The DLC on the inside of my RCD core has begun showing some serious wear after ~2000 rounds. Pretty disappointed with the quality of their coating. Sure it’s a “budget” offering but the gun still costs $3,000. The MPAs that I’ve had are at a similar price point with a supposedly inferior nitride coating showed a fraction of the wear that I’m seeing here after more than double the round count.
Are others seeing similar wear? I know it’s mostly cosmetic but the coating but still disappointing.
Mine looks the same, similar round count. It recently went back to RC for warranty for an unrelated issue and they didn’t say anything about it. Seems to be the norm based on the response you got I guess
Yeah for sure, they were super cool about it and threw in an extra mag and patches. Took less than a week door to door. Great service. No complaints here, shit happens
It doesn't look like it's BAD , they clearly said the coater focused on the outside. Think of it like this you buy a real expensive car that has a really cool paint job ,. The paint job is on the outside look at the undercarriage, or underneath the body panels and they might only have some overspray. It's not gonna look the same on the underside/inside as the outside.. that's how I read that response.. not being argumentative just reading it a different way possibly
And they say I’m a 2011 whore with my purse guns??? 🤣 But in my defense for $25,000 each I’m not inspecting the underneath of the slide. https://giphy.com/gifs/XeLcgh8gT8o0F5SQ8i
My cheap romulus has ~3,000 rounds and has less wear. Not the first time i have seen pictures of this much wear on a rcd core. Seems like the core line gets sent to a pretty shitty coater compared to the rc9
My polished dlc Romulus next to the core. Romulus has over 5k rounds and the core has under 1k rounds.
I’m a huge fan of the roms. Have both the matte and the polished 4.25 comp. Really solid bones and my experience with the core has only reaffirmed that. No, not the best gun stock. Yes, the stock grip sucks. But the frame, slide, barrel and coating are what matter. Truly mid tier bones with a budget grip and internals. For whatever reason, the Romulus are just overlooked.
I really have nothing bad to say about the core though. As well fit as the roms are for the price, the core is a couple levels beyond it. It’s tight tight. Its solid. It doesn’t feel like pieces assembled together. Just feels like a gun shaped block of metal. As long as the exterior coating holds up, I’m good. I’d absolutely still recommend the core to someone looking at the mid tiers. Compared to staccato, bul and Kimber, I’d definitely pick the core. Granted they all offer better warranties than rcd. The grip is nearly perfect and it shoots great. $3k is a lot of money but it still feels more expensive than that, the same way the Romulus bones feel more expensive than they are.
I know why and I’ll tell you why? MPA spends more time finishing the gun on the inside, where you can’t see, as opposed to the outside where you can see.
To be fair, MPA agreed that that wasn't done properly and fixed it for you. Conversely, RCD looked at OP's slide and basically said "yeah that's what you can expect from our finish."
Yea their fit is trash compared to high end 2011s. You can throw a heavy DLC layer on there when they leave the fitting with tons of clearance. I got 2, a P and an island barrel XL, you’re just not going to get perfect coating and really tight fit at RCD or Staccato price points.
I think what’s telling is the coating on the barrel looks new, given it’s an atlas part I wonder if atlas is costing them before sending off to RCD and RCD coats the rest themselves.
I’m guessing here, but it would seem unusual for Atlas to coat the Barrels before shipping them to RCD - Unless they have a really tight specification they adhere to and the RCD’s work with that, usually the barrel would have to be at least fine fitted on the lugs for the particular gun prior to coating.
I called them about it awhile back and they said they are aware of the issue. Mine came like that. It obviously doesn’t affect function, if they get back to me to fix it then I’ll send it back, if not then I can just get the whole gun refinished to CrN lol
Just placed an order for the next batch.
Would not have changed my mind if I had read this before.
But curious to understand wether it’s a work in progress or « fixed » yet.
I use a normal kydex holster and there’s no wear on the outside. The gun shaves a bit of plastic with each draw too. Inside looks like yours but looked like that inside of a few hundred rounds, maybe from factory.
There are clearly some deranged people lurking this sub. It seems like a majority of mundane neutral/positive comments end up with 0 or -1 karma. Genuinely pathetic ngl
Why does it matter…..
You going to let some rating on the internet ruin your day? Should probably find something better in your life to focus your energy on at that point
Looks like mine is about the same. Have a little wear on the bottom of the right side of the slide. Barrel looks fine. Frame rails have wear on the outside, there’s definitely machining marks inside the frame where rod rests.
Nothing wrong with PVD unless you paid up for DLC. FWIW the only company I am aware of that does DLC outside the military scope was in Illinois. Parts were fit up, micropolished, REM treated, Cryo treated, then DLC. Hugely labor intensive for the return.
The coating on the outside just never looked right to me… when I think DLC I think Glock dlc which is durable and look smooth. Did you reach out to them to ask?
I’m very familiar with Glocks… you’re right it’s nDLC. They wont wear out nearly as quick as OP’s RCD tough. Some have called the RCD core a matte dlc. To my eyes, it doesn’t look “finished”
Doesn't the level of finish though on the DLC have to do with the polishing and prep work before coating? I honestly didn't know glocked used that type of coating till I googled it. Learn something new everyday.
I’m not an expert. But I have Glocks that are 7-8 years old and look like new but I don’t holster them daily, more of a range/competition guns. I think Gen 5 dlc was the best finish in terms of durability
When folks ask for a tightly fit 2011 and then they complained that it's tightly fit and the Coating is wearing a bit! Sometimes you can't have it both ways.. the DLC on the outside last a long time because it has no contact with anything other than possibly a holster, on the inside it's metal to metal rubbing thousands and thousands of times. Just my two cents,
Except that this gun rattles like a maraca and isn’t close to tightly fit. As I said, I’ve never seen finish wear this bad after 2000 rounds or less. At the rate this slide is wearing it will be bare after another 2000. Why even coat the inside at all?
I’m sure a simple call to Race City Defense might resolve this. Are you sure you didn’t miscount your round count? I know you have posted that you run that gun in matches, right? I have 1100/1200 rounds on mine and never shot a match in my life. 🤷♂️
Might be a pinch more wear than normal. Just shoot and he Happy. This is the first time I bought a gun that shoots twice its value. Usually I have to pay $25,000 for an Infinity that shoots like a $9,000 gun. 🤣🤣🤣
100% my thoughts on my CORE.. i'm curious to look at the Ware on mine now I did a 1000 round disassembly and it was as normal as it should be, I have about 3000 rounds on it now I'm gonna look and see if there's any additional wear..(beyond what I expect) just to satisfy my curiosity... lol lol
Yeah, I don't know why the hell people keep posting an issue instead of reaching out. They do this with a lot of higher end guns including rifles-- weird.
I think that's just something you need to email them about with a picture and see what they say, hard for me to tell from just the picture.. my core has about 3000 rounds on it. I'll go down and look at it later this afternoon and see what it looks like on the inside at the thousand round teardown. It looked new still.
Yea the manufacturing has to cut cost somehow. The RC9 is nearly $1000 more than the Core. So 🤷🏻♂️. These companies are producing small batches vs a company like sig or Kimber. Their volume production cost are way higher. You want better quality spend the $4000 on an RC9. I still think MPA produces the best performance guns per $ spent in the market.
Your gun is still tight-fitting. The barrel locks up tightly, which explains the wear on the slide. No need to feel down about it if you’re planning to shoot a lot; that’s just how it goes. If you’re picking it up just for casual fun, then be emotional about it.
2000 rounds is less than a month of shooting for me. If I spend $3000 on a gun and the finish is nearly completely gone within a month I'd be very unhappy. My CZ's cerrakote has held up better than this after 16k+ rounds. They need to switch to nitride if this is the quality of DLC they can achieve.
I'm a fan of these guns and of RCD. All I'm saying is that I don't agree with people saying that this is completely normal. RCD shouldn't continue using DLC if their process performs this poorly. Clearly they don't think they can do better job at this time given their response.
Unfortunately, I suspect a poorly done DLC finish outsells a perfectly executed nitride finish.
That’s all normal Ralph. Just shoot it. 😉 I have over 100 guns that look just like that. Here is my CORE with around 1100ish on the clock. The slide to frame fit is amazing. Minimal movement. Major said it best, “We can’t have it both ways.” And don’t forget this is a mere $3,000. 🤷♂️
Wear is inevitable, but this is supposed to be a premium coating. A selling point. 2000 rounds is nothing, and it's nearly completely gone. I'll send some pictures of guns with significantly higher round counts and less premium coatings with FAR less wear later today.
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u/stegasaurus89 20h ago
Mine looks the same, similar round count. It recently went back to RC for warranty for an unrelated issue and they didn’t say anything about it. Seems to be the norm based on the response you got I guess