and etc. Pretty much anything that takes Glock parts, this trigger system should work in so long as you have the right size frame. I was interested in this because I like to do these builds. So to have something that I can swap in and out and make work in everything, it’s just extremely convenient. I can have one trigger to test in all my Glock builds and get a feel for what works. That being said, I don’t know if this trigger system will be a permanent part of this build. As I’ve said, it’s meant to be my trial donkey. It’s just in here for testing purposes so it might come out when I put my next build together. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Moving up front, I have an extended slide lock. This is something that’s come to be a must on all my Glocks. I personally think the ones that come stock is just too short. It makes dissembling the gun more difficult than necessary and the extended slide lock definitely helps with that. This particular one is extended but there’s a slant or graduation to the extension. Up top, it’s pretty much stock length and gets more extended as you move down. This slant extended slide lock has become my favorite design because it’s more ergonomic. With some extended slide locks, the manufacturer just makes them too long and if you rest your thumbs forward, your thumbs can catch the slide lock and just get irritated or ripped up after shooting for a while. I don’t see that happening with this design and it still provides that extra ease of use. The slant actually makes gripping the slide lock much easier. So, I’m a fan of this design.
Lastly, I think the only other notable thing is the pin set. These particular pins are from L2D and as you can see, all of them are dimpled. I actually got the idea for these pins from my completed PFC9 P80 because it came with dimpled pins. But for some reason, only the front 3 pins were dimpled and the back trigger housing pin wasn’t. So I thought, I’m already here. I’ve blown a bunch of money everywhere else so might as well pick up the L2D pin set and make all four pins dimpled, so here we are.
And I think that’s it. I think that’s every notable part of this build. This setup took months to get to where it is right now and that’s partly because of all the shortage in the gun industry and partly because I keep changing up the parts. To be realistic, it’s very likely that there are still going to be a few major changes coming up for this build. I have a few people interested in buying some of the stuff you’ve seen here and I just have to decide if I’m good with this build as it is or not. I’ll definitely keep you guys updated if there are any major changes.
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