Kimber 22 conversion kits

[high_revs]

How are these? I'm still searching for my Kimber. I almost bought one on the spot at Antioch Arms, but arriving there 15 mins before close and they put everything into the safe already, they wouldn't budge even with starting the paperwork. And I called around 5'ish to tell them since I drove for like 2 hours in heavy rush hour traffice to go to a shop I've read good stuff on here, 60 miles one way. And my friend was with me to buy a glock on the spot too.

Anyway, my search for a decent priced Kimber goes on. But one reason I wanted one was to kinda kill 2 birds with one stone by just using a Kimber conversion for the .22.

Anyone has experience with these? How does a conversion kit shoot? I like cheap shooting too.

Else, I'm getting tired for looking for one and will just opt for my P220R (which I wanted too).

[NextTimeAround]

I got a kit when I picked up my TLE/RL II. The kit was too tight for the rails. Every time you fired it would FTE, so I'd manually pull the slide back. After about 10 rounds I couldn't handle it.

So I finally got around to sending it back to Kimber to loosen it up a bit. They're taking care of it under warranty, but it kind of sucks I have to send it away for a couple of weeks. I think the kit is well worth the money, I wish mine would have performed better out of the box.

I researched the kit before I got it, and most people had good things to say about it. My recommendation is only use .22LR High Velocity ammo (so it will cycle properly). Also when shooting the last round, the slide doesn't lock. Kind of a pain, but not too much of a big deal.

[Aluisious]

Mine lives on my Kimber TLE frame as well.

Slide doesn't lock by design.

22 High Vel only, but it'll run the 9 dollars for 550 federal bulk from Wally World.

The magazine design is awful. This weekend mine wouldn't feed the last round in a mag 95% of the time. The bullets just fall out, too, which means they jam often enough. I'd say 5% or a little less of the time, it fails to feed.

FTE all the time. Mine wouldn't work at all until I started using BreakFree on it exclusively. It gets a bit better when it warms up. When it's going well, that's about 5% FTE as well.

Overall, a little less than 10% of the shots fail in some way. Sometimes it's happy and it will bump to maybe 2% failure rate. Sometimes it's not happy and will fail about 90%.

Overall I like mine, it's fun, but it wasn't really worth 300 bucks. It's worth maybe 100 bucks considering the quality.

[Black Majik]

Look into the Marvel .22 kits.

[scorpucla]

Marvel with Ciener mags

Look into the Marvel .22 kits.

I second that, take a look at marvel, use high velocity, and take a look at the ciener magazines. I don't care for the ACE style that marvel uses, but the cieners normally work flawlessly.

Like most other calibers, you can go expensive or cheap with ammo. Remington golden bullets work well for me, but CCI minimags produce the tightest groups.

[maxicon]

The Kimber kit is made by Ciener. I understand it has slightly different sights, but don't know that for a fact.
(update - apparently Kimber now makes their own units)

The Marvel is considered to be much better (that is, much more accurate) than the Ciener, and is more expensive too.

I have a Ciener for my Milspec, and it works just fine. It's reliable (with the occasional FTE), fun to shoot, and accuracy is decent (1.5 inches at 10yards with good ammo). I haven't tried a Marvel, so can't compare.

One big problem with Cieners is that the magazines are expensive. I understand support is pretty weak, too, but I haven't needed any.

You can read until your eyes are crossed at the m1911.org conversion forum:

http://forum.m1911.org/forumdisplay.php?f=47

[capitol]

I have the Kimber 22 conversion and it works perfect. You must use high velocity rounds like Stingers though.

[high_revs]

ahh... good to know kinda stuff. helps me in terms of continued pursuit of my Kimber. guess it's still worth the effort.

thanks for all responses.

[Mael]

I have a Marvel 22 conversion kit that I use regularly with my Kimber Gold Match. It is extremely accurate and has worked flawlessly for three years now. I looked at the Kimber conversion kit and found that the Marvel was a much higher quality. I purchased mine from Midway Usa.

[ccampbell]

The latest Guns and Ammo has a good article on these conversion kits.

[Sundowner]

I have the Kimber kit on a Colt 1991 and it works perfectly! Very happy with it. That said, the Marvel kit, which is more expensive, is supposed to be of better quality. However, since mine works fine, I'm happy to have save some $ which I'll put into ammo.

[Kiba]

I received a Kimber .22 kit when I bought my TLE/RL II from a friend. Mine is very picky about ammo, it only likes hyper velocity stuff like Velocitor and Stingers which are expensive enough to reduce the appeal of the kit for me. High velocity stuff is only about 50% reliable, I would have to manually rack the slide almost every other round, FTE & FTF were quite common. A light oil on the rails is a must, using anything heavier causes the slide to drag too much and with the limited power of the .22 to cycle the action the additional drag causes it to short-stoke.

My conversion eats CCI Stingers with almost 100% reliability, anything slower isn't very reliable. I'm hoping that after another 1-2K rounds it will loosen up enough that cheaper HV ammo will work reliably.

The reliability issues cycling cheaper ammo (i.e. Wally World stuff) made me go out and buy a Ruger Mark III Hunter which I love-- reliability is excellent and accuracy is quite better than the Kimber conversion (the Ruger groups at 50 yards what the Kimber groups at 15 yards.) I still like the .22 upper though just to put more use on my TLE/RL. Love the feel of a 1911.

[TMC]

If your not in a real hurry Tactical Solutions has a converiosn about to come out. Its a steel upper with mags of thier own design. I've been told it will shoot any ammo out there with no failures. They're sending one to me to try out, when it gets here I'll post some pics and report on how it shoots. Sorry but no info of price but I do know that units are in productions now.

[ccampbell]

I re-read the Guns and Ammo article on 22 conversions last night.
The Ciener was the easiest to install, uses high-quality standard velocity, high-velocity, hyper-velocity ammo. www.22lrconversions.com
Advantage Arms (2 kits, standard and target version), high-velocity only (special spring kit for standard velocity). Accurate and reliable. www.advantagearms.com
The Kimber, high quality product. High velocity only. Also available in .17 Mach 2. www.kimberamerica.com.
Marvel Precision/Wilson Combat various models. Tightest groups of all tested. They didn't mention which ammo it consumes, but the website might.
www.marvelprecision.com www.wilsoncombat.com

Chris

[ccampbell]

For the money, buy a browning buckmark or ruger 22. Then you will have more guns.