My Kimber Story

I used to be a die-hard 1911 lover. Loved the style, loved the design and loved how it felt in my hands.

My first gun ever was a brand new Colt 1991A1 Commander Stainless and I loved it, well mostly because I did not know better. The gun was a jammo-maniac, but I thought that was normal from some old/obsolete reading I did. My enthusiasm died quickly because I spent so much time doing malfunction drills at range.

Much later in life, I bought a Beretta 92FS out of many considerations, one of which was that i wanted to try a different platform. I had so much fun shooting that pistol! Yes, it's big and bulky, but I was shocked by its out-of-box accuracy AND there's not a single failure. In fact, it has never failed even once ever!

What a joy!!!

The Beretta 92FS showed me how a fine firearm should perform. Since then, I acquired many other handguns but none of them was 1911 style, and none of them ever malfunctioned.

Fast forward to 2005 when Hurricane Rita was looming around Texas coast. It was the first time I loaded all my guns at home getting ready for evacuation. To my horror, I had no concealed handgun license (CHL), and Texas laws back then prohibited car-carry. As a law-abiding citizen, I had to lock all my guns in their cases and put them in my trunk. It was truly a fun time driving in 100+ degree weather at 1 mile per hour traffic jam with people's temper getting even hotter. Needless to say, I promptly joined CHL class after that and now wanted a carry weapon.

I did a lot of research on what to carry. I was not so keen on carrying a loaded gun without any external safety - my own personal preference/comfort level. I was also a slim built person who weighed 170 lbs; therefore size of the gun was my main consideration.

I finally narrowed them down to:

Beretta 92FS - too thick
HK USP - I boycott HK, another story, and they are too thick
Kimber Ultra CDP II

The Kimber Ultra CDP II was a fab and was a sleazy looking pistol, designed specifically for concealed carry with its slim size and melt design (no edges.)

I was very leery about getting a 1911 style pistol. I spent quite a bit of time reading and researching this particular gun, and the general consensus seemed to be:

1. don't expect it to be problem free out-of-box
2. run through 500 rounds of full metal jacket bullets to break in before it becomes reliable
3. may need to be sent back to the manufacturer a few times
4. some did report that theirs worked since day one

Unfortunately, mine didn't.

The gun was pretty, and there was a lot of attention to details!!! Before I took on a range trip, I hand-cycled about 500 times using full metal jacket ammo - wouldn't do this again because I actually used live ammo. Bad idea on safety!

My first trip was a disaster. The gun kept on jamming!!! Mostly stovepipe. After about 50 shots, I quit shooting, called Kimber the next day and sent them some pictures too. Kimber service was great and they told me to send the gun back. Because I couldn't take time off work to wait for Kimber's free UPS pick-up, they promised to give me 2 Tac-mags to cover my shipping cost.

My second trip was not so great either. Upon advice from some forum member, I bought a few "premium" magazines to see if they worked better. Well, not really. After a few tries, I found that Kimber magazines worked the best because they really tilted the bullets up to feed into the barrel and their springs were stronger. I made a few more trips to the range, and somehow, the Kimber started to spitting ejected brass back to me. One time it hit my head so hard that I started to bleed profusely. After that, I started to fire a shot and dodge the brass right after. This quickly tripled the fun at the range: practicing clearing malfunctions, dodging brass and wondering if next round would fire or not!


(Note the feed ramp became shiny due to the bullets hitting on it. Actually, the bullets shaved metal off the feed ramp. To me this is a design problem. The feed ramp should have proper curvature but it didn't.)

Again, I called Kimber and again it went and came back.

After the second trip back to the factory, it started to behave much better. I now stuck to Kimber Tac-mags exclusively and malfunctions became very little. It still had occasional FTF and failure to chamber a round, meaning the slide returned but there's no round inside the chamber even though the mag was full. By then, I had put more than 1000 rounds of FMJ through it but hadn't really shot enough Hollow Points.

I just came back from another range trip (Jan 2009). This time I fired about 100 rd of lead round nose handloads with my Kimber. I had 1 failure due to the slide stopper was pushed slightly up for some reason - I didn't think that was my thumbs hitting it but it's very likely a cause.

I must say that I knew what I might get into when I bought the gun and the experience was not pleasant. For a $1000 gun, it should have worked right out of the box but it did not. For the amount of money and effort (original purchase, break-in ammo cost, trips back to the factory, and taking time off work to wait for UPS pickup&delivery), it was totally not worth it. On the other hand, Kimber does stand behind their products and I must give them credit for that!!!

Yes, I still carry and shoot my Kimber Ultra CDP II.

Update on August 2, 2009

I just came back from a pistol training class where we fired about 100 rounds in various conditions and scenarios. There were 11 people in the class with HK USP, Beretta 92F, Glock, S&W etc.; almost everybody's gun, including the instructor's, malfunctioned in one way or another except for my Kimber.

I guess it finally starts to run well from now on.