This is probably a simple one for the experts here and I would appreciate your help.
I am noticing that when when I am loading a new magazine in the pistol and cycle the slide to go into battery, the hammer is falling to half cock... not always but sometimes... please give me the fix for this so I can bring it to a compitent gunsmith and have it taken care of.
Let the gunsmith diagnose the problem. You don't need to tell him the cause, just that the hammer is failing to stay cocked.
He'll look it over and decide what the problem is and how to repair it.
The cause could be any one of a number of problems, from a weak sear spring, to a defective sear or hammer, to impacted dirt, to ?
I'm not a gunsmith but I watched a movie once in which John Wayne shot one. Maybe my answer will inspire a gunsmith to comment.
The disconnector in some 1911's can stick forward through the trigger bow port in the mag well, if you look down past the opened slide though the mag well you will see it, toward the back of the gun, is it possible your mag is hitting that and somehow moving the sear or trigger bow?
Below that is another opening farther toward the bottom of the magwell that should show part of the leaf spring, one leg of which presses on the sear, can that be moving something? I'm trying to think of how you can try it so you will know. For one thing, the front of the disco can have the part that projects into the magwell filed off, it doesn't have any function sticking into the magwell as far as I know. If it's stick past flush, out into the well, you will see that by looking.
See the following; http://forums.1911forum.com/showthre...=disco+magwell
Are you saying that when you release the slide, the hammer follows it to half-cock? If that's it, it's probably trigger bounce, and the most probable cure is to add tension to the center leg of the sear spring by carefully bending it forward.
Try it again, but this time... pull the trigger to the rear and hold it there while the slide goes home. If the hammer doesn't follow...it's the spring. If it does... you've got other issues.
Held the trigger as you suggested and tried it 4 times... the trigger did NOT follow. It remained in the correct cocked position. Now, not to sound completely ignorant but how much is required to bend the middle spring and which way in towards the trigger or out towards the hammer ? Don't want to mess this up...
Bend it slightly toward the trigger / disconnecter to put more pressure on it and control the trigger bounce.
The left arm exerts force on the sear, keeping it engaged to the hammer
hooks.
The middle spring controls disconnecter and trigger reset.
The right arm adjusts the grip safety pressure.
You might could stand to add just a tad more pressure on the left arm too just to insure the sear getting a good return.
You can tweak the spring with your bare hands.
DO NOT try to make a sharp bend in it.
Just increase the curvature slightly.
"Just increase the curvature slightly"
Question:
By applying slight pressure / bending the middle strut on the sear spring
as suggested... what will happen to the overall tuning of the gun, will it
throw something else out of whack?
Just want to make sure before I undertake something I've never done before.
Don't want to mess it up...
The worst that can happen is it will make the trigger pull slightly heavier by a 1/4 to 1/2 pound.
Well, actually, the worst that can happen is, it doesn't fix the gun and the hammer still follows.
In which case, you need to find a 1911 smith who understands hammer and sear angles and can fix it.
It is possible that constant beating it has taken when the hammer follows to the intercept notch has rounded off the sear angle.
But since it passed the 1911Tuner test by holding the trigger back and dropping the slide, probably not.
I think a little more spring tension is all it will need.
I detailed stripped the pistol for the first time ever and I used your instructions to tune the sear spring... I feel I really learned something today. The pistol is working fine and I was able to clean about 93 yrs. of stuff out of it.
To say I'm impressed with your know how is an understatement.
I can't thank you fellas enough... really.