Glock Modifications by Spec Ops

Since Glock is a very popular handgun for law enforcement and gun hobbyist. These retired U.S. special ops have looked at and pushed the envelope on what it can do with a little modifications.
Here’s Larry Vicker of Vickers Tactical and company talking over some mods with the Glocks.

Here’s a quick view of Glock mods from the 3 retired spec ops:

• Glock19 – Tritium Sights front sight, textured surface, Crimson Trace laser
• Glock17 Gen4 – Ameriglow Hackathorn sights, AmeriGlow Hackathorn Sights, Guardian Triggers

The main thing that everyone agreed to modify was the plastic sights, anything with night sights is a huge plus in sighting in quickly.
Ok, back to the Video Transcription:

Vickers: Ok we’re back out here for a little bit of table talk, and the subject is glock modifications. Now, we would all agree, the guns we shoot the most now in classes have all been glocks.

[“Absolutely, absolutely.”]

And that’s a direct byproduct of how popular they are worldwide. Now Ken if you wouldn’t mind, kick off the guns you’ve got, and the mods, and we’ll just take it from there.

Ken: Ok, the gun I probably carry the most in the glock line, I almost have it with me all the time, is a Glock 19. It’s a compact, readily-concealed gun that holds 15 rounds. And on this one, I have the Warren Tactical sights. Tritium front-sight insert. I’m not much for Tritium in the rear. One thing is, from a grip standpoint, it’s got a textured surface. And you and I are both good buddies with Dave Bowie, he does an excellent job of testuring the grip so that it doesn’t slip or slide. This one particular gun I carry a lot has a crimson-trace laser unit on it.

For me, I have a fairly big hand, when I shoot a glock, the slide comes back and cuts grooves in my hands. I’ve actually got scars on each side of the web of my hand from shooting a Glock. Buddy of ours, Frank Royce, sharp guy, he came up with a product called a Grip Force Adapter. And basically it’s a unit that mounts on the rear of the frame. It gives you an extended -if you will, like a beavertail protection- totally fixed the problem. This thing is a godsend.

Vickers: Now Dave, I know you’re a fan of it.
Dave: Right.
Vickers: If you wouldn’t mind, take us through your Glock.
Dave: Today I’m holding my G-17, it’s a Gen4. I have the Ameriglow Hackathorn sights. I have a Guardian trigger made by Jeff Wilson at Glocktriggers.com. Just short of a competition-grade trigger, what it gives you is a little bit of a wall before it breaks. Very nice to, once you get into the trigger, if circumstances change and you have to get back out of the trigger, very easy to accomplish.
Of course I have the Vickers mag button-

Vickers: The new one for Gen4?
Dave: For the Gen4, and I’m also running a rogers grip adapter. It’s basically a magwell, that’s the duel function of it, but what its actual purpose is to allow a higher purchase on the Glock.

Vickers: That rolls into one of the things I like, and this happens to be one of my guns, this happens to be a first-gen glock, did not have the finger grooves, but one of the things I have Bowie do when he customizes my guns is take the finger grooves off. Because I’m not a fan of the finger grooves, and like you said, the finger grooves are great as long as they fit your fingers. When they don’t, it’s a problem.

Ken: One of the single biggest complaints I hear from Glock users, is they would like to see the finger groove go away. They don’t really seem to– they try to make ’em fit the average hand, the problem is there’s no average hand.

Vicker: Absolutely. And you see the texturing like bowie does, and one of the things Glock did to address the fact that the guns can get a little bit slick like in the Gen3 format, with sweaty hands, is that they did this texturing on the Gen4.

Ken: Yeah and the texturing is definitely an improvement from the grip standard. When your hands are sweaty or wet or muddy, or most importantly, bloody. Blood’s like having grease or oil on your hands, the gun can be hard to hold on to. So an adhesive grip surface is an advantage in a fighting gun.

Vicker: One thing we all agree in, you wanna keep factory springs in the striker spring, and the recoil spring. On top of that, you’ve got to clean and lubricate the guns. These guns have kinda got a little myth built around them, you never have to clean them or lubricate them, and that is simply untrue. Now they’re very tolerant to running dirty and somewhat dry, but you don’t want to run ’em that way. Ken you’ve got a pretty good line on that.

Ken: Yeah, you know, I just tell people, ‘you don’t have to take a bath very often either. You can go for months without taking a bath. But you don’t want to be around people like that.’ In my theory, if you’ve got somebody that’s backing you up; brother, officer, teammate, family member, whatever; you want the person who has your life at stake carrying a gun that’s not cleaned or lubricated?

Vicker: Yeah it’s a no-go.

Ken: It’s just stupid.

Vicker: Dave, as we wrap this up, you’re gonna have a glock, what are some of the absolute things you’ve got to sort out, or the modifications you want to do when you use the gun?

Dave: Ok, the primary modification, first thing, is get rid of the factory plastic sights, and get a quality set of sights on the gun. If that was the one thing I would do, that would be it.

Vicker: I agree 100%.

Ken: You know, one last thing, Larry, and I think we all agree, they make glocks in a lot of calibers. But in my opinion, if you own a Glock pistol and you want the best, you want a 9mm.

Vicker: I would agree.

Ken: The gun was built to be a 9mm, they work the best, they last the longest.

Vicker: As a general rule, the Glock17 is kind of the gun that’s kind of the baseline, and if you can live with a gun that size, that’s probably your best choice. If you can’t, and you need something a little smaller, look at the Glock 19. Between those two guns, generally you will get the job done. They’re both great guns, have excellent track records.

Well I hope you got something outta this, this is something we kinda put together real quick, drug out some of our own personal glocks, and we wanted to pass on to you some of the lessons learned that we all have from running these guns.
 

Sources: Vickers Tactical Youtube