A little extra striker force

[JFD]

I'm having a lot of difficulty finding Federal primers for my wife's G35 Limited gun. Winchester can easily be found. I've got enough ammo loaded to supply her match ammo needs for hopefully the rest of the year, but that leaves her about 1K a month short on practice ammo.

I put the stock spring back in for a test, and she absolutely hated it , so that's a bad option. I wasn't too thrilled with it either.

The problem is at least a couple of Winchester primed rounds will not go bang out of 100 rounds. Very unacceptable.

The gun has a RS trigger in it now with a standard weight firing pin and my wife loves it. What can be done to give it that extra "oomph" to reliably set off Winchester primers?

I have a dremel and am not afraid to use it, so I'm hoping a home-lightened firing pin may be the answer. I also have 2 spare firing pins, so if I screw up it's no big deal.

I've also heard cutting some coils(?) off the stock striker spring could help without losing the nice trigger pull.

I'm also considering getting 5K Federal magnum match primers. The Glock is still pretty new to me, so this is a good opportunity to learn something else about it.

Any help would be appreciated.

[boo radley]

Here's the short version of my experiments on this subject -- ymmv.

Sotelo kit with factory striker spring: 100% reliable with everything. Feels pretty good, compared to completely stock.

Sotelo kit with factory striker spring minus a couple coils (shortened). Very good -- what I'm using now, and 99.95% reliable

Sotelo kit with reduced spring and lightened striker (I took the dremel to it -- someone posted some pictures here, and I used those as a guide. Very easy) -- feels *great*, but still, once in a great while, I'll get a light strike.

Where I say Sotelo kit, I mean generically a 3.5lb connector, polished parts, etc -- whatever *isn't* the striker and striker spring.

In fairness, some of the problems are just due to reloading with many-fired, old brass. It was a real eye-opener when I started tumbling my loaded ammo; out of a couple hundred rounds, a few would have their primers back out....

Still -- I will never trust, with 100% confidence, a reduced-weight striker spring in my Glocks.

[Aircooled6racer]

Hello: I would ask JoeD. He is the Godfather of Glock mods. He helped me set my G22 up and it runs with Winchester WSP primers all day long. What I have is a 4lb Wolff spring and a 13lb ISMI recoil spring. The Lone Wolf 3.5lb connector. The rest of the parts are stock. Hope this helps. Thanks Eric

[Joe D]

You can lighten the stock striker, but is kind of a PITA to do. I just use the lightweight steel striker from Brownells. I use CCI and Winchester with equal results. I don't recall ever having a primer fail to pop. My old G35 had over 100,000 rounds through it without any failures. I use the 4# Wolf spring.

[00bullitt]

Your best bet right now may be to lighten the factory striker. I did one of mine and its only about 25 grains heavier than the Lightning Strike lightened steel striker. LS products are hard to get right now. Brownells's has been out of the Ti and steel one for a while. I've been on backorder to get one of the steel ones for a month. I live in GA where LS is and can't even get one. I used a dremel wheel and cut a large slot in the factory striker perpendicular to the lug. I use the 4 pound Wolff spring in one of my 17's with no problems on any primers in the last 3-4000 rounds. I have the lightened steel striker in another 17 and the Ti striker in my 34 and they work like a charm. The lightened strikers also improve the feel of the trigger to me. The only time I ever got light strikes was when using the factory striker and 4 pound spring mostly with CCI primers and more rare occasions with WW. Cutting 3 coils off the factory spring and using a lightened factory striker is a good compromise. Good feeling trigger and very reliable too. I have found that the reduced power Wolff firing pin spring only has a service life of about 5000 rounds. Others have reported differently but I just do not trust Wolff springs. ISMI needs to make a 4,4.5,and 5 pound pound Glock striker spring as well as trigger return springs in 2 or 3 weights.

[the duck of death]

I lighten the OEM striker and cut 7 coils off the OEM striker spring. With other mods I have a ZOOT trigger and it'll light off any primer.

[chp5]

I use the stock striker spring with no more than 2 coils cut. 100% reliable.

I will slightly lighten the striker on the "sear" area by Demeling off the corners.

[Matt Griffin]

The reliability of my G35 with the Wolff reduced striker spring is directly related to my effort at the reloading press. If I am conscientious about firmly seating the primers, it is 100%. If I am medium-grade and cull the ammo, I'll get about one failure per 200. If I'm just banging out practice ammo and don't look, I'll get about 3.

Also, you might need to change springs. I had two failures at Area 6, so I bought some Wolffs from a vendor, and they were probably 1.5 mil longer than the one in my gun. Since then it has run 100%, that was at about 5k rounds since the kit was installed, including the second half of Area 6 with the same batch of carefully sorted ammo.

All of this was with Winchester SPP.

H.

[JFD]

Thanks for all the ideas!

I'll have to get a couple of spare factory striker springs to play with. I thought that while the stock spring didn't compare to the full RS kit, I could probably live with it. Obviously my wife didn't share the same opinion, but cutting a couple of coils off might be enough to change her mind.

I've changed lightened striker springs with no effect. Had the problem from day one, but anticipated it from reading posts here, so I had Federal primers in stock. No problems with the gun in factory condition.

I'm going to have to search out the proper lightening technique. I've seen it a couple of places so I know it won't be hard to find.

Again, I'm just thinking of the worse case senerio in terms of Federal primer availability, so any testing will be done in practice. My Para gets long-loaded ammo, but it eats factory length perfectly, so no test ammo will go to waste.

[Joe D]

Use a diamond cut off disc to make the cuts in the factory striker. One note of interest. I put a lwt spring in my G21 with the stock striker. I even had the "bad" trigger bar. It never failed to pop a primer.

I sure hope Brownells gets more of the lwt strikers.

[mscott]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Lightning-Strike-Stain...VQQcmdZViewItem

There are a few on ebay. I never dealt with this guy, but if you need one here you go.

[JFD]

I ordered 4 stock striker springs today; needed some spare recoil springs anyway.

I checked out the Rhea pics of his lightened striker. At least I don't have to worry about making it pretty I guess I'll give that 45 degree angle on the striker hook a try as well (more weight gone).

Personally I'm hoping the lightened striker will take care of the problem.

In the huge RS Trigger thread, it appears a lot of folks don't have trouble setting off Winchester and CCI primers. In this case I'm just not lucky.

[JFD]

I just found and ordered 5K Federal small pistol match primers, so that should take the pressure off until Federal primers are more plentiful.

I'm still going to lighten the striker because it would be nice to just go back to buying only Winchester primers for everything (if it works).

I've got a tension tester that should allow me to test the compressed tension on both the lightened and stock springs; allowing me to come up with a spring halfway between the 2. I hope this isn't needed, it might be. At the very least I should come up with some useful info for other forum members.

[00bullitt]

The angle cut to the lug on the striker is a bad idea. Unless you want a MG? Your better off cutting small 45 degree tits on the cruciform sear at each corner that meets the lug. Make them very small. Like no more than .020" each side. Also......do more drastic lightening to the striker. Cut a slot all the way through with a diamond cut off wheel on a dremel and then deburr,smooth,and polish.

[SouthpawG26]

Here was mine, it lasted 12000rds before breaking where the square striker head and the cylindrical shaft meet. In hindsight the cut at this point should not have been made as wide/deep. Weight was nearly identical to Lightning Strike's steel striker (which i'm using now), about 30% lighter than stock.

The 45 degr. cut on the lug is indeed a bad idea IMO.

Edited May 20, 2007 by SouthpawG26

[Aircooled6racer]

Hello: I'm kinda new to Glocks but why wouldn't you just drill a hole in the striker from the back side. You could put it into a lathe and drill out the center to lighten it. Has anyone done it this way? Thanks, Eric

[mscott]

Hello: I'm kinda new to Glocks but why wouldn't you just drill a hole in the striker from the back side. You could put it into a lathe and drill out the center to lighten it. Has anyone done it this way? Thanks, Eric

Not many of us have a lathe at home, but pretty much everyone has a dremel tool

I was wondering about the same thing. How hard are those strikers?

Edited May 20, 2007 by mscott

[00bullitt]

Hello: I'm kinda new to Glocks but why wouldn't you just drill a hole in the striker from the back side. You could put it into a lathe and drill out the center to lighten it. Has anyone done it this way? Thanks, Eric

That would be ideal if you have a lathe. Pretty much what Lightning Strike does.

[Aircooled6racer]

Hello; I guess I'm a lucky guy since I have a lathe and know how to use it ;-) Does anyone have a picture of one of the Lightening Strike strikers? Thanks, Eric

[boo radley]

Not many of us have a lathe at home, but pretty much everyone has a dremel tool

I was wondering about the same thing. How hard are those strikers?

Not hard -- the dremel, with a thin cut-off disc, will channel out the striker. Mine looks exactly like the one pictured.

[JFD]

This has been quite the learning experience. Just can't beat this forum

After looking at the excellent pic of the lightened striker, it turns out I'm too much of a coward to cut up anything to that degree that I'm not using myself.

Instead I just ordered a Lightening Strike steel striker to play it safe.

I'll gladly accept that the 45 degree angle cut is a bad idea from those who know.

Thanks

[Suburban Commando]

Hello; I guess I'm a lucky guy since I have a lathe and know how to use it ;-) Does anyone have a picture of one of the Lightening Strike strikers? Thanks, Eric

Click the link in post #11 for LS striker pic.

[atmar]

if you're looking for a LS lightened steel striker cpwsa.com has some...

[bountyhunter]

The gun has a RS trigger in it now with a standard weight firing pin and my wife loves it. What can be done to give it that extra "oomph" to reliably set off Winchester primers?

make sure your striker isn't dinging the FP safety plunger when it fires (I have the Sotelo trigger and it was doing that). This will cause marginal misfires. If you see dings on the nose of the striker, that's the problem. You can reshape the curve on the trigger bar where it engages the disconnector to get it to drop the striker a shade farther rearward and get the FP plunger out of the way.

[SA Friday]

OK, I may have missed this, but have you tried a new wolft 4 lb spring yet? I run WSP primers religiously through my G34 (has a RS kit in it) and only have light strikes when the wolfe 4lb striker spring gets wore out. When was the last time you changed the striker spring from your RS kit? If you have 10-15k rounds on the striker spring, change it and then try the WSP's. Please try this before you break out the dremel. You can also try the marine spring cups too.