Harmon Posted June 20, 2005 Share Posted June 20, 2005 here recently my glock has been acting a damned fool. between the light striker hits and sometimes failing to return to battery my gun has been driving me nuts..the whole time i was thinking it was the ammo...i was wrong. After Area 4, i inspected the gun for damaged parts, i also cleaned it real good. what i found was lots of brass in the striker tunnel, plus extra gunk from the few federal small pistol primers that were peirced.. when i removed the striker from the gun, the striker came out in TWO PARTS!! yep the classic broken striker...the price paid for 30K rounds fired since i bought the gun(it was used) and probably another 30K of dryfiring without a snap cap. The firing pin was broken about 1/4 of an inch away from the tip...upon inspection of the tip, about 50% of the tip was missing too. Its a wonder the gun would still fire 90% of the time. i put my spare striker in it and thought everything would be OK....i was wrong I shot two club matches this weekend and had nasty death jam or missfire on every stage....sometimes it wouldnt strip a round off, sometimes it wouldnt chamber...other times it would missfire despite the new striker I didnt really know what was going on i get home after two dismal matches in a row and grab some of match ammo i was using..i loaded it up, aimed at a 12 yard target and Click, ANOTHER Missfire! i ejected the round, looked at the primer and the firing pin struck the primer way way off center. i loaded back in the gun and touched it off. my dad was watching me shoot and noticed the brass went 15-20 feet from where i was at.. he asked me if that was normal...i didnt know, i normally dont watch(or care) where my brass goes So i shot a few more rounds and noticed the brass was going pretty high in the air and pretty far to my right.. that made me start thinking about what spring i had in there...it was the same spring i put in it when i set the gun up for limited....over 30K major power rounds ago the spring had finally collapsed..its really light, light enough when you pulled the trigger it would bring the gun slightly out of battery...causing light hits on the primers.. I dont know for sure if that is what caused the striker failure, but im certain it was causing the missfires... just to show you how light the spring had gotten, i took the gun in my right hand and moved it back and fourth real fast(like a jab) and the slides inertia would overcome the spring allowing it to open about 3/8ths of an inch I think ill replace the next recoil spring at 15K instead of 30! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cautery Posted June 20, 2005 Share Posted June 20, 2005 You know... IMHO, a competition pistol needs to be treated like we used to do aircraft (or race cars and the like). I do this, and have never had an equipment related malfunction (I've had malfunctions, but they were always traceable to "operator headspace and timing"). I have a program that has every part in all of my weapons listed... ALL of them. For each part, I have time and round count listings for maintenance checks and End of Life. Everytime I fire a weapon, I come back and pull up the Entry Page and enter the date and round count. The program runs a nightly process that checks for due dates/round counts and emails me with a list of weapons to check broken down by part nomenclature/type of check. OK, so I am an anal retentive freak... But I've never had to worry about a weak spring, broken striker, et al... For the less obsessive individual, a simply written list of "critical" parts with date of install, and an aprox date/round count to replace/check might be sufficient. Sure would reduce failures DURING competition. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harmon Posted June 20, 2005 Author Share Posted June 20, 2005 Maybe so, but you woudnt expect a broken striker from a glock...at least i wouldnt... As far as the recoil spring..the gun was shooting perfect, better than ever untill a few days ago. well i have a plethora of springs coming from brownells also a new striker to replace the pirated striker from my other glocks even the striker spring is getting replaced...as i believe it could be part of the problem Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merlin Orr Posted June 20, 2005 Share Posted June 20, 2005 OK, so I am an anal retentive freak... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diehli Posted June 20, 2005 Share Posted June 20, 2005 Someone give than man an enema! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcoliver Posted June 21, 2005 Share Posted June 21, 2005 just to show you how light the spring had gotten, i took the gun in my right hand and moved it back and fourth real fast(like a jab) and the slides inertia would overcome the spring allowing it to open about 3/8ths of an inch <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Jacky Chan pretty much uses that technique to chamber a round. I think that's normal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harmon Posted June 21, 2005 Author Share Posted June 21, 2005 You can do that to chamber a round with jarretts limited gun...He uses a SIX AND THREE-QUARTER POUND RECOIL SPRING...shooting major with a bushing barrel dawson limited para....i wonder how long that pistol lasts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XRe Posted June 21, 2005 Share Posted June 21, 2005 The rumor is that, if the pistol is well built, it won't get beaten up prematurely using a light recoil spring. Remember, the mainspring figures into the equation, too, and does a good bit to slow the slide down as that energy is stored in the mainspring to fire the next shot. If the gun feeds super reliably, you don't need to store a lot of energy in the recoil spring to feed the next round. I can't imagine how that'd feel, though - hard slap in the hand, followed by seemingly sluggish feeding??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clay1 Posted June 21, 2005 Share Posted June 21, 2005 Harmongreer, for grins and giggles I would replace the spring in the trigger assembly as well while you are at it. This link has some useful information: http://www.ismi-gunsprings.com/ Rick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harmon Posted June 21, 2005 Author Share Posted June 21, 2005 all the important springs are going to be replaced...nationals are too soon for gun problems! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevin c Posted June 22, 2005 Share Posted June 22, 2005 all the important springs are going to be replaced...nationals are too soon for gun problems! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Though replacing springs all at once might qualify as a significant change in your equipment right before a major, with the same risk as a new combo of parts of causing a change in your gun's function. I'd personally change everything well enough in advance to see if the new set of whatever replacement parts put into my gun actually ran well in practice over a few sessions before taking it to the Nats in its new and improved version (wow, nice run on sentence). Just my thoughts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now