S2 Hammer Spring life?

[Stafford]

What is the lifespan of a Shadow 2 hammer spring, including live and dry fire? Stock, Cajun, Ultimate (Grauffel), etc... 

 

 

[TheChef1]

I've had one is my iron sight gun since 2017 with no issues. I also have a 1987 pre b and I dont know if its the original spring but its  certainly old.

[rowdyb]

You won't get an honest, scientific answer. They'll all just be anecdotal. 

 

I change then every 6 months on guns in full time use, it's only 6 bucks or whatever. Flipside, know people who use one for a lifetime of gun ownership. 

[Stafford]

I’ve had excellent reliability runnning CCI Blazer Brass, both aluminum and brass cased. Picked up another case last week and ran 150 rounds or so in practice and was running it during a match yesterday without issue on the first six stages. On the last stage, I had 3 light primer strikes. I previously ran an 11.5 CGW main spring along with the extended firing pin with soft spring. Currently running the Ultimate 10lb spring with the extended firing pin. Either spring worked well with factory ammo including Winchester, Federal and Blazer. I had probably ran 150 trouble free rounds yesterday when I started the final stage and had the three light strikes. All ignited when I pulled through the DA. So, I’m trying to diagnose the issue and thought I’d start with the main spring. Any other ideas?

[rowdyb]

I'd say 10# is too light for anything other than federal spp. That was my experience with it.

11# recoil, 12# main, both from czc is what I settled on in my shadow 2s

[Darqusoull13]

On 10/30/2022 at 3:07 AM, rowdyb said:

You won't get an honest, scientific answer. They'll all just be anecdotal. 

 

I change then every 6 months on guns in full time use, it's only 6 bucks or whatever. Flipside, know people who use one for a lifetime of gun ownership. 

I really haven't ever thought about this but I'd bet mine are less than the starting 15 from when I put them in. They do still set off 450's though so I'll probably leave them alone since I've got a decent stock of 205's and 205m's

I have changed my recoil spring though. Likely a cheap little hammer spring should be a maintenance item as well though. 

[slavex]

I've never needed to change a hammer spring, once I've setup the gun with one I like. I have changed, but only because I switched suppliers and decided to have all my guns run the same ones. I am currently running 9lb in my match and practice guns. I have run 10lb mains when I ran into harder primers. They all last hundreds of thousands of rounds though. Recoil I am running 10lb in my iron sighted guns and 11lb in my Optics guns. I was running 9lb recoil, but decided to go to 10 and see if I noticed any real nose dip, didn't, so stayed with the 10lb. I used to run a 6lb recoil, but that was crazy times. 

[Tip3008]

On 10/30/2022 at 7:01 AM, Stafford said:

I’ve had excellent reliability runnning CCI Blazer Brass, both aluminum and brass cased. Picked up another case last week and ran 150 rounds or so in practice and was running it during a match yesterday without issue on the first six stages. On the last stage, I had 3 light primer strikes. I previously ran an 11.5 CGW main spring along with the extended firing pin with soft spring. Currently running the Ultimate 10lb spring with the extended firing pin. Either spring worked well with factory ammo including Winchester, Federal and Blazer. I had probably ran 150 trouble free rounds yesterday when I started the final stage and had the three light strikes. All ignited when I pulled through the DA. So, I’m trying to diagnose the issue and thought I’d start with the main spring. Any other ideas?

So I actually had this exact same thing happen to me before, I spent 2 weeks going crazy over it lol.. Prior to the light strikes starting on the second to last stage of the match, I had always used the exact same Norma 124g ammo and never had so much as a single light strike in practice even with around 15,000 rounds since getting a shadow 2 and going with a 10# CZC main spring. I figured surely the spring was just needing swapped as it had around 15k through it and popped in another 10# spring but the problems did not go away I was light striking in SA sometimes even.. So I went up to 11.5# cgw spring, still light strikes practicing. At this point I was like there is just no way this is the spring, but at the same time I was thinking there is no way it’s the ammo as the ammo has always ran absolutely flawless I’m not even exaggerating that I hadn’t had a single light strike or even a single malfunction for that matter in the first 15k rounds I put on my shadow 2.. Owner of my club is a top 10 open nationals finisher for over a decade now and is almost always right, he was saying it has to be the ammo it’s possible they had a bad batch. So I do some researching and find that there are multiple other people complaining about Norma 124g suddenly light striking for them when it never has before. Turns out there were some lot#s that Norma issued recalls on, but the 1000 round case I had was not on that list. Figuring it’s totally possible there are effected lots that they don’t even know about, I bought a different ammo for the first time in like a year and it ran flawlessly through 2 straight mags of me putting the hammer down between every shot so they were all DA pulls as this is when your hammer will be hitting the lightest. I gave it a month for the bad batch that was manufactured to be resolved/all sold and the next case of Norma I bought was back to running good as gold.
 

So yea, moral of the story here is that I drove myself crazy writing off that it was the ammo because I knew the ammo to be great and reliable in my gun, but bad batches/boxes totally happen and I am willing to bet it was a short stretch of rounds that something was off on. If you are running a 10# spring like me, you have to be extremelyyy careful with factory ammo that it will reliably run, here are a few I have found to run reliably you can test with: Norma 124g(the best), federal 124g, PMC 124g, and of course blazer brass but I would try using another kind just in case there’s a few bad batches currently..  Never ever ever get fiocci it is pure garbage and gets stuck going in battery and when it does go into battery you’re likely to have a light strike lol I will never waste my money on that crap again.. Good luck!

[Stafford]

Since the three light primer strikes last week, I ran another 100 trouble free rounds in practice this week. And then another 175-200 rounds today in a match. So, maybe a single bad box?

[Foxj66]

I just replace them yearly along with the trigger return spring. only spring I really worry about is replacing the Rami firing pin spring when I replace the recoil spring.

[slavex]

@Foxj66but that is so much effort dude, lol. Do you have a date you do that on? A buddy of mine swaps all his stuff out on January 1st every year, and crazily, throws the old springs out in the trash so he doesn't get them mixed up with new ones. 

[Foxj66]

8 hours ago, slavex said:

@Foxj66but that is so much effort dude, lol. Do you have a date you do that on? A buddy of mine swaps all his stuff out on January 1st every year, and crazily, throws the old springs out in the trash so he doesn't get them mixed up with new ones. 

 

I just get a new gun every year and do it when I am setting up the new gun.. works for me. I dont throw the old spring away because then I would have to take the old gun apart.

Edited November 10, 2022 by Foxj66

[slavex]

On 11/10/2022 at 7:02 AM, Foxj66 said:

 

I just get a new gun every year and do it when I am setting up the new gun.. works for me. I dont throw the old spring away because then I would have to take the old gun apart.

I used to get a new gun every year too, but now our government has made that no longer possible. Got my new gun for next year and until we vote them out, that's it. Thankfully CZ was quick to get me my new one early this time. 

[rpm8300]

I would say switching every 6 months is very safe, and 12 months would be the longest I would go.  As mentioned, if you're running Federals and have a 13 or higher, that thing will probably work well past 12 months.  I run an 11 and Federals and haven't had an issue - I will say I had a light strike on a Remington slightly high primer - i.e. barely above the case.

[mSNACKS]

On my shadow 2 Change all springs, extended firing pin and if you want to be extra safe slide stop once a year. In my experience, I run a 10# hammer spring but only can do so with confidence only using federal primers. I rain 11# recoil spring for first year but recently changed to 10# and have been happy