So, kind of the opposite situation. Most people report their Glocks are reliably flawless. But that doesn't negate your experience, certainly.
My very first pistol was a Gen 2 Glock 19. Circa 1996. I still have it. It has been flawless with an estimated 10k rounds through it. The trigger spring did break at about 9k, though. It cost me $2.12 (no kidding) to have it replaced by the gunsmith onsite, labor included! (That was before I started building. I know how to do that now!
)
In closing, I don't agree with your assertion that the consensus here is
"ONLY OEM will do." The bottom line is whether each of us gets each of our builds up and running. My dad has long said,
"Don't argue with success." The truth is we can be successful either way.
My first Glock was also a Gen-2 G19, a little older than yours, with zero-point-ZERO malfunctions from new 'til now. I don't have that kind of round-count through it, but the ONLY issue ever on this was when handing it over to an inexperienced shooter they limp-wristed it and got some BTF (stock "336" Ejector...
). For me, it throws brass like a city-park sprinkler: everywhere.. But reliably OUT of the gun, so I'm not complaining.
@Callducks7 , we all know your preferences for NOT Glock parts, you have made your position very clear, and I have no problem with that. In fact, thank you for your input and advocacy for alternate brands. But it doesn't mean you have to take it personally and call a well-respected Community Member a liar when their experiences don't match yours, and they don't like the same things you do. Everyone has taken an open-minded approach and listened to each others' experiences or at least had an 'agree to disagree' attitude on this thread until this.
Hey, I was a bit against the stream too when I continued to use Lone Wolf UPKs even after we started seeing a run of bad Strikers from them -I believe they simply had a few bad batches of those parts due to the increased volume of production during the lock-downs. Or possibly some of their old poor-quality parts had resurfaced again due to higher demand... But I can tell you one of my 10mm Strikers would have broken as well if I hadn't noticed that the tip was slightly 'cupped' to the right, and the edges were rubbing against the Striker-opening in the Breach Face. I smoothed the edges down and removed just enough material to keep the tip from impacting the Breach Face, eliminating the side-load that would have eventually lead to failure. Yes, a less experienced Builder might have missed that detail, and I could sprain my arm trying to pat myself on the back for figuring out the problem, but the point is that we are talking about THOUSANDS of Builds here on this Forum -so you have 13,
wow... That makes you the sole expert on P80-brand parts, you like them so they must all be flawless?
Shall I get defensive about LWD Strikers because I still use them (the old ones I have -I don't buy from them anymore) and I was smart enough to figure out what was going to break mine and fixed it first (hopefully)? Does that mean the ONLY way they could fail was the same way mine would have? Being honest, my Striker was just as defective as any other that a Builder had break on them -the fact that I LOOKED for a problem is actually credited to the fact that I LOOKED because of reports of so many other failures, it was other people sharing their experiences that taught me to look for a problem, not my own gun-smithing skills, and it doesn't make me an expert on LWD Striker failures. I wish I could even say it means mine will never break now, but I do not know that.
"Billet steel"... So what does that actually mean? Nothing, it means precisely Jack Shit, it means they took a chunk of steel of some unknown quality, of some alloy -do you even know what alloy they used?- and machined the Striker completely from that instead of casting or forging the primary shape and dimensions, and machining just the small details. Does it mean the chunk of steel isn't porous? No.. Does it mean it was heat-treated properly? No.. Does it mean the machining is correctly radiused in all the inside corners to reduce stress-risers? No.. Does it mean the Striker tip can't work-harden and break? No.. Does it mean the Striker tip is so perfectly aligned that it can't impact or rub the Breach Face opening, like my LWD Striker did? No.. So, "Billet Steel", so what? They can break too...
Personally, I hope we all stay open-minded enough to know that other people have different experiences, parts are manufactured in batches and some batches may have Quality Control issues, plus every Build is different and many (if not most) aftermarket parts have different tolerance-ranges from Glock or from each other, and that doesn't make other Builders with experiences different from our own 'wrong' or 'liars'. Have a good day.