Model 41 Ammo Suggestion

[chief38]

In order to make a 22 target pistol very accurate, the manufacturer must produce it with a tight chamber and tight tolerances. Of course when a target pistol is "tight", sometimes reliability does suffer. Couple that with mass produced, inconsistent rimfire ammunition and the curve widens. It was hard enough for S&W to find the perfect combination between tightness and reliability when the pistol first came out in the 1950's and and S&W was a high quality manufacturer. Today's S&W is unfortunately a totally different company and so many M41's are not tweaked to that fine happy medium between being tight ad being reliable.

S&W is not the only company to have issues with tight tolerances of true target pistols. I have seen and experienced this a bunch of times with several different model Ed Brown and Les Behr 1911's not firing high quality reloaded ammo and even some factory ammo. Some of my friends pistol's made by these manufacturers had go back a few times to be loosened up to shoot reliably.

I feel very lucky that my M41that I bought new in 1979, is 100% reliable and super accurate with CCI standard velocity, 40 grain bullets. While S&W has made some great M41's over the years, it is well know as a finicky target pistol. That said, once the kinks are ironed out and the right ammo is found for your pistol - they do shoot! Yes - it can be frustrating during the process. IMHO, every M41 built should be shot with a minimum of 50 - 100 rounds of CCI std. vel. ammo before leaving the factory. It should not be shipped after just firing 3-5 rounds like they normally do! They should not treat the M41 like just any other pistol they make as it is supposed to be - a premium target pistol. They certainly have no issues charging customers for a premium target pistol!

 

[Troystat]

I shoot CCI SV in mine, more than accurate enough at 25 yards. I have heard that the newer batches of the stuff are not as good as older versions.

 

[reedybart]

I have a Performance Center Model 41 that I really like. It is a beautiful pistol and is fun to shoot. Therein is the problem though, it doesn't necessarily like to shoot at times. When I first bought the pistol it had to go back to the Mothership for some work. It came back in good condition, no added scratches or marks and it did work better, but still not all the time. So I began a quest to make it work better thru various types of ammunition. After trying some 10 or 12 different types of ammunition I settled on CCI standard ammo, but even this stuff didn't work very well. I did the higher velocity thing to help break in the pistol, but in the end the results were the same. At least one or two rounds out of each magazine load would result in a variety of misfires.

Yesterday while looking for something entirely different in my ammo stockpile I stumbled on some CCI Greentag that I bought at a closeout price. I realized I had never tried this stuff in my M41 and thought what the heck, let's try it. My indoor range is only about 40' long from stem to stern, but it is all I have at home. First mag load had no failures much to my surprise. This setup a pattern and 150 rounds later with no breaks for cleaning or anything else I had no failures of any kind. Absolutely none! I wasn't really prepared to go for an accuracy test, but the Greentag was right there with CCI Standard.

Now I am not saying CCI Greentag is the ultimate round to cure all problems with all Model 41's, but in my case it worked extremely well in MY pistol. At one point I ran two full mags thru the pistol about as fast as I could pull the trigger and stay on target and the gun worked great. First time that has ever happened. I know one go-around with a certain ammunition doesn't mean all problems are over with, but it proves the pistol can and does function properly. I will dig thru my stash and find some more Greentag to run another test, but for right now anyway I am quite pleased with the results. You may want to try Greentag if you are having issues with your M41.

Rick H.

I will look for some green tag