[Unclenick]

DMK,

I didn't spot any obvious battering in your photos, but you should look for it with eyes and by finger tip feel, both. You can glue 320 grit wet/dry paper to a piece of 5/8" cold rolled steel rod and use it and a little oil to iron over the slide lug recesses and level any peening there. On the barrel careful use of a fine file loaded with chalk to keep the cut smooth will take care of high spots.

Edge breaking is a common tune up technique for reliability packages. You do it to both the barrel and the slide so you have mating surface corners that are angled to slip off of each other rather than try to bite. The reason you can get away with it is there is excess engagement in the gun. Hallock's book puts the break at the front edges in the 1911 to make camming into battery easier and he limits the chamfer to 25% of the lug height. I'm not suggesting you go that far. Just a couple or three light passes with a fine triangle file on the barrel lugs and breaking the edges. Not a lot more than dulling the edge.

Another thing you can try is to re-purpose the old S$W revolver armorer's school trick of making up a slurry of JB Bore Compound and well shaken (to get the Teflon into suspension) Break Free CLP. Slather that into the locking lugs, assemble the gun upside down as you had it in the test, then just open and close it a bunch of times. This not only polishes the dragging surfaces, but works the Teflon down into them, which leaves them sort of waxy. I've done this with other Teflon bearing products, too.

Those two actions won't hurt anything, but if you still can't get it to behave, then getting a correct link in place becomes necessary to figure out.