My first Colt revolver

Was checking the local Pawn shops today and spotted a revolver, which you don't see much of these days. It was a Pony gun, my first non Smith revolver. I got sucked in, a Colt Trooper Mark 3 in VG condition 4" 357, my favorite caliber with original grips. Don't know much about the Colts, but will take it to the range tomorrow and see how it performs. Any opinions about this model?

I do not have one of those, but I will pass on a word of caution I heard, or read.
AS I understand it, the Trooper Mark III and it's (kind of) predecessor, the Lawman MK III ,have a somewhat fragile hammer,/ignition system so, dry firing with out snap caps of some kind can cause a problem.
The Trooper has a totally different action system than the Python, but, all reports call them a great revolver. Heavy little dude isn't it ?

they say it didn't happen without pictures.

I've got a few Trooper Mk IIIs and they are fine.

Here's a couple 22 mags


MKIII snubbies


22lr

MkIII Colts are very sturdy revolvers. They were a Colt redesign of the Official Police framed guns so as to make use of coil springs instead of the old V springs,,and sintered metal parts for the hammer, trigger and a number of other small internal parts instead of machining them from stock or forgings.

The idea was simple, they had to produce it more inexpensively and they could not by sticking with the older system that took too much hand & machine labor.

Aimed primarily at the L/E market but unfortunetly right at the time most were either switching over to or at least considering semiauto pistols for their standard carry weapons.
A few Agencys did buy and use them. Colt sold a lot of the MkIII guns in various editions and calibers over time and they have held up well.

I can only remember replacing the trigger return spring on two. One a .22LR cal. The other a 357.
A small torsion spring, both revolvers had fired many thousands of rounds each plus probably as much dry fire.

Many disliked the sintered metal hammer and trigger. A big change from the forged pieces that gun owners were used to seeing.
There are some complaints of hammers breaking and the sintered parts are being blamed. I don't know if it is the problem or not. I've seen forged hammers on S&W and older Colts snap off too.

I personally don't advise dry firing any firearm, but that's just me.

Heavy,,built to take any 357 load around,,and they seem to have held up well.

I've got a question about the hole in the side of the top strap above the cylinder. I was looking on the Numrich web site and it showed a rear sight leaf pin. By looking at some pics of the MarkIII, some don't appear to have this pin. Should there be one?

A couple of quick crappy pics of the Trooper. I'm thinking I really like this pony.

The sintered (powder) metal parts did cause some concern. They went to non-sintered steel in the MK V and King Cobra. I'm almost sure that I recall David W. Arnold, who liked Colts, telling me that he'd replaced the hammer and trigger in his MK III with MK V parts.

The trigger has a long "pre-pull" with a lot of slack before the parts begin to work and then a hard, short pull in DA. The SA hammer cocking stroke is very long, but usually smooth. The hammer spur is too short for some thumbs.

The Lawman MK III is a cheaper version of the Trooper, intended to replace the fixed-sight Official Police. They also made some Official Police and Metropolitan versions. They were ugly and had very hard DA pulls, with a narrower trigger than the Trooper MK III. The Lawman did not precede the Trooper: all of these MK III guns were introduced about 1969-70, as soon as each could be made after the annoucement. The Trooper MK III was the flagship of that line. It replaced the former Trooper and Colt .357. The latter was a better finished version of what became the Trooper.

Compared to Ruger and S&W guns, most disliked MK III trigger pulls and the long SA cockimg stroke and the short hammer and the questionable action parts. The MK III frame looks stumpy or squat.

This is the result of Colt having engineers design the line instead of gun designers. It takes a special gift to be a John Browning, Georg Luger, Bill Ruger, or even a Gaston Glock. Most engineers don't have the intuitive gift of knowing what a gun should be. And I'm sure they were told to design to a price point.

The guns appeared well before US LE went to autos, but were on the market just a very few years before Ruger offered its Security-Six line. That was a severe blow to both Colt and S&W.

Two good things about the MK III Trooper and the subsequent MK V and King Cobra "fixes." One is that the cylinder timing system is far superior to the old Colt system, which is expensive to make and hard to maintain. A very fanous pistolsmith told a friend of mine that he could re-time his Python, but that it'd probably be out- of- time again within 500-1,000 rounds! I sold both of my Pythons, largely for that very reason.

Secondly, S&W quality control was in the toliet when the MK III guns were introdued. I could literally drop FIRED .38 S&W ctg. cases fired in a .38-200 revolver into the chambers of a couple of my M-19's! Extraction with .357 loads was hard; almost had to pound the extractor rod to eject some empties.

I wrote to both Speer and to a very famous gun writer who had one of the two most prestigious gun writing jobs in publishing. He is far more knowledgeable about gun design than are most of his peers, and has written a few excellent books. Both advised me that they had also seen these oversized chambers and advised me to buy a MK III Colt instead of another M-19. Colt simply had better QC. But the actions and the overall esthetics favored Ruger and S&W, except that Ruger's blued finishes were nothing like Colt's fine work.

Most serious gun enthusiasts avoided the MK III series and then Colt had some severe labor problems, the origins of which probably can't be discussed here. These lasted for a couple of decades, and Colt dropped making DA revolvers.

If I was going to buy one of their newer designs, it'd be a stainless King Cobra. I would not buy a MK III gun, because of the sintered action parts. But some seem to hold up, so if you own one that seems okay, it probably is.

Many here do not like S&W's current MIM parts. I should think they'd be even more wary of Colt's early sintered ones. I bought a Ruger GP-100 to avoid both. Now, even Ruger is using MIM on some parts, but I'd bet they are durable.

The MK III trigger pulls tend to be hard. Bob Nichols and others who preferred the old long action to the newer one that S&W introduced about 1948 would probably have to take a couple of anti-acid pills after trying MK III Colt triggers!

I hope this helps some here. It took long enough to type that I'd hate to think the info is useless to most. I'm telling you why I didn't buy any MK III guns.


Oh: aftermarket stocks are rare for MK series Colt guns. I don't think they sold enough to make it profitable to make grips for them.

"The trigger has a long "pre-pull" with a lot of slack before the parts begin to work and then a hard, short pull in DA. The SA hammer cocking stroke is very long, but usually smooth. The hammer spur is too short for some thumbs."

The MkIII has a very smooth DA trigger pull, no slack take up, ect. Just a nice smooth pull. SA let off is no worse than any other revolver on the market at the time and better than some. It certainly isn't in the 'needs an action job' catagory unless you just can't shoot a revolver handed to you w/o some sort of special internal adjustments made to it before hand.
The hammer spur is too short for some thumbs?
I'd guess some people would fall into that catagory no matter how it was configured.

Give it a break. You never even owned one.
It's a decent revolver. It came a long too late to make a dent in the market that it was aimed at. No one was looking for a 'new' revolver design in L/E.

Colt double action revolvers are IMHO a bit overly complicated inside as compared to Smiths, and yes they have more parts inside to go wrong, but that said, they are VERY WELL BUILT fine high quality revolvers.

There actions are a little more difficult to tune and most of their DA triggers "stack" when pulled, but they have proven themselves in many years of service. IMHO Colt's QC in general was and is a step above Smiths. Yes, I am really a DA Smith man, but I would never feel inadequate with a Colt!

Thanks for all the helpful information. It was just too nice of a gun to walk away from, and what I thought was a reasonable price. I was digging thru the holster box and found one that fits ok, a Bucheimer 01-004L-75LH, maybe for a Colt pistol? Hope to shoot it soon.

I carried a Lawman MK III for a couple years back in the early 1980's as a uniform duty revolver. It was never a problem and I qualified Distinguished Expert with it. The trigger was fine. The contruction of the action is much less complicated than the Python, etc. So far as single action cocking goes, I never had reason to cock thumbcock the hammer. I always shot it DA except for qualifications that required fifty yard single action shooting...That's a nice Trooper!...I'm jealous.

Update on the hole in the side of the top strap (I'm a dummy). While talking to a GS friend of mine today and telling him about the hole, he explained that it was a role pin for the rear sight and that is why I could see thru it. Looked under a magnifying glass, I am now convinced. I had told him about the Colt the other day and when he answered the phone this morning, the first words were "you have taken that gun apart and can't put it back together". I better find a repair manual for this gun.

I finally was able to have some range time with a few new gun buys. The Trooper is one smooth shooting son of a gun in both single and double action. I don't know if the action has been worked on or not. I'm a Smith guy, but I am very impressed with this Colt.