Sorry all had some technical difficulties on my end. Here is my 2020 Python freshly back from Colt’s. I put some Pachmayrs on it to protect the factory wood stocks. I also ordered a Ted Blocker swivel duty holster for it while it was at Hartford:
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This Python had a few issues. It had the dinged crown, now totally fixed by Colt’s. Also the single action trigger was fairly gritty and while it was a nitpick I wasn’t sure if they’d address, the single action pull is now superb along with the buttery DA pull. I have reason to believe my gun has the new mainspring as the DA pull is a bit heavier now which is not a problem, as I felt it was a bit “under sprung” from the factory and was apparently the source of some light primer strikes in other people’s guns.
Now one thing Colt’s did not seem to address is the cylinder gap on this revolver, or shall I say the LACK of a cylinder gap. Literally, the cylinder bottoms out against the forcing cone. The smallest leaf on my feeler gauge (.001”) will not go between and there is no light visible in the gap. There is approx. .001” of endshake which is normal, so when the cylinder is held to rear that gives us just .001” of total gap.
I fired 100 rounds of hot Federal and Remington 125 grain magnums in semi-rapid fire at the range, and it appears this incredibly tight B/C gap did not have any effect on function. However, the revolver was spotlessly clean before this. I have always been under the impression a B/C gap of anywhere from approx. .004-.007” was considered ideal on double-action revolvers (including the old Pythons) in order to provide some measure of clearance for fouling and debris.
Too tight of a gap can cause the cylinder to drag against the forcing cone once the cylinder and barrel heat up or when debris is encountered. I am going to call Colt on Monday to just see if my gap is appropriate. Perhaps the new Pythons are engineered for such a tight gap? I’d love to here how anyone else’s gap measures. Will update as to what Colt says.
The last issue is an inconsistent cylinder release latch. What I mean by this is sometimes the latch operates very smoothly, yet sometimes it totally locks up and can only be overcome with strong thumb pressure and sort of “snaps” open. This issue was not addressed by Colt despite it (and the above mentioned B/C gap) being mentioned in my letter to them I sent along with the revolver.
This is a bit frustrating as during reloads at the range I would sometimes have to really work at the stubborn clunker release latch to free it up, while other times it operated smoothly. My guess is Colt was unable to replicate the effect from opening the cylinder once or twice and just ignored it. This is unfortunate, as I planned to use my Python for defense, but this is keeping it off the nightstand for now. I will also mention this continuing issue when I called Colt.
So my revolver is “kind of” fixed. The turnaround time was about six weeks. Not too bad from all reports I’ve heard. Communication was lacking however. I never received an email, phone call, letter, etc. indicating the revolver had arrived at Colt or if they were working on any issues. This wouldn’t have been a big deal but to my surprise they included nothing at all for return paperwork except a generic packing slip with no information whatsoever about what had been done to the revolver. That wasn’t so good.
I am in the military and deploying in about a months time, so won’t have time to send the revolver back again to Colt if they are willing to address the remaining problems, so will have to wait until I get back. Thanks all and hope this information has some merit to anyone considering a Python or to other owners. I do certainly like the gun and it was a joy at the range despite the issues.
-Panzer
