1 Year Later: Marvel Precision .22LR 1911 Conversion Review

I’ve had my Marvel Precision conversion kit for more than a year, and my first review of it here was just over a year ago. So In a year, and probably close to 4,000 rounds through it, how has it held up?
10 rounds at 30 feet →

What worked great

The whole package worked awesome.
More specifically,

• The magazine loader, once i bought it.
• CCI mini-mags. probably ~2k of the rounds i’ve fired through it are mini-mags. probably a dozen FTE’s, 20 tops.
• 550 round bricks of Federal ammo worked well enough, but not as well as mini-mags.

Overheard at the range

One of the best parts about having the marvel conversion with a compensator and a red dot scope was the hilarity of conversations I overheard while people were standing around behind me at the range. I’m not the best shot (this gun is WAY more accurate than I am, and i don’t shoot anything at distances more than 40 feet very often. I’m usually shooting from 21 to 30 feet, and in that range, even I’m amazingly accurate with this thing. I hear the usual “wow, he’s pretty good” kind of comments from bystanders when i hit the same spot twice (i mean, besides inside my head, where i’m also saying it 😛 ). But the other things i hear are priceless:

Guy 1: That guy’s gun is quiet!
Guy 2: Thats because he has a silencer on it!

Random Dude A to his friend: what kind of gun is that?
Random Dude B: looks like a 1911 45 caliber converted to 22.
Random Dude A: why would you want to convert a 45 to 22? for the power of 45 with a smaller bullet?
Random Dude B: it doesn’t work that way, man.

I overhear the strangest things at my range!

Incidents…

• 1 sheared scope mount screw
  extra screws, 3 screw holes. 2 functioning screws holding it all together. problem solved.
• 2 giant blisters
  that problem went away after getting the mag loader. problem solved.
• 1 loose compensator mount screw causing the comp to fly about 10 feet downrange. Causing the rangemaster to force a cease fire for a minute while i (nervously) went downrange to pick it up. its dangerous walking on all that spent brass, (don’t walk, shuffle!) and being downrange from 10 armed people waiting for you so they can continue shooting was unnerving…fortunately, there was an extra compensator screw in the package. problem solved.
• hundreds of ruined rounds of ammo. the cheap ammo did not feed well, especially anything that wasn’t copper jacketed. Anything that wasn’t smooth had a chance of not going up the feed ramp correctly, then jamming. During break in this was a big issue, but after that much less so. (But again, i had almost no problems whatsoever with the mini-mags!)

All in all…

Overall, like any 22, the marvel conversion can be picky about ammo. I have no problem with that. The long wait to get it was painful. Breakin was a little disappointing while i figured out what worked, but after that I’ve had no real problems. Having extra screws was a bonus. Would I buy another kit from Marvel if I needed one? You betcha! If you do the math of 4000 rounds of 22 vs 4000 rounds of 45, I’ve saved a ton of money. If i had to shoot 45, it would have been cheaper to invest in reloading and learning to reload than to buy all that ammo…

All in all, if you want to shoot your 1911 cheaper, a 22 conversion is the way to go, and the marvel conversion has not been a disappointment! Getting used to the trigger and weight of the gun by shooting all these rounds has made me a much better shot, even when i convert it back to 45. Now i’m looking for a bottom half of a 1911 so i can keep the conversion on one frame all the time and take both the 22 and the 45 to the range at the same time 🙂