Weapon

I was on the verge of ordering a -S a few days ago and then got distracted by another project. I always seem to have a half dozen projects going at the same time so I often end up bouncing from one to the next and then forcing myself to finish those before ordering anything else. For the last couple weeks, they have mostly been knives and sheaths for some reason even though I have already finished more of those than I could ever wear out in two lifetimes.

Whoops - in the previous post regarding the drop plunger spring, I said that Springer Precision makes a drop plunger spring for Caniks…that should have been Sprinco instead. It is sometimes listed as a “Sprinco Walther competition firing pin safety plunger spring” but it is compatible with the “Walther PPQ, P99, PDP, and Canik TP, METE, & Rival Series.”

I was caught off guard when the CF forum vanished as I had been absolutely buried at work and had no idea it was about to happen. So much great info about Caniks and other firearms just disappeared overnight. Oof. Luckily, I still had back ups of most of the photos for my threads so re-creating them isn’t nearly the headache it could have been. I think my Canik tuning threads on CF for all of the different models added up to over 50 pages of various tips and tweaks for them with a few dozen pics. Taking all of the pics was the most time consuming part to write those threads the first time around - if I didn’t still have them, starting over from scratch likely wouldn’t have happened. In any event, thank you for the feedback - I am glad to hear you have found my (often long winded) ramblings on Caniks useful. They are great pistols right out of the box but with just a few tune ups that don’t really take all that much time, money or effort, they can run with guns that cost several times as much.

Glove is a solid plan. The first time I took one off, I was thinking it would be about like a Glock striker spring. lol - no. I had a bit of gun lube residue on my fingers so of course it slipped and it did some nice finger tip damage. Those were ridiculously overpowered. I always wondered if those striker springs were partly (or maybe mostly) responsible for the failures with their original MIM firing pins as I had swapped out striker springs in mine almost immediately once I found the ones for Glock would fit and I never had an MIM firing pin fail. I still upgraded to the machined ones when they came out.

The point on the underside of the earlier ejector housings that needed a bit of a tune up before they switched to the ejector blocks that have a mostly polymer frame:

When it comes to the factory drop plunger and drop plunger spring, they can obviously benefit from a new spring and some polishing (at least if you are using your SFx for competition purposes). Pic below is the usual finish on the drop plunger as well as the post-SDU drop plunger spring. Remember when everyone on YouTube lost their minds after they discovered the Sig P320 could go bang if you dropped it and then started putting pistols into bench vises and whacking them with dead blow hammers to see if they could get a primer to go off? Yeah. Canik’s response was the SDU (severe duty upgrade) which involved upgrading the trigger safety spring to the heavier (pretty red) spring and the drop plunger spring to the heavier (pretty blue) spring. [insert Godzilla grade face palm here] Both springs made getting a really smooth and light trigger pull more of a pain. Luckily, the drop plunger spring is an easy fix - use a Ghost Glock RP plunger spring or order one from Springer Precision as that blue spring sucks. From there, clean up all the molding lines on the drop plunger itself as the factory finish is about as smooth as using 80 grit sand paper in place of Charmin extra soft in the middle of a pandemic.

The area on the top of the trigger bar that makes contact with the bottom of the ejector block is the section between these two points in the pics below. Run the edge of your thumbnail down it and see if there are any snags or if it feels rough, if so, polish it:

My current SFx Rival and SFx. I still haven’t added the silicon carbide to the Rival (it now has a Talon granulate grip) as I have been debating an upgrade to the -S but you can see what the modded grip looks like on the SFx.

Moving down just slightly on the trigger bar from the previous pic, the round bump on the trigger bar is another point of contact as it rides against the inside of the frame during the trigger pull. Older Caniks had some texturing on the inside of the frame where that bump made contact and that added a gritty feel to the trigger pull as you were dragging that over a rough surface. It was particularly annoying on the DA/SA Caniks like the V2 and early DAs (kinda said the same thing twice there as the TP9V2 was basically the first TP9DA). In any event, all of the newer Caniks I have seen now have a smooth texture on the inside of the frame where this part of the trigger bar makes contact. Once the trigger bar is out of the pistol, you can check that area and you will likely be able to see a faint line in the frame where it makes contact. If you have a pre-2018ish SFx that you haven’t shot much, it may still have a textured surface on the frame here. 1500grit can be used to smooth it out but it usually breaks in pretty quickly as that wear point is metal vs. polymer. While Canik fixed the texture on the frame, the surface on that bump is sometimes still a little rough. You can polish it or just add a thin film of gun grease to it.

The other part to clean up on the trigger bar’s rear tab is the outer flat on that tab. It can make contact with the slide and induce a slight bit of drag. If you look closely at the following pic, right above the tip of the orange point, you can actually see a rub line where that contact has been taking place. Does polishing just this point really make a difference? Every little bit adds up to a considerable change in the total pull weight and/or making the trigger reset smoother and more positive. The #2 split ring mod mentioned in the first post reduces tension in the trigger return spring so all of this polishing works in both ways: reduced triggers pull and smoother, more positive trigger reset. If you flip the slide over, you will see a small curved cutout which may have a minor wear mark. That is the area this tab can make contact with. If you want to let your tuning OCD run wild, you can lightly polish that area with a Dremel, felt wheel and polishing compound but a very thin film of gun grease in that area is usually enough.

You just have to pull the striker spring down far enough and then lift out one side at a time. Not sure this trick still works on current models but you used to be able to put the back of the striker into the the cutout in the slide (with the striker upside down and backwards) and it would hold it in place to help you fight the spring down far enough to get the cups off. Put a piece of masking tape over the top back of your slide or you can scratch it in the process. It is much easier to deal with once you have a lighter striker spring installed. If you have an older Canik with the original massively overpowered striker spring, trying to pull the spring down by hand will just about wear out your fingertips.

Trigger bar. This can be polished up with a Dremel with a felt wheel and some fine polishing compound (Flitz will work) or a small piece of 1500 grit 3M wet/dry. The top edge of the front tab on the trigger bar is in the pic. It disengages the drop safety plunger during the trigger pull so if there is any roughness here it will make the pull feel gritty. The top edge of the rear tab should also be checked and polished up as needed.

The original thread included a rather long section on tools and how to detail strip an SFx as there was next to nothing about how to take down Caniks online at that time. Now, there are probably at least a couple dozen YouTube videos on how to take them apart. As such, I am going to skip all of that. As mentioned in the previous posts, once you have your SFx taken down, one of the first places to check for polymer burrs that can affect the trigger pull are around the trigger slot in the frame. One to check very closely is the exact spot the trigger safety has to clear to disengage. My first SFx had the oddest little snag in the trigger pull that I couldn’t track down and this spot was where it was hiding. It was just a very small polymer burr on the edge that was left over from molding. While you have the trigger out, check that edge all the way around for the same type of burrs as they can drag on the sides of the trigger. It’s easy to fix - just wrap a small piece of 1000 grit 3M wet dry paper around a small, flat needle file and clean up all of those edges if they have burrs on them. The exact spot to check for drag on the trigger safety is in the pic (right at the tip of the orange pointy thing):

Thanks. I was trying to edit it from an iPhone and that option doesn't show up in my phone browser for whatever the reason. Easy enough to find on a laptop though.

Before diving into pics and info on tuning up the SFx, the first question many seem have about Caniks is “why tune up the trigger? It’s already really good from the factory” For a striker fired, factory trigger, they are really good but they can be much better especially if you are using a model that still has the factory standard plastic trigger but even the Rival series aluminum triggers can be improved considerably. For starters, the Freedomsmith triggers greatly reduce overtravel and take up if either of those annoy you with the factory triggers. As for the factory trigger pull, the standard SFx or SFx Rival are typically somewhere between 3lbs 13oz and 4lbs with a some coming in a little under that from the factory. Just to manage expectations on the front end: 3.0lbs is easy - anyone should be able to get here with just a couple of spring swaps. 2.5lbs - also fairly easy to achieve with any Canik by swapping springs, some good gun lube and maybe polishing a couple parts. 2.0lb - spring swaps, polishing all contact points, a Freedomsmith trigger and the #2 split ring mod will get to right at 2.0lbs. It takes a little more effort but it’s entirely possible. Anything under 2.0lbs requires more attention to detail and possibly cleaning up all of the components inside the ejector block (which can be a bit annoying to get back together). I have been able to get my SFx trigger to run reliably with a trigger pull as low as 1lb 3oz to 1lb 4oz but it has to be really clean and well lubed to stay in that range. If I don’t clean it and let the goop build up, it will slow increase until it kind of levels off at around 1lb 12oz to 1lb 13oz which still feels incredibly light when you have very little take up or overtravel. Only two issues to worry about when reducing the trigger pull: 1. Safety - it is easy to get a Canik trigger into the scary light zone. I have let a number of very experienced shooters try mine and it’s not unusual for them to bring up the pistol and then get a “click” before they were expecting it. The surprised expression and raised eyebrow is always a give away. Lots of dry fire and other practice is recommended before you try to run a 2.5lb or lighter Canik trigger in a match. 2. Light strikes - not really a major concern until you get down to a 28 Newton striker spring or less unless you are using really hard primers. As you can still get a really light pull with a 6.5lb striker spring, the only reason to go lower is if you are trying to run a really light recoil spring and you have issues with the slide fully returning to battery. With a 6.5lb striker spring that will usually happen at <13lb recoil spring.

Absolutely - not entirely sure how that happened other than I was opening and closing the page while I was writing it to respond to texts and that edit: oddly enough, I do not see a setting for changing the font size so edit edit: pics are currently too large, working on scaling them down.

I have a new and improved back injury that has me out of commission for a few days so I thought I would try to recreate (at least to some degree) my original thread on tuning the SFx which was on the Canik Fanatik forum until that forum vanished into the mist several months ago. Preface: this is for informational purposes only. If you do not have the skills or tools required to do any of the upgrades/modifications mentioned in the following posts, please take your pistol to a qualified gunsmith (maybe with a print out of this to save them some time if they have never tried to tune up a Canik). *takes off attorney hat* I am fairly sure most people in this forum do not need an “intro to pistol tune-ups” starter course but I will cover any questions if any of this doesn’t make sense to anyone. I will also try to add some pics as time and forum limitations allow as pics are always worth a thousand words…and I happen to have a really high speed bright orange pointy thing that is great for showing exactly what needs to be modded and where. The general outline: My standard SFx setup for the TP9SFx (version 1.0). Note: Some of this will be different for newer models as Canik has changed quite a few things on their pistols since I first started playing with them and there are definitely some differences with the original models (like an early 2016 SFx) when compared to a Rival or Mete. I will cover those changes where necessary as I also have an SFx Rival, SA mod 2, a V2, an SF, an SF Elite, an SFx Mete and a Canik55 Shark-C in hard chrome with a bunch of Cajun Gun Works upgrades. Okay, that last one is an entirely different series that has nothing to do with this but I felt like pointing out I had one just to annoy people who didn’t buy one for cheap when they could have… Moving right along. Parts: 1. Freedomsmith trigger. Yes, I know the Rival series has a flat faced trigger that’s blah blah blah as I have thrown several of them in the spare parts bin as they are still not on par with the Freedomsmiths in terms of take up, over travel, etc. How do I know this? I have compared them side by side and then swapped back and forth between triggers in the same gun and measured everything you can measure when it comes to a trigger. Freedomsmith “for teh win” as annoying youngsters used to say on the Internets and the YouTubes. (Yes, I am poking fun at them as well as how old I am at the same time…a small confession: I borrowed “the YouTubes” from Maxine Waters as it has really impressive cringe value). Anyhoo… You can also order a number of different trigger shapes from Freedomsmith that will spoil your trigger finger. I have one of their first Fat Daddy triggers and while it was a huge upgrade from the original Canik trigger, it is more suited for people with larger hands/longer fingers (aka me). However, my current favorite is their Zombie Pro which also happens to make almost everyone happy in terms of trigger reach and overall feel. There is just something about the contours of it that guide your fingertip right to the trigger safety that’s dead center of the trigger face and you don’t have to have really large hands with overly long fingers to hit the trigger safety. As such, if you suffer from Girlyman-Hobbit hand syndrome (not a real thing) or just happen to have smaller hands, the Zombie Pro design might be the one for you. If you have really small hands, their classic curved version might be the way to go as it has an even shorter reach - I have one of those on my TP9SF and really like it as well. In any event, IMHO, the FS triggers are definitely a valuable upgrade…and, no, I don’t get any type of kickback or other benefit from them for saying that. Edit for an admission: I had entirely forgotten about it, but I did get one free trigger from Freedomsmith years ago for a review on the CF forum - it was actually sent to one of the other moderators and he sent it to me for a TP9 SF carry build project I was working on at the time. It was one of their first classic curved models and I had already purchased two or three of their other triggers for Caniks and their excellent SAR9 trigger they offered at that time. (Note to Freedomsmith: if you wanna send me some free stuff to play around with, my DMs are open ) 2. Springs - I still use the same ones I posted on CF so many moons ago. Specifically, a Ghost Glock 6.5lb striker spring, a Ghost Glock G17 RP block plunger spring and a factory trigger return spring modded with the addition of a #2 oval split ring (only for use with a Freedomsmith trigger). For those that have never seen this mod (I am shocked as I posted it years ago ), it’s basically just what it sounds like - adding a small #2 oval split ring to the loop on the trigger return spring that hooks onto the trigger bar hook to slightly reduce tension on that spring and reduce trigger pull…possibly into spooky light trigger territory. “Omg! What could that possibly do? It sounds unsafe!” For starters, it can take about .75-1lb off the trigger pull and a #2 split ring is rated to handle far more weight than the spring you are adding it to. Don’t believe me? Take a factory trigger return spring and try to stretch it a little using a couple pairs of pliers and a bit of a tug…you will pop the loop end right out of that sucker without much effort. Now try stretching a #2 split ring with the same pliers…good luck. 3. Guide rod and spring: the W74 tungsten guide rod with a Wolff 14lb Colt Commander spring (traditional version - not the variable version). This works great for me but you obviously may need to tweak the recoil spring poundage to your liking and ammo as recoil is subjective, everyone has their own end of the magic rainbow sweet spot and blah blah blah. (Note: I did receive my first W74 tungsten guide rod for free through various channels and I have no clue if they even realized it was going to me when they sent it. My original review of it is now lost along with the rest of the CF forum so here is the short version as to whether or not I really liked it: I bought their guide rods for my other Caniks through their website at full retail prices and never mentioned it was me buying them before I placed my order so I got zero discount) Anyway, my ammo is typical CO pf loaded stuff that is right at 129-130pf for minor power factor and the 14# spring is the flattest shooting I have found for me...your mileage may vary. Play with every # option Wolff (or you favorite spring manufacturer) offers from 13-17lbs or so and find the best one for you. Make sure you take a video of it so you can see which one is actually the flattest shooting…then show it to your spouse and her family and her friends so they can start talking about whether they need to organize a surprise intervention regarding your gun tuning addiction. Note on Caniks and recoil springs. They cock the striker when the slide is in its last few millimeters of movement. The striker spring is actually fighting the recoil spring at this point in the slide’s movement and you may discover this if you try to use a really light recoil spring with the factory striker spring. This was much more of a problem before Canik lightened up their striker springs some as their original striker spring was nothing less than extreme. I am fairly sure it was designed to fire a softball into low Earth orbit. Fortunately, they have lightened up their striker springs a bit so it’s less of a problem but if you want to go with a really light recoil spring you will still almost certainly have to swap out to a lighter striker spring or you will get failures to feed when the slide doesn’t have quite enough forward velocity to fully load the round while also compressing the striker spring. Note on striker springs as I have tried basically every one imaginable at this point: - Glock 28 Newton (red) spring. This is the lightest you can go without running into light strikes almost immediately. It is best used with really soft primers like Federal Gold Medal match small pistol primers. Over time, it will get lighter and you will have to swap it out for another one or risk light strike problems. It is a reliability risk. That one light strike at a really wrong moment in a stage can wreck your match. - Wolff 6lb Glock striker spring. I find this spring can behave really oddly when used in a Canik (after all, we are using it in a pistol it was not designed to be used in). They are longer than several other Glock striker springs and give the trigger pull kind of an odd feel to it (obviously, that’s subjective and just my opinion). - Ghost 6.5lb Glock Striker spring - as stated above, my favorite. It’s got enough thump behind it to avoid light strikes with any decent primer but still let’s you use lighter recoil springs. - Glock 31 Newton (blue) striker spring. Heavier than the ones above. Probably as low as I would go in any Canik intended for actual carry. 4. Taylor Freelance brass backstrap. Long before this lovely part was available, I milled out the factory polymer backstrap and epoxied in a number of tungsten weights with an epoxy that was also loaded with tungsten powder. That was a pain and TF has made life much easier for everyone with their line of brass backstraps for Caniks that add a nice bit of weight. Why bother? It’s below bore axis, non-reciprocating weight…it feels good…it looks cool…your significant other would have just blown that money at Ulta or on some weird yoga ribbed tank top thing from Lululemon anyway. No, I have no clue whatsoever as to what a Lululemon yoga ribbed tank top thing is but I saw it on a receipt once, assumed it couldn’t be worth anything close to what they charged for it and then concluded that the same amount of money would have surely been better spent on gun parts/accessories. 5. Taylor Freelance +4 (140mm) mag basepads. The factory basepads are a lame 20 round capacity and they are made of plastic (“boo-hiss!” at both). I really like the TF brass ones as they drop out of the gun like they were fired out of a rocket launcher and they take a lot of abuse. As we are talking CO use here, they also add to your round count. More bulleeets = better…always. Drawback: if you slap four or five mags with brass basepads on your belt, you will notice the extra weight tugging at your belt a little. I sometimes run two mags with the brass TF basepads on my belt and then one or two with aluminum TF +4 mag basepads. My go to mag springs and followers are the CZ sets that TF sells for Canik mags that have a Grams follower. When combined with TF mag pads (the CO legal ones), they bump your mag capacity up to 23 rounds. You lose last round lock back (late reload alarm) but if you ever see your slide lock back in the middle of a stage due to an empty mag you have already screwed yourself anyway. I recently started testing the new spring and follower kits from MBX. They are the “MBX ULTRA MAX” kits that have a spring and follower that let you cram 24 rounds into a CO legal mag and they have the added benefit of sounding really cool as they are “ultra max”. I have not used them enough to have an opinion yet but I like the idea. Why? Not long ago, we had a stage in a local match where one of the stage setup guys put up a 24 round stage as he thought my mag cap was 22+1 (it was before I switched to the CZ spring and Grams follower). Doom on you stage setup guy as it was actually 23+1 and I ran it without a reload. He has now moved to 25 round stages in an attempt to thwart me but the MBX mags are 24+1 and I am going to spring this new high speedery upon him as soon as I verify they are reliable. Yet again, I do not get anything from TF or MBX for saying any of the above. I paid retail prices for all of my TF and/or MBX parts and I am very happy with their quality and customer service overall. (Note to Taylor Freelance and MBX: if you wanna send me some free stuff to play around with, my DMs are open ) That’s about it for parts…on to actual mods on factory parts. 1. Polish all contact surfaces on the trigger bar. The easiest way to figure out every point that needs to be cleaned up is simple: pull out the trigger bar and ejector block, coat all surfaces that look like a possible friction point with Dykem blue (or a Sharpie marker if you are a YouTube “gun influencer”), put it back together with no lube, do an hour or so of dry fire, pull it back apart, make a note of all points where the dye/dykem is gone and then polish those areas to where they look like a perfect mirror finish. Then add a thin film of high quality gun grease. Option 2 that’s even easier: wait for me to find my pics that show exactly which areas need to be checked and polished. 2. Polish the block plunger (bottom, sides and top edge). There is the potential for major drag here even with a reduced power block plunger spring as there are often burrs on this part (most factory block plungers - not just Caniks). The second step is checking the cutout in the slide that houses the block plunger as the lip of it also often has burrs on it that will cause a nasty bit of grit in the trigger pull. Walthers were (and maybe still are) notorious for this and Caniks somehow managed to clone that as well. I have some pics of this on a hard drive that I will find and post sooner or later. 3. The trigger bar tabs, the top edge of the trigger bar and other friction points on the trigger bar and ejector block. The top edge on the trigger bar tabs has been greatly improved in the latest models but if it doesn’t look like a mirror finish, it can be better. At bare minimum, run your thumbnail over every edge on the top of the trigger bar and see if you feel any snags - if so, polish them out until you feel no snags. The bump on the right side of the trigger bar that contacts the frame is also worth a look - if it isn’t mirror shiny, polish it. The rearward tab on the trigger bar (the one closest to the ejector block) often needs a bit of extra work - polish the top edge and the outer flat on that tab as it contacts the slide during the trigger pull. Last but not least, check the flat on the top of the trigger bar behind the rearward trigger bar tab. If you take the slide off the pistol and pull the trigger while looking at that section of trigger bar, you will see why - it rubs against a nub that’s on the bottom of the ejector block (hence, a friction point). Note on this particular area as it has changed from the earlier models to the most recent ones: the earlier SFx models have an ejector block that has metal frame and that included the nub on the bottom of the ejector block that makes contact with that area of the trigger bar. If you have one the older models, polish that area on the ejector block as well and then add a very thin film of a high quality gun grease to it (I like Tetra Gun grease but use whatever grease you like - if you know of one that’s far better than Tetra, let me know and I’ll happily try it). On newer Caniks (or at least all I have looked at thus far), the ejector block’s frame is mostly polymer (including the nub that contacts the top edge of the trigger bar during movement). As such, trying to polish it is of limited value but a thin film of high quality gun grease at that point doesn’t hurt. Yes, I realize this likely needs a pic and I will find it and post it later. 4. Feed ramp and chamber Most Caniks have a really good finish on the feed ramps. I still whip out the polishing compound and give them a mirror finish. I have heard people say this is a waste of time and such but you can actually feel a difference with how smoothly a round goes into the chamber after the feed ramp is mirror polished. The chambers (old vs new): The Ver. 1.0 SFx pistol had a great chamber and leade. You could load your ammo about as long as you wanted with almost any bullet profile but they were still tack drivers. My newer SFx Rival barrel was the opposite in terms of COAL limitations. It had a very tight chamber with a very short leade. My large supply of CO loads which took days of testing and tweaking (that I had used with my original SFx for years) just would not work with the Rival’s barrel at all. In the Rival’s barrel, my old tried-and-true loads were a long way from passing a plunk test much less the spin part of “plunk and spin”. It was actually tighter and shorter than many CZs (which are well known for requiring short COALs). It finally annoyed me to the point of sending the barrel off to Patriot Defense for their 9mm barrel reaming service (send a dummy round with your barrel and they’ll make it work if at all possible). $65 and several days later, that was one less headache to worry about. Well worth the time, money and effort if you have a primary Canik pistol and a backup that cannot use the same ammo due to COAL limitations with one of them. 5. Frame modifications - these are mostly optional but there are some points worth checking. a. the slot cut in the frame for the trigger. More specifically, the point right where the trigger safety has to clear the frame to disengage. There is often a small burr left over from molding the frame on this edge that can snag the trigger safety lever or drag against it causing a bit of a gritty feel to the trigger pull. In the worst cases of this, it feels like an extra wall in the trigger pull. This can be polished off with a bit of 1000 grit 3M wet/dry paper that is wrapped around a small needle file. There can also be bit of polymer left on the trigger slot in the frame that can drag against the sides of the trigger. As such, I usually check it and then go around the entire slot with the same 1000grit paper wrapped around a needle file to make sure there is no unnecessary drag on the trigger. b. The underside of the trigger guard. There can be molding seam here that will wear on your knuckle after long range sessions - knock it off with 1000grit The underside of the trigger guard also sometimes has enough of an edge on the corners to wear on your knuckle. It can be reshaped and contoured to where this isn’t a problem. This is a worthwhile mod for anyone with larger hands or anyone who finds the trigger guard wears on their knuckle and gives them a bad case of Glock knuckle. If you are going to reshape that at all, it is a great time to also slightly deepen the recess at the back of the trigger guard to allow for a slightly higher grip. This will require a post of its own if anyone needs a detailed how-to. c. The Mega Grip - silicon carbide. I would never use this on anything but a competition pistol as it would be a nightmare that would eat up clothing, car seats and possibly any small, furry woodland animals that venture too close to it on a carry gun. Many people claim it is entirely permanent but there are a few ways yon can put it on and then take it off later with no effect on the original grip. The usual “permanent” version involves sanding down most of the factory texture, coating the grip with a layer of slow drying epoxy, sprinkling lots of 60-80 grit silicon carbide on to the wet epoxy and then letting it cure. It is the most grippy grip you could imagine that doesn’t involve bolting your hand to the gun. Hands coated with 20w-50 and sweat in the middle of a 120° day with 95% humidity? The silicon carbide grip does not care about such things - your hand will not slip. Full post on this later if needed. End of part one. More to follow. For anyone who missed it - I was entirely joking about anyone sending me anything for any reason as I usually have zero spare time for reviews or the like nowadays due to my job.

Yikes. I may finally order one now that “some” of the bugs are worked out and the initial price gouging hype seems to have died down a little. I haven’t done a Canik deep dive in a while so it might be fun.

It has been so long since I have seen a Canik with an MIM striker that I had just about forgotten about the change over that occurred from MIM to machined. The older MIM ones were prone to wearing down and/or tip breakage (likely due in part to the crazy striker springs they were still using at the time). After those problems started popping up, they changed over to a machined striker and, so far as I know, those solved all of the problems with breakage. The original one in my SFx never broke as I ran it with a several lighter striker springs until I figured out which one would work (there was zero aftermarket for them back then) but I still upgraded it when they came out with the new ones. Luckily, they are easy to tell apart. The top one is machined, the bottom one is one of the old original MIM models:

Try a 6.5lb Ghost Glock 17 striker spring. I have been running one of those in my SFx and Rival Dark Side for years with no problems. You will probably want to swap out the block plunger spring and the trigger return spring as well if you want a really light trigger. If you play around with the springs and polish this and that, you should be able to get the FS trigger down to 2.0lbs or less with no light strikes (assuming you want to go that low). As for recoil springs, keep in mind the recoil spring has to fight the striker spring when the slide is closing. You will get to a point where the striker spring vs a light recoil spring will keep the slide from returning to battery. Thanks to the striker indicator on the back of the Canik’s slide, you can see exactly where the striker spring is fully compressed. Dry fire it and then watch the striker indicator on the back of the slide as you slowly close the slide. A lot of 1/8” out of battery problems are due to a heavier striker spring vs. a light RSA. Speaking of the striker/firing pin indicator, it’s a good idea to check the slide backplate and make sure there are no polymer or metal burrs around that hole in the backplate. One of my first Caniks had a weird little burr there that caused several headaches until I found it and removed it. It still looked like it the pin was rubbing there so I ended up enlarging that hole by about a thousandth or two just to make sure there was no drag on the pin. That’s likely not a problem on newer Caniks as the one on my Rival already looks slightly larger (and smoother) than the one I bored out but it’s still worth checking.

This may help someone… Caniks cock on close (in the just last few millimeters of slide movement). If you are running a lighter RSA you often have to use a lighter striker spring. Failure of the slide to go into battery during those last few mm is due to the recoil spring having to fight several things at once - the round going into the chamber, upward pressure from the mag spring but especially the force required to compress the striker spring. The first SFx pistols and other Caniks of that time were designed around 9mm NATO specs. The striker springs were ridiculously overpowered (they could likely launch a golf ball into low earth orbit). Their recoil springs were also very stout so that didn’t cause any problems especially if you were shooting them with 9mm NATO spec ammo (i.e. 124gr FMJ moving at around 1225fps out of an SFx). That’s 151.9 power factor for anyone still paying attention. NATO spec ammo often has harder primers so that recoil spring and striker spring combo made sense for the specs. However, it certainly isn’t ideal for production division or CO. A few years later, Canik lightened both springs but just slightly. Around the same time, the Sig P320 drop fire nonsense came up and people were all over YouTube whacking loaded guns on the back of the slide with a mallet to see if they could make them go off. Canik released the “severe duty upgrade” to make sure their guns were “whack with a mallet” safe. The part of this that’s worth noting is they changed the drop plunger spring — if you have a pretty blue coated drop plunger spring in your Canik, that’s a post-SDU spring. They are heavier and this is relevant as it can cause some drag issues on the striker if you start playing around with the other springs. It also adds a weird wall in the trigger pull on some Caniks. So, if you want to go really low on the recoil spring, you will almost certainly have to change the striker spring (Sprinco, 6.5lb Ghost spring out of a Glock 17, etc). If you also have the SDU drop plunger spring, you likely want to replace that with one from Sprinco or a Ghost Glock RP Glock block plunger spring (this spring may require a slight stretch but it works…competition use only obviously). With a mixture of the various springs above (I tried around 27 different combinations before I quit counting), I have been able to run ammo as low as 105pf in my Rival with no problems. I was using different bullets and powder and started at book recommended loads when I discovered this - they were hilarious to shoot due to the compete lack of recoil but they ran fine. The point being you can run a really light RSA if you swap out the other springs and get the right balance between them. note: changing the striker spring and the drop plunger spring will also reduce the trigger pull. Another problem to watch out for on newer Caniks is the freebore/throat & leade. Someone at Canik had the brilliant idea to make the newer ones really short. This was not a problem on the original SFx ver. 1.0 as you could load really long with those - like >1.160” with coated bullet and have no problems. You are not going to get near that COAL in the the newer barrels. Loaded rounds that will easily pass a Dillon gauge will not work. The one in my Rival Dark Side was so short that I finally sent it off and had it reamed. It still won’t let me load as long as my original SFx but at least it gives me a little more room than the factory barrel. For whatever the reason, a very short freebore/throat/leade seems to be the new thing with many manufacturers. Since I ran into this problem on my Rival, I have encountered the same with other barrels from other manufacturers where virtually none of my older 9mm pistols are like this. As such, I have gotten in the habit of doing a plunk and spin test with every new 9mm barrel I get to check it with every ammo I plan to use in it. That includes factory ammo as, to my amazement, I have now found some 9mm barrels that will not pass plunk and spin with slightly older production date factory ammo. The most recent was the concerning combination of a PSA dagger barrel and older Remington 115gr JHP +p. Despite being factory ammo, those had the bullet firmly in the rifling (just short of plunk, no where close to spin) and, as they are also +p, that could cause an impressive pressure spike. I didn’t test fire them as I like having all my fingers.

Is it the blue firing pin block plunger spring? I forgot to mention this in my previous reply but if it’s the blue one, it’s the “severe duty” upgrade spring that came about after people on YouTube started putting pistols in bench vises and whacking the back of the slide with a hammer to see if they could make them go off (I swear that was really a thing). Anyway, if it has the blue coating, I wouldn’t mess with it as it likely isn’t worth the effort and the Ghost Glock RP block plunger spring is cheap (~$3.49).

I am still talking to some of the other mods from CF - we may revive that forum or at least parts of it in the future as some of it was backed up. Hopefully all of that content isn’t just lost.

lol - it took quite a bit of time and tweaking to figure it out. I started tuning up Caniks when the TP9SA (mod 1) and TP9V2 first came to the US so I had a good idea of how they worked well before the SFx showed up. The TP9V2’s performance really surprised me (especially for its price point back in early 2016) so I spent days playing around with it. It has a DA/SA trigger and a lot of the tuning methods for the SA Caniks ended up coming from figuring out how to really smooth out and lighten up the DA and SA pull on the V2. The SFx Rival Dark Side I posted above uses a 6.5lb Ghost striker spring from a G17 and I haven’t had a light strike with any primer since I switched to that striker spring. The one in my original SFx has been in it a few years - since the summer of 2018 or around that time. So far, so good. I wrote some how-to threads on tuning the TP9 series and then specific threads for the the SFx and the SFx Rival that were on the Canik Fanatik forum for years but that forum went offline a few months ago. Unfortunately, I don’t have full backups of any of those threads but I think I still have all of the pics so I may put them up on another forum at some point. The problem there is finding a forum that will let me post 30 or more high resolution pics in a single thread. In any event, the short description of the process is: 6.5lb Ghost striker spring Modded oval #2 split ring added to the trigger return spring Freedomsmith trigger Polishing of all contact/mating surfaces in the fire control system (by “all” I mean every possible friction point including the really annoying ones to work on inside the ejector block) Ghost RP block plunger spring Block plunger polished Striker polished where needed.

Whoops - forgot the pic of the package. My local Academy Sports has them but they are likely available online as well: