I had an epiphany tonight as I cleaned two of my Third Gens that have nested (or, if you will, dual) springs over the guide rods. Wanted to run this past the experts here for confirmation or debunking, whichever is called for.
I realized that I hadn't been paying all that much attention to how I was reinstalling the inner springs into the outer springs when reassembling after field-stripping. Realizing this, I thought to myself, "Self, you probably don't want that inner spring to go in the wrong way, or its coils will bind in the outer spring's coils and that wouldn't be a good thing."
Lo and behold, though, it turns out the inner spring and outer spring are different in more than just their relative lengths and diameters. The inner and the outer are actually wound differently -- call one a "right hand" twist and the other a "left hand" twist, just for grins.
Upshot is, you can't install 'em backwards to each other! They're idiot-proof -- a highly desirable quality in my particular case!
See, if you have a spring wound "right handed," it doesn't become a "left handed" if you rotate it endwise 180 degrees. (In other words, if you "switch ends" or "turn it around.") It's still right handed, so you don't have to worry about whether you've put the spring in the correct way -- from either end is OK, since the other spring in the pair is wound in the opposite direction. They won't bind with each other.
"Self," says I. "You gotta share this with the Forum, in case there are some other guys out there that might be similarly winding-challenged." (This does not apply to those who are wound too tight -- that's a whole other subject.
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So, do I get bouquets or brickbats on this one?
Nested springs, dual springs
Linear Mode
