Hammer following

[RickyH]

My STI 2011 open gun is Hammer following it's only 4 months old. what would you check frist?

Edited September 6, 2010 by RickyH

[gordonm1]

My open gun is Hammer following it's only 4 months old. what would you check frist?

I'd check the hammer.

My only experience with hammer follow was with a sig 220 hammer I modified. I changed the angle on the hammer to sear contact to get it to work again. This was my own screw up and I was able to get it working again.

You did not state make and model which you will probably need to do before you get much help here.

[RickyH]

STI 2011

[yoshidaex]

When was it last cleaned?

[RickyH]

600 hundred rounds ago

[yoshidaex]

A slight bend of the left leg of the sear spring might help. YMMV

Do you remember what your trigger pull was before this started happening?

[RickyH]

No I dont know.

[yoshidaex]

Brazos trigger tuning tip

Before you do anything else, read the above article.

[Dan Sierpina]

Check that the screws holding the grip to the frame are tight.

[Rob Tompkins]

A slight bend of the left leg of the sear spring might help. YMMV

Do you remember what your trigger pull was before this started happening?

Same thing happend on my 2011 Open gun (bought used, estimated 9k rnds). Turned out to be the sear spring slipping off, it was not resetting. I replaced the spring with a stock STI spring, so far so good but I have not shot it much after the repair.

[konkapot]

This can be a hideous nightmarish pandora's box of horribleness.

Check that leaf on the sear spring.

Check to see that your grips aren't cracked.

If you have big monkey hands AND you've modified the grip YOU might be the cause.

Take a look at your hammer hooks.

If you've done some home "gunsmithing" undo your "work" and see if that fixes it.

If you've removed the sear spring recently check and make sure you reinstalled it correctly.

You'll try all this, some of it will work for awhile, some of it won't work at all, but ultimately you'll need to take it to a gunsmith, who, almost always, will fix it in about 10 minutes.

Trust me.

FY42385

[Dave Campbell]

When it happened to me.

1st, Sear spring.

2nd, Sear Pin, Sear is wobbling on a loose/worn pin, Easy fix, Replace sear and pin.

[DrawandDuck]

A slight bend of the left leg of the sear spring might help. YMMV

Do you remember what your trigger pull was before this started happening?

+1, it should resolve the issue...

[pries81]

My new sti 2011 6" hammer followed and doubled. I had many different gunsmiths look at it and none seemed to find a problem. I had a gunsmith adjust, tune and replace diff. parts. Nothing helped. The kicker is, I shot four other 2011/1911 guns and they did it to ME too. Weird. I lightened the slide significantly, and replaced all the sti trigger parts for extreme engineering parts. Hasn't done it since. So...what was it-me? Virgil Tripp says he has heard of some people who just don't fit right with some gun/part combos. What do you think?

By the way, these parts are currently functioning well in an open gun.

Edited September 9, 2010 by Duane Thomas

[Duane Thomas]

I think that everyone gives the gun a different platform to push against, because everyone has a different body: a different skeletal system, a different nervous system, a different muscular system. Which means the way that recoil travels through the person's body, and therefore the way it travels through the gun, is different for everyone. Most of the time this makes no difference; occasionally it does. That's when you hit those experiences where you take a particular gun that's been 100 percent reliable for tens of thousands of rounds for its owner, put it into another person's hands and watch it instantly start choking. Put it back in its owners hands, or anyone else on the range, it starts purring again. Or you can take a gun that doesn't hammer follow for anyone else, put it into one particular person's hands, and it will. The lighter the trigger pulls - and I know the trigger pulls on your gun are very light - the more likely this is to happen. So yes, I think that, with THAT gun, with THOSE parts, it was the way your body interacted with the gun. Fortunately you've got the problem solved and are now rocking with your new Limited gun. Life is good.

[lcs]

Everytime it is happened to me, I replaced the sear spring with an SVI tri-glide and never happened again. My triggers run 1.5 to 2LBs.

[Rob Tompkins]

Compared to the few steel framed 1911 single stacks I've messed with, the plastic grip on my STI has VERY wide tolerances for the grove the sear spring fits in under the mainspring housing. The STI grip allows a LOT of lateral motion for the sear spring, hence the potential to slip off the sear.

Is this normal for a plastic STI grip?

I bought several sear springs to try (they are cheap) and the STI was marginally wider and had slightly less lateral motion but it is still more then I would have expected.

Any thoughts?

Edited September 9, 2010 by Rob Tompkins

[TONY BARONE]

Dave Dawson modifies his enhanced sear spring so that it will not rub on the grip and slip off the sear in an STI 2011.

[pries81]

Compared to the few steel framed 1911 single stacks I've messed with, the plastic grip on my STI has VERY wide tolerances for the grove the sear spring fits in under the mainspring housing. The STI grip allows a LOT of lateral motion for the sear spring, hence the potential to slip off the sear.

Is this normal for a plastic STI grip?

I bought several sear springs to try (they are cheap) and the STI was marginally wider and had slightly less lateral motion but it is still more then I would have expected.

Any thoughts?

People told me to pean or bend the sear spring so that it doesn't move in that bottom slot and then slip off the sear.

[2alpha]

There are a few people who can ride the trigger exactly in the right place and cause just about any 1911 or 2011 to double. Thankfully for those in the trigger job business they are only a few. The heavier the trigger job and the more over travel the harder it is to do.