MAC 9 DS Comp Disassembly
Welcome back to Jim's Armory. Snowed in and looking for something to do, Jim grabs the Military Armament Corp 9 DS Comp and puts it through a full teardown. It's a gun built from a mix of parts and origins, and pulling it apart turns up some genuinely clever design touches alongside a handful of fit issues that leave Jim with real concerns about how carefully this one was assembled.
Safety First Jim starts the way he always does: confirming the chamber is empty and the magazine is out before anything else happens.
The Upper: A Stubborn Extractor Removing the slide is standard 1911/2011 fare - line up the smaller notch with the slide lock and pull it forward off the frame. From there, a small tool that came with the gun (functionally the same as a paper clip) depresses the recoil spring so the barrel link and barrel can come out the front.
The MAC 9 uses an internal extractor, which Jim warns can sometimes be a bear to remove - and this one lived up to that reputation. After a real fight getting it out, he found a visible bend in the extractor, which he suspects means it was overtightened at the factory. He hasn't fired the gun yet, so he doesn't know for certain how it will affect feeding, but a bent extractor is never a good sign.
Pro-Tip: When pulling the firing pin, always pinch it at the retainer rather than yanking it straight out - and turn it opposite the direction of the coil windings to help the spring open up as you remove it. Skip this step and the firing pin can launch across the room, never to be seen again.
The Lower: Tight Tolerances and a Broken Trigger Adjuster The thumb safety on this gun was unusually difficult to remove. Jim ended up wedging a pry bar against the grip safety and lightly tapping it with a plastic hammer to loosen the tenon joint enough to pull the safety free - a workaround for what he felt should have had more clearance from the factory.
Pro-Tip: Put a small bend in the slide lock and thumb safety detent springs before removing them. It keeps the detents from launching out of the gun and disappearing when the safety comes off.
Digging into the sear and disconnector, Jim found the sear pin unusually tight coming out - another spot he flags as "an area of opportunity" for some smoothing. He walks through how the disconnector and sear interact: the disconnector rides up through a slot in the frame and only engages the sear when the slide is fully in battery, disengaging the moment the slide is out of position even slightly.
The frame itself is stamped "T-Sauce" and "Made in Turkey" - Jim notes this manufacturer builds for Military Armament Corp overseas even though MAC's home base is in Tennessee, which also explains the metric screws throughout the gun.
The trigger setup brought the most disappointing discovery of the teardown. The gun ships with three trigger shoes (small, medium, large) and the frame has a screw that appears to double as an overtravel adjuster. Tightening it to test that function instead pushed through a plastic piece inside the trigger bow, permanently disengaging the shoe from the adjustment. In Jim's view, this means MAC 9 owners effectively give up functional overtravel adjustment in exchange for swappable trigger shoes. He also found the factory trigger bow doesn't move freely in the frame - it binds noticeably - and demonstrated the difference by test-fitting a Chile-style aftermarket trigger from Red Dirt, which has working pre-travel and overtravel adjusters and moved with no friction at all by comparison.
Reassembly and Quality Concerns Going back together turned up a few more details worth flagging. The trigger guard sleeve had Loctite applied to both of its tiny 2mm screws from the factory - Jim's practice is to only Loctite one side, since a fully locked sleeve on hardware that small risks rounding out the bit or snapping it off during future service. He removed the Loctite from one side and left it off going forward. The magwell screws also came with factory Loctite, which Jim isn't a fan of either and chose not to reapply, planning to check tightness periodically instead.
Reinstalling the sear spring requires care: the spring needs to rest on top of the back of the sear and disconnector, not slip in behind them, or the gun won't hold the hammer back at all.
Crucial Safety Checks With the gun back together, Jim runs through his usual function checks. He confirms the grip safety blocks the trigger from moving until fully depressed, and that the half-cock notch will catch the hammer if the sear were to fail, keeping the firing pin out of reach. He also checks the thumb saf
