Kimber 2K11 SRO Reinstall
Welcome back to Jim's Armory. In this one, Jim tackles a problem that showed up mid-range session: the factory-installed SRO on his Kimber 2K11 came loose while shooting. Rather than pile onto the online chatter blaming C&H for the issue, Jim does his own investigation, pulls the optic and plate off, and shows you exactly what he finds — and how he puts it back together properly with Loctite this time.
The Teardown: Checking for Loctite Jim starts by backing the screws out of the C&H plate, and right away something's off — the screws spin out by hand, no tool required. That tells him they were never torqued down with any real thread-locking compound. Pulling the screws for a closer look, he finds only the faintest trace of factory-applied Loctite on the threads — what he describes as "a tiny, tiny, tiny bit" right on the edge. In his view, that's just the small dab manufacturers put on new screws to make you feel like it's handled, not an actual functional amount of thread locker.
Jim notes this is his first C&H plate mounted with T-nuts rather than screws going directly into holes machined in the slide, so he's careful not to assume this is a defect in C&H's product itself — he's had good results with C&H plates on other guns. Whatever the root cause, the fix is now his problem to solve.
Cleaning Up Before Reinstalling Before any Loctite goes back on, Jim stresses the importance of properly cleaning the screws and the mounting holes. He drops the screws in alcohol to dissolve the old residue, and after letting them sit, the leftover gunk comes right off. He wipes them down with a paper towel and inspects them again — one screw comes back essentially spotless, the other still shows a faint trace but nothing significant.
Pro-Tip: Don't skip the alcohol soak. Jim considers this step easy to overlook, but if you don't fully clean old Loctite residue off the threads and out of the holes, fresh thread locker won't seat and bond properly.
He also runs a screw into the mounting hole itself dry, then backs it out to break up any leftover Loctite stuck down inside the threads, even picking at a stubborn chunk with a dental pick to knock it loose.
Choosing and Applying Loctite With everything clean and dry, Jim moves on to reassembly. He has a few options on the bench — 242, 246 (a higher-temperature formula), and 243 — and ultimately goes with the 243, reasoning that the mounting screws are far enough from the chamber that heat from firing shouldn't be a major factor.
Working the screws in from the underside first to get them started, Jim applies the Loctite and threads each screw in by hand until snug, wiping away the excess that squeezes out around the plate.
Torque Value: 15 or 20? This is where Jim runs into some conflicting information. The documentation that came with the SRO specifies 15 in-lbs, but videos he watched from C&H recommend 20 to 25. He's uncertain whether the screws currently in the gun are the ones that shipped with the SRO or the ones that came with the C&H plate, which adds to his hesitation. He starts torquing toward 15, since that's the number he's always used, but ends up drifting past it to 20, ultimately deciding to land in the middle between the two references rather than commit fully to either spec.
Final Thoughts Jim isn't thrilled about having to do this repair on what he expected to be a reliable factory-mounted optic setup, and he remains unsure exactly who's responsible for the lack of proper Loctite from the factory. What is clear from his teardown is that there wasn't enough thread locker applied originally to keep the plate secure under recoil. His fix — full cleaning with alcohol, correct Loctite application, and careful attention to torque — is the standard process he recommends before mounting any optic. He'll be keeping an eye on this reinstall to see if it holds up. Subscribe and stay tuned to find out how it performs.
