My wife is just starting to work on better pistol technique. Lately, she's been working using trigger reset properly. Tonight, she gave me a real puzzler. Her 9c is fully stock and has about 700 rounds through it. The gun has always run fine for her since she learned how to grip it properly. However, it turns out there's something wrong with it and I'm just not sure what. Even worse, I'd never really played with it much so I have no idea if this problem existed from day 1 or appeared when the gun was detail cleaned recently.
If you dry-fire the gun, hold the trigger to the rear, cycle the slide to cock the action, and then slowly let the trigger forwards to reset it, you'll get a very strong, very tactile click that seems like the trigger resetting but it's not. If you start pulling rearwards again from that point, you'll find out that you've got nothing but the trigger to pull against, just like the dead trigger problem BUT you get another big click as the trigger moves rearwards. However, if you get that first, strong click and continue to allow the trigger to move forwards, you'll get a second, very weak click about a 16th of an inch farther forwards. That second click is the actual reset.
So, I tore into the gun trying to figure out what was going wrong. I separated the frame and slide and ran the trigger "by hand" through its cycle and it felt exactly like it should. I played with the slide and confirmed that the striker block blocks the striker at rest but allows the striker to move when pushed fully into the slide. I took the barrel and recoil spring out and played with the gun otherwise assembled. There's a definite pop as the trigger bar pushes the striker block out of the way and a definite pop as the trigger bar allows the striker block to come down again. Pushing on the striker block with the tip of a punch, most of the time it'd move up and down without any problem but every couple of pushes it'd pop strongly just before it bottomed out and then pop again as I released it. I'm not sure why it happens only some of the time with a punch but every time with the trigger. I then removed the striker block from the gun and everything felt exactly like it was supposed to according to the textbook.
That obviously limits the problem to something related to the striker block. On a whim, I took the spare striker block and spring assembly I had from my full-sized 9mm and placed it into her gun. Still made pops and clicks that it shouldn't, which implies that the real problem is the interaction of the striker block with either the slide or the striker assembly itself.
Do you guys have any suggestions for other things I could investigate or repair before I give up and ship it back to S&W for repair?
If you dry-fire the gun, hold the trigger to the rear, cycle the slide to cock the action, and then slowly let the trigger forwards to reset it, you'll get a very strong, very tactile click that seems like the trigger resetting but it's not. If you start pulling rearwards again from that point, you'll find out that you've got nothing but the trigger to pull against, just like the dead trigger problem BUT you get another big click as the trigger moves rearwards. However, if you get that first, strong click and continue to allow the trigger to move forwards, you'll get a second, very weak click about a 16th of an inch farther forwards. That second click is the actual reset.
So, I tore into the gun trying to figure out what was going wrong. I separated the frame and slide and ran the trigger "by hand" through its cycle and it felt exactly like it should. I played with the slide and confirmed that the striker block blocks the striker at rest but allows the striker to move when pushed fully into the slide. I took the barrel and recoil spring out and played with the gun otherwise assembled. There's a definite pop as the trigger bar pushes the striker block out of the way and a definite pop as the trigger bar allows the striker block to come down again. Pushing on the striker block with the tip of a punch, most of the time it'd move up and down without any problem but every couple of pushes it'd pop strongly just before it bottomed out and then pop again as I released it. I'm not sure why it happens only some of the time with a punch but every time with the trigger. I then removed the striker block from the gun and everything felt exactly like it was supposed to according to the textbook.
That obviously limits the problem to something related to the striker block. On a whim, I took the spare striker block and spring assembly I had from my full-sized 9mm and placed it into her gun. Still made pops and clicks that it shouldn't, which implies that the real problem is the interaction of the striker block with either the slide or the striker assembly itself.
Do you guys have any suggestions for other things I could investigate or repair before I give up and ship it back to S&W for repair?
