round count for recoil spring assembly replacement?

[mrmike7189]

Springs dont break....they weaken

I have never experienced, nor heard of a recoil spring breaking. Ever.

I have heard about the guide rods breaking often. Plastic guides rods are more common now.
If your RSA is a captured one, Glock ,for example,then the plastic insides break and you have to replace the whole unit. Recoil springs dont break per se, .........they weaken.

 

[Rastoff]

I have heard about the guide rods breaking often. Plastic guides rods are more common now.

I have never experienced, nor heard of a recoil spring breaking. Ever.

Neither have I heard of a recoil spring breaking. I've only ever seen one recoil rod fail and that was a plastic one from a Glock during a 1,000 round torture test. The gun kept working even after the rod shot out the front.


If your gun starts to have failures to feed, it might be time to replace the recoil spring. However, a lot of people put too much emphasis on the spring. It's far more likely you'll have a failure from a broken firing pin, a broken extractor, a broken ejector or damaged feed lips in the mag, than a malfunction from a broken/worn recoil spring.

I've replaced the recoil spring in my favorite 1911 at least 5 times. This was due to regular maintenance rather than a malfunction.

 

[Biscut]

There are two ways to handle springs. One is to just wait until you have a failure. This method works fine for most people. As you've seen, there are a lot of people who have fired many thousands of rounds and have no issues. So, this is not an unreasonable methodology.

A second way to handle springs is to just replace them every so often. This is a kind of cheap insurance. You can pick any type of indicator that works for you. For example, using round count is a good method. For the flat RSA in the M&P, 5,000 rounds is a good point to replace it. Or you can just use time. Every other year is a good time.

If you carry the gun for your job or for self-defense, changing the springs regularly, like every other year, is a good thing to do. You need to ensure the gun works the first time, every time.

M&P, Glock, Sig's that will eventually get a high round count it's cheap insurance for the long run. If you will have one of these handguns for 10 years a 5k rounds it is what it is. We all hear the stories of 500k rounds in XXX and no maintenance but that is just not the norm and also not responsible ownership.

 

[Rastoff]

We all hear the stories of 500k rounds in XXX and no maintenance but that is just not the norm and also not responsible ownership.

Indeed, not responsible.

We hear stories every day on the internet. Stories of 2" groups at 50 yards. Stories of 20K rounds without cleaning or maintenance of any kind. Stories of...internet bravado. In reality these stories are usually fantasy.

The truth is no one is as good as they think they are and no gun is as good as the owner claims. I'm sure some are factual, but most are "colored" a little.

I'm at the range a few times a week. I see the targets left behind and none of them at the pistol range ever have 2" groups. Especially not at any significant distance. I shoot a lot of Trap and I see guns malfunction all the time and the number one reason is dirt. Even a minimal cleaning will prevent most failures.

What is far less common is spring failure. It happens, but it's rare. Again, springs are cheap and easy to replace so, there's no reason not to. Even so, springs in modern firearms are quite good and they usually do their job.

 

[ggibson511960]

Why? Explain Please.

This old mechanical engineer was not a straight A student, but I paid enough attention in strengths of materials and mechanics classes to know that 99% of these recommendations to regularly replace springs are nonsense. Why do metals fail? They fail in direct tensile failure or fatigue failure. Direct tensile failure doesn't happen in firearm springs. They are constrained to a fixed deflection (strain) below their elastic limit. Fatigue failure, either high cycle or low cycle? I would hazard to say that 99.99+% of firearms springs are sized for infinite fatigue life. That means they can be cycled into the tens of millions of cycles before fatigue failure. The only remotely plausible causes of spring failure I can conjure are corrosion and abrasion, either of which is readily observable. Notice that none of the people recommending replacement cite reductions in spring rate or more exacting evaluations like microscopic evaluation of surface cracking. How often do these cautious folks tear down internal combustion engines to replace valve springs with seriously high cycle counts? How many RSA's have failed due to spring failure? There are likely some that have chewed up their guide rods and retaining collars, but fractured springs??

 

[oldiegoldie]

This old mechanical engineer was not a straight A student, but I paid enough attention in strengths of materials and mechanics classes to know that 99% of these recommendations to regularly replace springs are nonsense. Why do metals fail? They fail in direct tensile failure or fatigue failure. Direct tensile failure doesn't happen in firearm springs. They are constrained to a fixed deflection (strain) below their elastic limit. Fatigue failure, either high cycle or low cycle? I would hazard to say that 99.99+% of firearms springs are sized for infinite fatigue life. That means they can be cycled into the tens of millions of cycles before fatigue failure. The only remotely plausible causes of spring failure I can conjure are corrosion and abrasion, either of which is readily observable. Notice that none of the people recommending replacement cite reductions in spring rate or more exacting evaluations like microscopic evaluation of surface cracking. How often do these cautious folks tear down internal combustion engines to replace valve springs with seriously high cycle counts? How many RSA's have failed due to spring failure? There are likely some that have chewed up their guide rods and retaining collars, but fractured springs??

thanks for mentioning valve springs. they go through millions of cycles of high tension-low tension without breaking or weakening. of course they will probably fail at some point. interesting discussion.

 

[Turq]

thanks for mentioning valve springs. they go through millions of cycles of high tension-low tension without breaking or weakening. of course they will probably fail at some point. interesting discussion.

They do occasionally fail, but more importantly if you are replacing the valves, why wouldn't you proactively replace the springs? I think the same principal applies to the RSA, it's so inexpensive, relatively speaking, when doing preventive routine maintenance why not change it?