HIVIZ Smith&Wesson 617 Fiber Optic Front Sight (Red)

After being unable to locate a fiber optic front sight for my Taurus Tracker model 990, 22lr; I took the advice of another reviewer, and, purchased this one. After removing the original front sight, I measured the thickness of the base of the blade. I then honed a little off of the thickness of the base of the new sight to match, and, drilled a hole for the original retaining pin. I had a solid fit that only required minor elevation adjustment at the rear sight to shoot “dead on”. The sight is brighter than a non-fiber optic, but, not as bright as other HI-VIZ sights I’ve owned. It’s not really designed to change out the fiber rod if you wanted a different color, but, I may attempt to replace the pale red one with a green color of similar size anyway, (though not originally intended for this sight). Overall, this is still a better sight than Taurus currently offers, but, I would recommend having a qualified gunsmith install it.

This sight is awesome; the standard front sight is hard to pick up on a dark target. They recommend Gunsmith installation but if you are handy you can do this in your shop. Anytime working with firearms make sure they are unloaded, keep them pointed in a safe direction and finger off the trigger.You need a roll pin punch to drive the old pin out, had to file a little off both sides of the new sight down a bit to fit, once in the grove drilled the same size hole in the new sight and put the roll pin back in, only had to adjust the sight one click down to be right back in the bullseye.I teach the Ohio CCW course and this is one of the firearms I use for the class, both in class and at the live fire range, the HiViz front sight has made it a lot easier for students to get the correct sight picture as the original front sight was sometimes hard to pick up for them, would love to see a replacement for the rear of the 617 as lining up 3 dots is an even easier option when lining up the [email protected]