Trailside: The Story

I mentioned the Trailside pistol in my last post, so I thought I'd tell the whole story of the thing.

A few months after it came out, to great fanfare, I was looking one over at a local range. I'd read good things about it, the price was good, I had some spare cash, and I like .22's, so I bought it. They waived the range fee if I wanted to try it out, so to the firing line I went.

First, the good things. The sights were clear, the trigger was marvelous, it was very accurate. The bad thing? 8 or 9 times out of 10, the slide lock would not lock the slide after the last round was fired. In a pistol that the book specifically states will be damaged by dry-firing, this is not good. Well, maybe it just needed a good cleaning & oiling. I'd usually do this before firing a piece, but it had looked nice & clean, so I hadn't this time.

Field stripping is straightforward and easy, so I thoroughly cleaned it & oiled as directed. Next time at the range, same damn problem. So I called Sig, got an authorization to return it, and shipped it to them.

About two weeks later, call to check status, no word yet. Two weeks later, the lady who answered said had no information, but would I like to speak with the gunsmith? Yes, I would. So she connected me. He asked which problem I'd had, I described it, and he said, "Oh yeah, that one". Sounds of paper. "That was one of the problems we found." 'One' of the problems? But before I could ask what else they found, he said, "We decided that rather than try to fix this one, it would be better if we replaced it, if that would be ok with you". Well, yeah, that would be ok. He told me they didn't have any available in-country right now, but as soon as one became available, they'd send it. Which they did, close to a month later as I recall.

Happy ending, right? Not quite.

This one didn't have the slide lock problem, but after I'd fired about 100 rounds accuracy fell off. Badly. Problem was the bore was fouling. I had cleaned it thoroughly and lubed it with Break Free before shooting, so it wasn't that. I cleaned it again, and it was a bitch getting the lead out of the bore. Next time at the range, same thing. So I wrote to Sig, described the problem, and asked for any ideas what to do? No reply. The bore was shiny, no sign of roughness, and at this point I damn sure didn't want to ship this one back, too. At this point I remembered reading about Microlon Gun Juice, and decided to give it a try. I reviewed the stuff in a letter that Mad Ogre posted in his 'Weapons' section, so I'll not repeat it here other than to say it worked. No more problems mechanically.

However, by about the 500 rounds point, I noticed that the chrome on the crosspiece at the front of the slide was flaking a bit. Crap.

No, I didn't try to contact Sig again. Only a small part of the plating flaked off, so at least the whole damn slide isn't stripping. But I'm still pissed about it.

I've heard many good things about Sig from people, but I'm still leery of them after this mess. Yes, the Trailside is wonderfully accurate, and the trigger is marvelous, and maybe I just happened to be the one of few who had a problem. Doesn't change these facts, in my opinion:
1. The first one should never have left the factory if the slide lock didn't work.
2. It shouldn't have taken that long to resolve.
3. The replacement should not have had any damn problems, and it had two.

Sondra K bought one a short time ago, and she loves it. So maybe all the bugs got worked out. But they should damn well have been worked out before they put them on the market.

So that's my history with Sig.