Sanity check on Trooper Mk III

[2152hq]

The MkIII sintered parts would fail occasionaly.
We would get them in for repair with usually the hammer broken.
Sometimes just the spur, which could have been from dropping the gun or other such handling.
Some had the hammer cracked right across under the area where the spur is.

The trigger return springs (wire torsion spring) would fail and one of the arms would break off.
Some were guns with extremely high round count. Others not.

I'm sure parts like the springs were vendor supplied at the factory. So they could have easily had some bad batches delivered.
I've replace a couple of those broken springs on MkIII's on my own with revolvers brought to me for repair when I still had my shop.
But I haven't seen a busted sintered part in years.
Maybe the bad ones have all been culled out..

The last of these were made when things where not going good at Colt betw Labor and Managment.
Though the actual Labor Strike didn't occur till '86, most who were there in those yrs prior say that the quality of production fell right along with the divide betw workers and management..
I think the MkIII was last produced in 83/84

FWIW,,don't mess with that small screw underneath the trigger.
It is not and overtravel trigger screw that can be or should be adjusted.

The screw was used to assemble and put the action into correct time.
The MkIII was designed to be assembled with little/no hand fitting. Cost cutting was in the design.

The screw was adjusted in and out by the assembler to the correct position where the action functioned correctly in SA mode.
There it was secured in place with the LockTite thread locker that had been applied.

There is no advantage to 'adjusting' it.

Also don't polish up the surfaces of the sintered parts to smooth the action. They are surface hardened, but the depth of hardening is extremely thin.
Probably surface hardened with one of the liquid or gas carburizing methods ..which I absolutely do not understand! But they are quite popular for surface hardening in the industry.

Once you go thru it, the part is pretty much useless.

MkIII parts are getting hard to find.
Jack Firsts Gun Parts seems to have some original and also some repro parts available (MkIII, MkV)
They have repro hammers, triggers and a few other parts like the transfer bar (another part that sometimes breaks) now made of solid steel and HT'd.
Not cheap! But maybe the only source?

Much easier and less expensive to repair a S&W.

 

[44wheelman]

$800 is more than half of the new price of a Python. I am a fan of the new Python.
No it's not blue. No it's not a S&W. But this would be my recommendation for someone wanting a Colt shooter.

 

[NY-1]

I hope that Colt considers bringing the Trooper back one of these days. I love the way it looks and its partial underlug compared to the features of a comparable Python. Maybe once they can figure out that shiny DLC coating that mimics blue...

 

[BB57]

Building in 2151 HQs comments hardening of fire control parts is always a compromise.

All fire control parts like hammers and sears are surface hardened for wear resistance. If they were not, the edge of the sear and mating notch on the hammer would quickly wear.

As 2152hq describes, that is exactly what happens when someone does a trigger job on one and files or stones down through that outer surface hardened layer.

However, those parts are only surfaced hardened because they also need to be tough not to crack and or break in use and that requires a core of soft, tough, non brittle steel.

The problem is that over time, and over the course of thousands of impacts the crystalline structure of that surfaced hardened layer begins to migrate inwards, until the entire part is hard and brittle.

For example, a friend of mine spent his career in ordinance and one of the tasks he was assigned was to determine why the US Army was seeing high incidences of M9s with broken fire control parts, despite those same M9s having low round counts.

Looking at where these failed M9s came from it didn't take him long to figure out the broken but low round count M9s were either used in training soldiers how to do function checks on them, or were in units where they were issued and functioned checked on a daily basis.

He described the multiple impacts on the hammer and decocker that occur during a function check and noted they were often function checked when they were checked out, and then again when they were checked back in.

In their zeal to ensure they worked, those units were literally function checking them to the point of failure.

A partial solution was just to ensure M9s were moved around to spread the abuse over the entire inventory, rather than functioning checking the same pistols to death. That's much like how the US military manages and moves C-130 aircraft around to different units and even transfers them between services based on the types of missions flown and the differing amount of fatigue life those various missions take off the wing box structure.

——

Forged parts have an advantage as the grain structure is aligned during the process and creates a stronger part with more stable grain structure. It's still an issue, but less of one as embrittlement will take a lot more time and impacts.

Ruger addressed possible issues with this on their investment cast parts by making their investment thicker and heavier than was necessary as a hedge against premature failure.

Winchester hedged it's bets on it's sinter forged receivers with a stronger chromium steel alloy.

Colt doesn't appear to have taken either of those approaches on their sinter forged parts. But to be fair, failure rates do see, to be quite low, and they may well have accurately estimated the service life for the vast majority of them.

S&W has taken a similar approach with all its J-Magnum frame .357 Magnums. Alloys can only get you so far and those forcing cones and frames don't have a lot of metal in them. S&W is clearly betting that the high level of discomfort that comes with firing full power .357 Magnum loads in them will effectively reduce the number of full power .357 Mag rounds fired in them over their service lives.

Ruger has taken a more conservative approach with the SP101, adding about 5 oz more metal in the same basic package, with a heavier forcing cone and frame top strap in particular. Its store ger but it also changes the equation a bit as it hurts less to shoot with a full power .357 magnum, so round counts with those loads will be higher.

 

[hittman77]

Somebody will likely pay $800 for that.

In the condition you say, it's $200 too high for me.

Now, I bought one in nickel and 98% with excellent original wood grips and paid $800.