Hammer pin walking out

[Steve912]

Is is possible for the bolt to cycle far enough to eject a spent casing, load the next round, but not cock the hammer?

Not familiar with the 15-22, but I'd say "unlikely", to answer the
question. You could confirm by letting bolt close (at full spring-
driven velocity) on a live round, then ejecting the round and
examining for any primer indent.

Have you checked the bolt and firing pin, for accumulation of wax,
carbon--anything that would hinder the firing pin from taking the
hammer strike?

How's chamber/chamber face, for deposits that could resist
full chambering of cartridge?

 

[RGBellCSI]

The bolt and firing pin have been thoroughly cleaned. It was just worked on by S&W and they didn't say or do anything related to dirty parts. The dead trigger is my biggest concern. I am wondering if a light load could cause it to not cycle properly, causing the hammer to not engage with the sear. I have seen discussions about double firing that resulted in a recall. S&W said that my serial number was not affected. If the bolt moved back and pushed the hammer back, but did not engage the hammer with the sear and then the hammer could follow the bolt and new round forward with insufficient force to hit the firing pin and cause the next round to have a light strike and dead trigger.

 

[Steve912]

If the bolt moved back and pushed the hammer back, but did not engage the hammer with the sear and then the hammer could follow the bolt and new round forward with insufficient force to hit the firing pin and cause the next round to have a light strike and dead trigger.

Does it have an inertial firing pin?

 

[RGBellCSI]

Does it have an inertial firing pin?

The firing pin has a spring.

 

[REM 3200]

What ammo are you using? I use nothing but CCI Mini Mag 36 gr. HP or 40 gr. solids in mine and have never had the issue you describe. Some .22 loads don't have enough velocity to provide the necessary bolt speed to the rear to reset the trigger and produce the symptoms you describe. Try some CCI ammo and let us know the results. Also make sure the bolt rails are lightly lubed with oil.

 

[RGBellCSI]

Update

I was using CCI standard velocity, some Federal Black Box and some Golden Bullets. This gun would eat all of them prior to the J spring breaking. These two failures occurred with the Golden Bullets, which are known to be somewhat inconsistent. My Ruger 10/22 will use any ammo with very few failures. It did have Failure to Feed problems early on and they ended up replacing the receiver. It appears that the hammer that S&W installed improved the issue, but did not eliminate it. There must be something different about the 15-22 hammers when compared to mil-spec AR hammers, since I tried two different hammers and it made the problem much worse. I do plan to do more testing with some Mini-Mags next week.

 

[Luger9x19]

Is the hammer spring installed correctly? It can be installed backwards and if it is in backwards I believe it can cause cocking problems or light strikes.

Here is a picture of a correctly installed spring on a Larue Tactical MBT hammer.

 

[RGBellCSI]

Is the hammer spring installed correctly? It can be installed backwards and if it is in backwards I believe it can cause cocking problems or light strikes.

Yes. It was installed by S&W and I verified that it was installed correctly.

I tested at what point the hammer is captured by slowly pull back on the charging handle. It engages approximately 1/4 inch from the from the end of travel. Is this consistent with other 15-22 owners?

 

[RGBellCSI]

Update

I did a little more testing and it appears that the bolt can come far enough back to strip the next round, but possibly not far enough to engage the hammer. It is very close, but I believe it is possible for a light load to cause this failure. Hopefully, testing with 100 rounds of Mini-Mags will help in troubleshooting. If it doesn't fail with Mini-Mags I will shoot a bunch of Golden Bullets to see if I can reproduce the failure.

 

[RGBellCSI]

Update

Today I shot 100 rounds of Mini-Mags and 100 rounds of Federal Black Box with ZERO failures! The only difference that I can identify is that I did not clean the gun prior to testing the last time. I tested it as it was after S&W repaired it. If it continues to perform as it did today, I will be a happy camper. I can certainly live with an occasional failure for a non-defensive weapon. I fine tuned my iron sights, red dot and laser sights. I am clearly more accurate with the optics than I am with the iron sights. I suspect that may be due to my inability to get a clear front sight focus, even though I just got dedicated prescription shooting glasses. Aging sucks!

 

[RGBellCSI]

Update

I shot 75 rounds of Federal Black Box today and I had five failure to fires. It was not like the last time, where I had a dead trigger. The bolt was fully closed and the hammer was cocked. I inspected the rims and there was a prominent strike in all of them. The strike was at least as strong as with the cases that fired correctly. I reloaded one of them in a magazine and it fired. For one of the failed rounds, the previous round sounded weak. I did not notice that with the other four rounds. After shooting the Federal ammo, I shot 50 rounds of CCI standard velocity with no failures. This may be due to the Federal ammo, but why was I able to shoot 100 rounds with no problems the last time I tested? They were all from the same box.
What is your experience with non-CCI ammo? For those that have replaced the firing pin with an after market part, did you see any improvement with the cheaper ammo?

 

[MWC2068]

I shot 75 rounds of Federal Black Box today and I had five failure to fires. It was not like the last time, where I had a dead trigger. The bolt was fully closed and the hammer was cocked. I inspected the rims and there was a prominent strike in all of them. The strike was at least as strong as with the cases that fired correctly. I reloaded one of them in a magazine and it fired. For one of the failed rounds, the previous round sounded weak. I did not notice that with the other four rounds. After shooting the Federal ammo, I shot 50 rounds of CCI standard velocity with no failures. This may be due to the Federal ammo, but why was I able to shoot 100 rounds with no problems the last time I tested? They were all from the same box.
What is your experience with non-CCI ammo? For those that have replaced the firing pin with an after market part, did you see any improvement with the cheaper ammo?

I must lead a sheltered life, as I haven't ever seen any Federal Black Box 22 ammo. The only Black box that I had been aware of was Winchester, and several of us that tried it had nothing but problems, too much wax, FTF, FTE. Most of the Federal I have seen was the blue boxes, which work great for me, and the Walmart Red boxes along with the white box semi-auto 22lr, which worked in some guns and not in some of my other ones. But almost everything I have tried in my 15-22 has worked as expected.

 

[RGBellCSI]

Federal Black Pack: Cabela's Online Store - Quality Hunting, Fishing, Camping and Outdoor Gear

 

[REM 3200]

Stick with CCI, the best .22RF primers going short of Eley.
I can't remember the last primer failure I've had in the 15-22 with CCI.

 

[sgtsandman]

My 22s have liked Remington Golden Bullet best and I don't remember every having a fail to fire with them.

 

[RGBellCSI]

I shot 100 rounds of the Federal Black Pack ammo with my Ruger 10/22 and 40 rounds with my Ruger SR22 today. With the 10/22, I had 3 failures to fire, 2 failure to feeds, with bent/grooved casings, and one failure to eject, with the spent casing jammed in the closed bolt. I had two failures to fire with the SR22. I reloaded the fail to fire rounds and 2 of them did not fire on the second attempt. There were two clear marks on the rims that were consistent with the marks on the successfully fired spent casings from these guns.
With my 15/22 and the two Ruger firearms, it is clear that the Federal Black Pack ammo sucks big time. I will just have to accept the high failure rate, burn up the rest of the box and stick with CCI ammo. I have had a fairly high failure rate with Remington Golden Bullets as well. Once again, you get what you pay for!

 

[Eric300]

I don't know what to tell you. My M&P 15-22, Ruger 10-22 (modified), and Browning Buckmark 5.5 Field will shoot all of the ammo pictured below (as well as other ammo) with almost no issues at all. Including sub-sonic & standard velocity. HP, SP, 36gr, 40gr, it doesn't matter. Of course, there will be a bad round or two but those are few and far between, and I just consider it's just those particular rounds that were bad. Especially in semi-auto rimfires, keep the chamber clean, the action clean and PROPERLY lubed. Assuming that all of the parts are in working order, you really shouldn't be experiencing an unacceptable amount of malfunctions of any kind. Good luck, hope you get it worked out.

 

[Meangene]

Lately my favorite ammo has been Agela, it's lower cost makes it very affordable and if functions near perfect in my 15-22.
I theorize that these rifles are all a little different, like identical cars, both have there own quirks, one will work a little better than the other. One likes this, but the other doesn't, one may have displayed no issues at all, but the other is a pain in the ***.