I was recently able to take the Polymer 80 that I built out and live-fire it for the first time. In this post, I want to share with you my experience with the gun and its various parts.
First off, I want to advise those that have not seen my original build video to watch that first because some of what I say here is going to make a lot more sense with that previous information in mind.
Let’s just go from top to bottom, starting with the Trijicon SRO. The particular one that I own has is a 1 MOA dot and this is the smallest dot that I’ve run so far. I typically use Holosun optics and the ones I use go down to 2 MOA. When I bought the 1 MOA SRO, I did so because it was the only one that I could find in stock anywhere. There was some worry that the dot would be too small but after getting some range time, I can say that I honestly never even thought about the dot size. Maybe it’s because I’ve been running red dots for a little while now but I didn’t feel like I struggled at all with finding the dot. I actually like the 1 MOA dot more because once I started shooting at longer distances, it was much easier to precisely put the dot where I want it and not worry about the dot size covering up my target. This is only my first experience with this dot size but I don’t see it being a problem moving forward.
With the SRO, I should also talk about its general design. A point of concern that I brought up in my first video was that because the SRO overhangs the footprint and moves much closer to the ejection port, there would be a problem with spent shells bouncing off the optic as it’s ejected. Again, because I didn’t record myself, I couldn’t really keep track of where spent shells were going. However, there were two notable instances. In the first, I noticed a shell fly forward, ahead of me. It would make sense that the shell extracted right at the SRO and that caused it to bounce forward. On the second occasion, I noticed a shell flying straight up then landing on my hat. Again, it would make sense that the SRO caused the shell to do this. In my first video, I mentioned that I included two parts in my build to help with shells ejecting at the SRO and those parts are the Gen 5 ejector and the APEX Tactical Failure Resistant Extractor. I can’t judge the ejector too much in this build because I don’t have a lot of time with it and it seems to work, but the extractor I can speak upon.
An OEM Glock extractor for a Gen 3 Glock is around $20. The Apex Tactical Failure Resistant Extractor is $60. So for three times the price, how did it perform. I’m going to say flat out that this thing is trash. Total garbage. This part is often recommended over the OEM extractor because it is supposed to be milled better and has a better angle of attack so it can better pull spent shell casings out. When I tested this gun, I noticed a ridiculous amount of failures to eject. Literally the very first mag. The first shot went off. The second shot went off. The third shot was a double feed failure to extract. I thought maybe because this is a new gun and there’s a lot of aftermarket parts, things just needed to break in. So I continued and the failures just kept coming. I was never able to shoot more than 3 shots because of some sort of failure to extract. There were a bunch of double feeds and on many occasions, the spent shell would still be in the barrel and get lodged in there by the next round. I had to find a cleaning rod to force the spent shells out of my barrel. After trying a few different types of ammo from different manufacturers, I just knew that something had to be up with a part. I locked the slide back, looked down the mag chamber, and noticed that the extractor looked more rounded than I’ve ever seen any other extractor. So, I stripped the slide, pulled the extractor out, and guess what? Like 75% of it had sheered off and there was only a little nub left that was attempting to extract spent shells. What a piece of junk. Again, I had failures within the first handful of shots so it was possible that this thing broke off after one shot. After figuring this out, I borrowed a stock extractor from someone I was shooting with and things ran flawlessly the rest of the day. Not a single similar malfunction since. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am with this part. I contacted Apex about this and they’re sending me a new one but man, I don’t know if I’m willing to go through testing this thing again because it could be a ticking time bomb. I may work for a while then bam! The extractor sheers off again and if this happens when I need to defend myself, it’s game over. The gun will essentially be a one-shot pistol. I’ve put in a stock Glock extractor and it will likely be used for a while considering that I know it works with my setup.
Back to the topic of the SRO’s overhanging design, I do want to mention that I noticed that this optic gets dirty a lot faster than others that I’ve tried. Because it’s so close to the ejection port, a lot of gasses expel and build upon the glass. After shooting for a bit, I thought that I was fogging up the glass because it was a rather cold day. But the fogging never went away and it was pretty obvious what was going on when I looked at the front glass. There’s not really a fix for this so I’ll just have to deal with cleaning the SRO more often.
The next part that I want to talk about is this Tyrant Designs extended slide release. I removed it immediately upon returning home because I was so ready to replace it. This is the third one that I’ve purchased, one was for my Glock 43X and two for Gen 3 Glocks. The one for the 43X works flawlessly so no complaints there. The first Gen 3 release was fitting kind of weird so I got rid of that one. The second was better but I noticed that it was also bent kind of weird. When installed, there seemed to be a lot of play. There was a lot of play and It was able to move to and from the frame a lot more than it should. Well, in shooting, this resulted in the slide release actually lifting up and jamming itself between the frame and slide instead of locking back. This is the first time that I’ve ever seen this happen. Another reason why I think this particular one was bent wrong is that I noticed the mag that I was using got chewed up by the release. A part of the bar just stuck out too much and continually hit the edge of my mag causing damage. Luckily the store that I purchased the release from was cool with calling this a manufacturer’s defect and will let me return it. I’ve replaced the Tyrant with a Tango Down Vickers Slide Stop. I’m not sure how I feel about this slide stop yet so we’ll see what happens with it. Hopefully, it will be more reliable than the Tyrant.
Next, the only other part that was giving me problems was the L2D dimpled pin set that’s holding everything in place. Three of the pins were fine but the smaller top pin kept walking out. After a few mags, it would move from right to left. It just seems like this pin is a little bit too narrow. This could also be a contributor to my slide release problem because the slide release has a spring that sits in a groove on this pin. So if the pin is walking, the spring isn’t seated properly and that can be why there’s more than a normal amount of play. Luckily I still have the dimpled pin set that came with my PFC9 so I just put those pins back in but kept the L2D trigger housing pin because if you remember, the PFC9 only came with 3 dimpled pins for some reason and the trigger housing pin was plain flat. The L2D trigger housing pin worked fine in this frame so I’ll keep it to have a complete 4 dimpled pin set.
Moving on, let’s talk about the Norsso Piranha EDC slide. Like I said in my first video, I love the way this slide looks. It’s super aggressive. But, that aggressiveness equates to rather sharp corners on the serrations. Because I was having so many malfunctions, I ended up having to manipulate the slide a lot. I had to rack this thing so many times and in doing so, I noticed at the end of the day, my hand’s index and thumb got cut up quite a bit. Only one cut was visible and the rest are those cuts that you don’t see but when you run them under water they start to sting. So, the slide is a tough call. It looks really good and runs perfectly but is it worth cutting my hand up to use it? I’m not sure yet. This slide is actually already sold. I have a buyer lined up and now I just have to decide if I want to pick up the ported version of this slide or go with something else.
Since we’re talking about the slide, let’s cover the barrel since they run hand in hand. First off, as I mentioned in my first video, this Lantac 9ine barrel was already showing some wear on the hood after a few hand manipulations so I wasn’t sure how it would hold up long term. Well, I got my answer. This barrel is developing wear faster than any other barrel I’ve owned. It’s not too bad right now after 250 rounds but just think long-term. The marring is already pretty deep in comparison to some of my other barrels that have more use so I don’t know about this one. The length of the barrel is also developing some wear but that’s a little bit slower. All this wear is of course, largely related to the slide. Maybe the two are just rubbing a bit too much but that’s just something that you figure out through trial and error. These are aftermarket parts so who knows how they’ll run together. They certainly weren’t designed for each other so I can’t really complain here. However, on a brighter note. This is the most accurate barrel I’ve ever shot. But, of course, that’s not completely just attributed to the barrel. The gun is a sum of its parts. Everything works together. And I have to say, the setup that I’ve put together here has helped me to be more accurate than I’ve ever been.
Then also connected to the barrel and slide, we have my stainless steel guide rod. I’m running stock 18lbs and that seems to be functionally ok. It ran all loads perfectly but I did notice some primer drag. Again, the gun runs so this is something that I’ll eventually get to. Messing with the weights is an unnecessary thing at the moment.
Finally, let’s close with the trigger. I’m running the Johnny Custom Glocks Legacy Universal Hybrid system. Now, because this part is such a major component and it costs so much, I want to make a video solely dedicated to it. I think it deserves that. But for now, let me just say that this is the best trigger that I’ve ever used. When talking about accuracy, we have to partially contribute that to the trigger and I personally have never been more confident with a trigger than this Johnny Glocks Legacy trigger. Again, I’ll make a video dedicated to this thing so keep an eye out for that.
And that’s about it. I realize there are a few more parts to this build but if I didn’t mention it, those parts just worked as they should and that’s good considering all that I went through on just my first range outing with this setup. It was a major pain to troubleshoot at first but once I got this build going, man is this thing sweet. It is absolutely my most favorite handgun right now. This thing is just amazing. But once I get everything really dialed in, I think this thing will be perfect.
So, I’ll be sure to keep you guys updated on this build and hopefully will be able to take you along with me on my next outing.
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