Steyr M-A1 any good?

[taylor]

I been reading about this pistol and like the sights and the angles, Anybody have any experience with them?
Taylor

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[elsullo]

I too was very interested in the Steyr pistols and studied up on them. It is a brilliant design with much to desire. I have never held a gun that felt so natural in the hand. There is at least one fanatic messageboard devoted to them that you can search for. Most posters there totally love the things, in spite of some minor flaws and the difficulty in finding parts and holsters. Lots of high-priced trading on that site.

HOWEVER, Steyr has officially abandoned the USA pistol market, mostly because the dollar is so weak, as of about a year ago. They do maintain a customer service department for warrantee work and parts orders (firing pins and extractors are in high demand.) Nevertheless, parts and magazines are hard to get and priced high.

The Steyr pistols are becoming a "collector's item" and are high priced in spite of being difficult to own. They were really cheap for a while a couple of years ago as the wholesalers closed them out. Alas, I never got one then! Finding a new one now still in the pipeline would be rare, and deciding to buy it would be a painfull decision!.........................elsullo

 

[jordanvraptor]

A buddy of mine has the older version called the M9. I've fired it and it is a good reliable pistol. The grip angle is kind of weird if you are used to other pistols and there was one problem that plagued his pistol. It had chronic failures to extract with all kinds of ammo. I researched this for him and it seemed to be a known issue with the M9's. New extractors were sometimes the cure but not always. What I ended up doing for him was removing the extractor and installing a second spring inside the factory extractor spring. This gave it more gripping force. That seemed to cure the FTE problem as he has not had a problem with it since. If you can pick one up at a good price then I would say go for it. Oh, hicap magazines were in short supply a few years ago, I don't know if thats changed since then.