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Spring Life


Mike62

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I have an almost new Limited Pro 9mm.  I have had the barrel reamed, added 12lb PD hammer spring and did a quick 30 minute polish on all the parts.  It runs phenomenal now.  My question is how often do I need to replace all the springs in the gun?  With my Glock's I replaced all the springs every 10K and never had an issue, I would like to setup a similar maintenance cycle to track to.

 

Thanks

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An email i got from Eric G., said he swaps  his "light"  springs before every competition. 

 

Joe at Patriot Defense said refresh every 5000 rounds fired.  i think that's a bit conservative, but safe. Very safe.  i do think the weaker the spring used, the sooner it needs to be replaced. Losing 1 pound from a 10# hammer spring could be catastrophic where 1# loss from a 15.5# isn't noticed.

 

I dry fire 5 days a week year round and shoot 3-500 training  rounds plus 1-200 in competition in a week during our short miniscule brief fleeting season.  But, i mess around with the gun guts so often, i have zero clue how many rounds are on each gun's springs. (I have 4 total).

 

My "opinion" is 10,000 is a good rule of thumb for hammer springs. But i would also have a second set to use for major / important matches. Swap them in 5-7 days before the match and swap out after. Cheap insurance, imho.

 

Recoil, FP return, sear, trigger are probably good for annual maintenance or 20k rounds (maybe more.)

 

But the above is based on "feelings", NOT data from cycling the springs and measuring the change in force!

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It depends a lot on what springs you're running, too. I think Johnbu is right about that.

 

If you're running a 14 with Federals, it would go a year and still probably be stronger than a 10 was in the first place.

 

Of course... if you're running it with CCIs you won't have nearly as much margin for wear.

 

An annual re-springing with a hammer spring in the middle of the season sounds like a solid plan. If it was a CZ, I'd do the trigger spring halfway too, but I don't believe Tanfoglio guns break trigger springs like the CZ does. (I know we don't have to carry spare slide stops like they do.)

Edited by MemphisMechanic
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Springs are cheap compared to a match that you flew across the country for and saved up a years worth of hiding money from your wife to attend..... all thrown away because of a broken or worn out spring.

 

Seriously though, springs fatigue over time and loose their elasticity which in turn gives a much weaker spring rate than advertised. We did quite a bit of testing with all kinds of springs to see about were these springs begin to loose life. The 5,000-8,000 cycle range was when most began to loose force due to fatigue. We recommend every 5,000 rounds and I'm sure your thinking "well of course you do you sell them". That is true, however I like having a safety factor built into everything to help minimize failure. We noticed springs begin to fatigue at 5,000 cycles; some much keeper than others depending what kind of load their dealing with and how quickly they receive and release that energy. At the end of the day if you are trying to penny pinch I would not save money by skipping out on the hammer spring, recoil spring, and trigger return spring. 

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5 minutes ago, PatriotDefense said:

Springs are cheap compared to a match that you flew across the country for and saved up a years worth of hiding money from your wife to attend..... all thrown away because of a broken or worn out spring.

 

Seriously though, springs fatigue over time and loose their elasticity which in turn gives a much weaker spring rate than advertised. We did quite a bit of testing with all kinds of springs to see about were these springs begin to loose life. The 5,000-8,000 cycle range was when most began to loose force due to fatigue. We recommend every 5,000 rounds and I'm sure your thinking "well of course you do you sell them". That is true, however I like having a safety factor built into everything to help minimize failure. We noticed springs begin to fatigue at 5,000 cycles; some much keeper than others depending what kind of load their dealing with and how quickly they receive and release that energy. At the end of the day if you are trying to penny pinch I would not save money by skipping out on the hammer spring, recoil spring, and trigger return spring. 

Recoil and/or Hammer spring? I'm thinking 5000 hammer falls during dry fire isn't much.

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10 hours ago, mjmagee67 said:

Recoil and/or Hammer spring? I'm thinking 5000 hammer falls during dry fire isn't much.

 

If your pulling the trigger (DA) in dry firing your still putting fatigue on the hammer spring. It's the loading and unloading of the Spring that breaks its elasticity down. It doesn't matter if it's live fire or dry fire, if the spring is loaded and unloaded it's a cycle. 

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^ what he said.

 

In physical terms, the greater the bending motion, the faster the wear out mechanism.  The greater the number of coils the longer the spring will last (assuming same alloy and heat treatment).  That's because the relative bending motion is less on the spring with the longer wire (more coils).

 

If you dry fire a bunch (and we all should, right?),  having a hammer spring for DF and practice firing and one for matches is a good practice.  It's really just a couple minutes to swap hammer springs and before important matches a detail clean and lube is being done anyway.... right?  For me,  that makes more sense as there is no way I'm organized or OCD enough to track every hammer drop! 

Edited by johnbu
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5-10k sounds really conservative but I guess if you start running on the edge then you don't have any room to move.

 

I have two seasons on a cut Wolff 14 lb hammer spring. Somewhere between 30-40k live fire so far + dry fire. Never had a problem using Win primers but they are seated in a 1050. 

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I did this a while ago. PD 10# hammer spring in my primary.  i ran it that way for a month and 2 local matches. 4# DA (3&3/4 to 4&1/4) which was "nice". The SA was however only 15oz. A bit "twitchy" some might say. Actually cost me a on a WHO classifier segment as it went bang and missed the target during trigger prep (there isn't any prep! Touch it and it fires).

 

As you can imagine, cleaning intervals with that setup are MUCH more important than with a factory hammer spring. There isn't much  whack force and none to spare fighting residue  in the action.

 

Oh, it was 100% with Federal match primers set 0.005" deep. probably around 2500-3000 run.   it didn't like S&B primers though.  lol.

Edited by johnbu
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  • 4 months later...

All springs "take a set".  my Rule of Thumb is cycle out the spring when they lose 2 coils of length.  Of course,  I'd have to take them out and look... which i don't do frequently.  i also check trigger pull force every couple months during a cleaning. When the force drops, time to investigate.

 

The other rule is to replace old with new before major matches.  the gun in question is heading to scholastic action shooting program nationals.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The PD trigger spring tension stayed very consistent after it initially took set right up until it just broke.  It lasted well into the end of the recommended service life at around 8000 trigger pulls.

Edited by NWfront
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Unless you're into round counting, both dry and real-fire, then I think a schedule is a good time to change them out.

For the heavily used gun, maybe every six months. For the not so heavily used, once a year.

A spring change just before that big shoot isn't a bad idea, either.

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1 hour ago, MikieM said:

A spring change just before that big shoot isn't a bad idea, either.

I almost learned this the hard way when my spring broke on the second to last round of live fire practice 2 days before the match.  

Edited by NWfront
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52 minutes ago, NWfront said:

I almost learned this the hard way when my spring broke on the second to last round of live fire practice 2 days before the match.  

 

Tell me about it. I once had a condom break and had to pay child support for the next eighteen years. Oh, the humanity! :lol:

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53 minutes ago, MikieM said:

 

Tell me about it. I once had a condom break and had to pay child support for the next eighteen years. Oh, the humanity! :lol:

 

You should really change condoms every three to six months whether you need to or not :roflol:

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