e-mishka Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 Safety is getting a bit loose on my limited, how do i stiffen it up? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 Tagging this because mine is a little mushy and I would like it to snap off a little more crisply, also. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gennaro Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 (edited) e-mishka and bamboo, Take the safety out and remove the sear assembly. Where the safety goes into that pocket , the detent ball locks in and out of two dimples that are split apart in somewhat of a Y shape if you will. Take a very tiny, fine needle file, and clean and slightly round those individual areas slowly, stay away from the little divider in the middle, between the two. Gently remove a little material at a time and check often. You can easily check it without putting the sear back , just put the one side of the safety back in and see if it is starting to click tighter when changing positions. The other option is to buy a new safety with a new detent ball. A little more pricey but may give you a more positive lock. Best of luck. Edited May 19, 2015 by gennaro Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gennaro Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 (edited) Sorry for the bad picture taking. Those two small pockets , facing forward , where the detent ball sits, can be rounded slightly to help give a more positive click into position. Best of luck. Edited May 19, 2015 by gennaro Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 Gennaro, Thank you for taking the time to post a pic and explaining it. I'll give this a try sometime in the near future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bpipe95 Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 I added material to the detent itself (via tig). I would avoid removing material from the frame. If you look at the inside of the frame when the safety is installed you can see that soft feel is due to the detent being to far inside of the frame. It does not ride in the center of the notch. Making the detent wider caused it to have more surface area engagement with the frame and "click" more like a firm 1911 safety. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gennaro Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 (edited) The detents on all my safety's are installed right up against the inside wall of the thumb safety itself. None of them go completely through into the frame when pushed into position for use. After a long period of work, they can where down the pointed section of the frame that sticks out in between the two ovals, where the detent ball pockets itself. Giving this mushy , non crisp feeling when engaging or dis-engaging the safety. It's that point in the frame that is rounding off from use. By cleaning those pockets up just a little bit, ( I'm not saying remove a lot of material ) the detent ball now comes out of the thumb safety itself, just a bit further, giving a little more positive locking feeling when switching positions. For me, this is what has worked on all my Tanfo's. bpipe95: your circumstances may have been different, these are off the shelf guns and some are tight and some not so much. You may have needed to add the material to get your result. Be careful adding material and making it too wide, that may hamper the trigger bar from smoothly moving against the frame. When the sear and safety are removed, watch how far the trigger bar moves to the rear, and in some instances even partially covers the bottom oval opening where the safety detent ball rests. But the detent ball also is being worked around and does loosen over time too. IMHO in the end a completely new safety may give you the best results. Cleaning up the pockets slightly will help if you do not want to spend the money right now on a new one, and will also not affect a new safety if you pick one up at a later time. Which I have done too. Disclosure : This is just from my own experience, and I'm not recommending to anyone to do this. Please Do Not attempt if your not comfortable working on your own gun. I was just trying to make a suggestion of what might help the mushy feeling on a safety. Best of luck. Edited May 19, 2015 by gennaro Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bpipe95 Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 I added material on the saftey side of the detent so that it has more surface area on the frame. It did not add any width on the inside. Thanks for the heads up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gennaro Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 Now I got it. I appreciate it . Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IHAVEGAS Posted October 15, 2023 Share Posted October 15, 2023 Thread resurrection, for what it is worth. The ball on one of my safeties does not protrude as far as it should and that caused this issue on one of my guns. New safety fixed it. Wondering if it is either a fabrication error or perhaps there is a tiny piece of grit in the channel that the ball rides in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted October 15, 2023 Share Posted October 15, 2023 Where the safety interacts with the plunger is quite variable from safety to safety IME so that's more likely the issue. Some I file or grind on with a tiny dremel ball to make them act differently in the 1911 space. More than one frame maker has made frames where the drill hole for the slide stop end of the plunger assembly wasn't drilled deep enough, but that usually shows up as weak slide stop detent and overly strong safety plunger action. Those tiny springs can weaken eventually too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IHAVEGAS Posted October 17, 2023 Share Posted October 17, 2023 On 10/15/2023 at 1:07 PM, shred said: The ledge/pocket where the safety interacts with the plunger is quite variable from safety to safety IME so that's more likely the issue. Can't speak to the general case. My circumstance was that one safety was bad in either gun I tried it in and one safety was good in either gun I tried it in, I didn't write down the measurements but it is very easy to compare the two safeties with a micrometer and verify that the ball on the bad safety doesn't extend as far forward. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted October 17, 2023 Share Posted October 17, 2023 Yeah I was thinking of 2011s and 1911s more than Tanfos when I wrote that part. Could be grit or over-staking of the ball assembly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DBX1987 Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 (edited) Horrible engineered safety's is the reason. I've had one break the plunjer installed, eating the frame before I knew it. On my new gun the safety plunjer went out to far, couldn't reinstall it. Then a bit later the plunjer launched itself ... Quality control is all over the place with the safety's, a mechanical indent holds them in place. This is always the issue Edited January 1 by DBX1987 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yigal Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 1 hour ago, DBX1987 said: Horrible engineered safety's is the reason. I've had one break the plunjer installed, eating the frame before I knew it. The old design was much better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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