RIA Tactical 9mm- finally cleaned

I have been chronicling my RIA's shooting to see how it would fair. Today I fired 144 more rounds through the Rock, consisting of 55 124gr LRN reloads and 89 Tula 115gr FMJs. Total round count after this shooting session was 549 rounds without cleaning. The gun was still running fine all day today, I just finally cleaned it out of boredom. I feel this gun has proven its reliability at this point, and I see no point in testing its uncleaned longevity further.

I noticed no irregular wear patterns or high points while breaking it down today, and it cleaned up rather quickly and easily. I did not clean the bore, but I did clean the chamber. Counting the frangible ammo I fired, this gun has 389 jacketed rounds through it, with the remainder being lead. The only reason so many jacketed rounds made it through this gun is that A) I've been too busy to reload like a should, and B) what reloading I've done has consisted of those frangible bullets.

With a good lead load, I find bore cleaning to be a very infrequent chore that is only necessary once in a great while, and is done easily with a nylon brush and some hoppes 9.  The bore is still in good shape, but is starting to show some copper build up. When it gets to about a thousand rounds in total, I may give the bore some attention, but until then - I just consider it seasoning.

All said and done, the gun went 549 rounds with only 1 failure to feed on the second round of the first magazine ever fired. That is plenty reliable for me, especially considering it did it all without cleaning. Moreover, I really prefer this gun with heavy for caliber bullets. I prefer a 6 o'clock hold, and the only ammo that gets me significantly above the front sight for POI over POA is 147 gr ammo. the 124gr stuff is really pretty close to POI = POA, and the 115gr stuff is a touch low at most practical distances.

I still maintain that this gun is an excellent buy, and have yet to find a shooter who doesn't find it controllable and pleasant to play around with. Today I was doing target transitions and multiple shots for speed, and the only other shooters who could keep up had to switch to rimfires to make the head-to-head shooting competitive.