Excerpt from American Handgunner Magazine...
According to pistolsmith Wayne Novak, full-length recoil spring guides do three things: "Make the gun harder to take apart, change the point of impact and make money for the guy who sells them." None of those are particularly good for the guy who has one in his gun.
When long guide rods first came along they were heralded as magical things that did everything but whistle Dixie. Various gunsmiths touted them as making the gun more reliable, improving accuracy and preventing the recoil spring from binding. Those claims weren't immediately challenged and so, they became accepted as gospel.
If you look at the Government Model pistols sold by custom gunsmiths and some major manufacturers, you'll find that most of them come with a full length guide rod installed. Why? Because customers expect them.
A review of the catalogs of major parts sellers, such as Wilson and Baer, finds no such claims at all. They simply list the variations available.
Now there is one claim that I would not argue with at all-- a little more weight can help with recoil management and there are even tungsten rods that add quite a bit. But the other, alleged benefits are hard to prove.
An awful lot of the things we do to our guns are done to prevent something that might happen. We put the widget in and sure enough, nothing bad happens-- so everybody rushes out to buy widgets. Pretty soon everybody knows that widgets are required if you want your gun to work right.
Of course we must not forget the arbitrary. Full-length guide rods are an excellent example of a solution to a problem we haven't found yet. Here's another one. We are told that bottleneck cartridges are more reliable because they feed better. Oh yeah? I've got two SIG 229s, one in .40 S&W and the other in .357 SIG. Since neither one of them has ever malfunctioned, I'm sure that the .357 SIG is more reliable.
Here is a quote from one parts catalog: "Guide rods smooth out the cycling of the gun and add weight to the muzzle, reducing recoil. Also lengthen the life of your recoil spring."
But if we just stop and look at the Government Model, how the recoil spring works and where it lives, you can see that there really isn't a lot of room for something to go wrong. The barrel and the dust cover of the frame actually define where the spring can go. There's no room for it to kink or bind.
Another stated advantage is that a guide rod makes recoil springs last longer. That sounds logical, but how many of us replace recoil springs at all and, if so, how often? How much does a spring cost and how much longer will one last with a full-length rod compared to a standard rod? My guess is that even if a spring lasted twice as long, it would take awhile to pay for the rod.
Let's look at some numbers for a standard Government Model 45:
The standard recoil spring guide supports 1.5' of the spring.
The recoil spring plug supports another 1.4".
The spring is compressed 2.25" when the gun is assembled.
A relaxed GI spring is 6" long.
Therefore, 0.85" of the spring is not supported and the maximum it could flex is about 0.25" from either the dustcover or the barrel. I'm sorry. I must be missing something, but could that 0.25" of "free floating" spring possibly matter?
Let's look at another aspect. None of the present catalogs make any claims for accuracy improvement, although I recall that some of them once did. However, if you ask most shooters, they'll tell you that guide rods improve accuracy.
As part of another test I had a brand new Springfield Trophy Match. Now I'm a real fan of that gun and think it represents one of the best buys in gundom. They've always been good shooters: reliable and accurate. They also happen to come with a two piece full-length recoil spring guide. So the Trophy Match was mounted in the Ransom Rest and we shot five 10 shot groups at 25 yds. with Black Hills 230 gr. JHP ammo. Here are the results. The average was 1.886".
Then, without removing the frame from the Ransom Rest, the guide rod was replaced with a GI part. The same recoil spring was used. Same song, second verse. The average was 1.718".
You are free to reach your own conclusions about the effect on accuracy, but from a statistical viewpoint, there probably isn't any difference one way or the other.
So here's how I feel about full-length guide rods. If the gun comes with one-- and it doesn't cost extra-- I won't take it out. But if I've got a choice, Mr. Browning's original will do just fine for me.
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