A Red Dot Sight For My New EDC!
I recently picked up a new gun to play with, a Taurus G3C, and it ended up working its way into my EDC (everyday carry) rotation. I love carry optic pistols, and it turns out that mounting an RDS (red dot sight) on a Taurus G3C was pleasantly simple, minus one little hiccup I experienced that hopefully isn’t a common issue other people will encounter. But I’ll get into that a little further below.
With the booming popularity of slide-mounted optics on carry pistols, there are now many options, both in optic-compatible pistols and in the available red dot sights on the market. In this article, I focus on installing a Holosun 407C red dot sight on a Taurus G3C T.O.R.O. (Taurus Optic Ready Option) slide.
The combination of the Taurus G3C T.O.R.O. setup and the Holosun 407C RDS offers an extremely attractive value buy to the newer shooter looking to get into an affordable multi-roll pistol (for everyday carry and home defense) and RDS.
The G3C offers a great feature set in a budget pistol with excellent quality, making it viable for both new and veteran shooters. Holosun’s optic offerings also provide value options, and I particularly like the 407 and 507 lines with their side-load battery trays. I purchased the G3C T.O.R.O. kit directly from Taurus on their website.
Your Tools & Work Area
The only tools and materials you will require for the installation are:
- Quality screwdriver set with multiple hex bits.
Not necessarily required but highly recommended are:
- Torque driver in in-lbs.
- Blue/medium thread locker.
I also highly recommend that you have a clean, organized area to perform this kind of work so that you can keep track of all of your small parts and fasteners.
What's In the Box? What's In the Box!?!
The kit is pretty comprehensive and includes an assembled slide (with all of the “guts,” minus the barrel and recoil spring assembly that quickly swap out of your existing G3C slide), multiple mounting plates to accommodate a range of RDS, a selection of mounting screws, and instructions with a page covering what plates and screws to use with specific optics.
The G3C T.O.R.O. kit comes fully assembled with the striker and springs already installed and a “slide cover plate” over the optic cut portion of the slide. The slide cover plate is secured with two screws that are required to be removed in order to remove the blank plate to exchange it for a mounting plate. This is where I ran into my one little hiccup during this operation.
Getting the Business Done
One of the two screws on my slide was stuck and stripped out immediately. It took a combination of heat, some now broken easy-out broken-bolt extractors, time, cursing, and eventually a hammer and larger hex bit to extract the stripped-out screw from my slide. This was a less-than-fun operation. I'm not kidding about the cursing!
Once that slide cover plate was successfully removed, the process of installing the Holosun 407C couldn’t be easier! Per the instructions, I selected plate #2 of the four-plate set and indexed it onto the optic cut on the slide. Next, I placed the 407C onto the adapter plate and, per the instructions, secured it using two of the screws provided by Holosun with the 407C optic.
The Holosun 407C requires the #2 plate from the T.O.R.O. kit to be used. Simply index it properly and drop it into place on the slide in the optic cut.
Then drop your optic, in this case the Holosun 407C, into place on your mounting plate.
Taurus’s instructions are a little confusing as far as torque specs for the screws are concerned. On the product page on the Taurus website, it calls out a torque spec, in highlighted red text, of 10.5 in-lbs. The instruction manual included with the T.O.R.O. slide calls for the screws to be tightened to 8.2 in-lbs. To make it even more confusing, I believe the Holosun instructions spec 15 in-lbs.
For those not familiar, an “ugga-dugga” is the torque measurement for tightening something so hard you can’t get it off, and you’ll probably strip or break the fastener. Watch out, folks, I’m a professional! HAHAHAHA!
You can either use the tool included with the Holosun optic, or...
...or use a hand driver and quality bits.
But that’s all that is required to install a Holosun 407C on a Taurus G3C T.O.R.O. slide! It’s a pretty simple operation that most people should be able to accomplish with basic tools at home. Once the optic is mounted on the slide, all one has to do is install the barrel and recoil spring assembly and reinstall the slide onto their G3C.
If installing an optic on the G3C T.O.R.O. pistol, reinstall the barrel and recoil spring assembly. If you are installing the optic on the T.O.R.O. slide kit, simply transfer your barrel and recoil spring assembly over from the new T.O.R.O. slide to your new T.O.R.O. slide.
I used a laser training insert/cartridge to roughly zero my optic and then fine-tuned it at the range until I was happy with my point of impact. After roughly 800 to 1000 rounds of 115-grain Blazer 9mm and 124-grain Blazer 9mm, I haven’t experienced any shift in point of impact with the red dot, so I am confident in this mounting system and have no qualms carrying it.
All done, and ready to hit the range for zeroing!
After installation of the Holosun 407C on the G3C T.O.R.O. slide, I achieved a rough zero at 10 yards with a laser training cartridge insert in the pistol. I was pretty happy with the results after several rapid-fire drills.
