Subject: (00/Jan/22)

From: "Mik ."
Subject: disappointing 1st range session

I took out my Bren Ten Standard out to the range on Monday. I am disappointed. I also took out my EAA Witness 10mm and it outshines the Bren Ten in the reliability department.

My Bren Ten is NIB and was probably only test fired. It has a beautiful blued slide mated to a stainless steel frame that is polished on its flats. Surprisingly, the frame looks as if it was cast. The grips are black plastic and feel nice in the hand. The grip is significantly slimmer than my EAA Witness 10mm (the closest gun I can compare it too). This gun feels REALLY good in the hand. 2 magazines, manual, white cardboard box and sight adjustment tool...also a funky gun rug.

The thumb safety is a little stiff, but I'm sure it will loosen up with use. The thumb safety can be activated "cocked and locked", or in DA with the hammer on the safety shelf. The thumb safety will not activate with the hammer fully down. The slide mounted cross bolt safety does not work on my Bren Ten unless I push the firing pin in. I think that this problem will dissipate with use...I hope. The 2 10 round mags are original, but I have been informed that they are for the convertible .45ACP/10mm model...the Dual Master I believe. I had to modify the mags a bit to make them reliable, but more on that later. There is only one locking lug on the barrel, using a camming "kidney" style lock up.

Ok, now that the nice things are out of the way...onto to the brutal shooting session I had with my Bren Ten.

Ammo on hand for the shooting session was 50 rounds of Remington UMC ammo and another 25 rounds of professionally remanufactured (not reloads) 180 gr. TMJ loads. The first round fired jammed. The second round would not go fully into battery. I had to eject the round as pushing the slide forward at this point was very difficult. Needless to say, I was a little distressed. I fired off the rest of the 8 rounds left in the mag and looked at the action more closely. I have seen this happen to new custom guns and I really hope that after 300 rounds, the Bren Ten will break in. I oiled the gun a little more and I paid special attention to the rear of the barrel hood where it seemed especially tight. After another 30 rounds of this frustration, the gun started to break in a little...very little. The last round in the mag would be left in the gun as the follower would engage the slide stop. I was able to shoot 3 rounds before I would have to nudge the slide into full battery. Around 30 rounds into the firing session, the rear sight became loose. Easily rectified by tightening the allen screws. The sight didn't come loose again.

With the bad news dispensed, I'll get onto the things I love about my Bren Ten. The accuracy is great! I'm sure it would be better if I wasn't distracted by the malfunctions and jams, but at 10 yards, all the rounds went into a hole no more than 1.5" wide. The last 5 rounds were shot (with a malfunction on the 3rd round) at 25 yards and group size was about 2". Recoil is not noticeable...which surprised me a bit since the Bren Ten is a little on the light side. I attribute this to the superior ergonomics of the design. DA pull is the best I've ever tried, 8-9#s, that is very short in pull. The SA is superb with very little take up and breaks nicely at about 3-3.5#s. Sights are highly visible and I had no trouble picking them up.

As I mentioned above, the magazine was one of the malfunctioning parts that I identified early on. These magazines are original but do NOT have the numbered witness holes. I don't know if there is a significant difference between the two types of magazines, but here is what I had to do to make the magazines malfunction free. When looking at my Bren Ten magazine, I noticed that the follower sits high, really high, out of the magazine. Even the spring was showing quite prominently out of the mag. I broke down the magazine and snugged up the top of the spring to the bottom of the follower. There are two "cones" on the bottom of the follower where the spring wraps around. After doing this, I reassembled the mags and tried shooting the Bren Ten again with just two rounds in the mag to see if the mag would engage the slide stop with one round left in the mag. It didn't do that, but now it didn't engage the slide stop. Soooo, after scratching my head a bit and taking down the mag again, I loosened and brought the spring down a little so that the follower was sitting "just right". This fixed my magazine problems. Hopefully it will be a permanent fix. Anybody else experience these problems? Please let me know. The gun is very tight and I really think that after it settles in a bit, it'll be ok...I hope.

I'm going to "break in" the Bren Ten and get back to you all. No time these days, but I hope to go out to the range soon...Saturday.

Jon


Hi Jon,

Okay...don't panic!!! :))
Two things....which lubrcant are you using with the Bren? If memory serves me stainless steel back then wasn't at the advanced stage it is today. Matter of fact I had a AMT Hardballer (piece of shit but that's another story) that had a warning on the box to use lithium grease in the slide rails because of the "exotic" nature of the stainless steel. I suggest you get hold of some Tetra lubricant or even better Militec-1 and put it in the slide rails. Not a lot but enough for them to be wet. Another good lube for the frame rails would be the RIG +p Stainless lube.

Magazines....always a problem with a gun like this where we are struck with using aftermarket replacements for the originals. If you are goig to fire your Bren, tweaking the mags to get them right iof they are aftermarket may be a necessary evil.

Ammo...here's another variable that may have to be tested. While I recommended not using hot loads in the Bren to prevent any frame/slide catastrophies, you may have to go to a "warmer" load to get proper function. Perhaps to the 165 grain loads. The original Norma loads were loaded REAL hot so the one load I would avoid like the plague is the Winchester 175 grain Silvertip load. It is loaded to the same specs as the Norma load and probably should only be shot in Glocks :)

Keep us posted on how you do. You are almost making me want to take my Bren out and fire it...almost ;)

"Dep"
Mike Bonomo
P.S. If Triton gets the Bren in production we may have an answer to the magazine fiasco. I hope!