I have an older folded slide P226 9mm that I love. It has been sent to Sig back in 2010 and had the armorers there do an AEP, SRT, barrel recrowned, and the E2 grips attached. It is such smooth and accurate shooter.

However, every once in a while(sometimes more than others) I get light primer strikes. I shoot mostly my reloads. I always use CCI primers. Every once in a great while factory ammo.

What spring do I need to change out to get rid of this light primer strike occurance?

Thank you in advance.

I sent my m11 in for the aep when got it back, I noticed some lite primer strikes with a misfire in about 1 out of 50 Federal xm892 ammo. I called Sig and they suggested I send the pistol back to be checked.
Being that this is a one year old pistol, I declined that offer. It wasn't heavily used, and didn't have the issue before.
What I noticed was that the hammer strut spring ( main spring) was painted yellow. I was told it's an enhanced Main spring. I removed the paint, put clp on it and reinserted the strut and spring. I also used some compressed air to blow out the firing pin channel. I've put 350 rounds of variou rounds thru it since then withou a hiccup.

Hope it helps

This message has been edited. Last edited by: blueinterceptor,

Just an FYI: Since it is a folded steel slide and 7 years removed from SIG service, you may want to check the roll pins that are securing the breech block. Can you detect and looseness in the breech block? Do the roll pins seem secure? If those check out, it may be time to install a new mainspring. Cleaning the firing pin channel is also a good idea.

To reiterate the advice by GaryBF, new mainspring. The yellow paint mainspring is less powerful than the standard spring used in DA/SA pistols and I experienced many light strike misfires when I experimented with one. The lighter spring results in a lighter and possibly smoother trigger, but lighter hammer force = possibility of misfires.

Added: I just noticed that I was reading the wrong post when I commented about the yellow paint mainspring. To the OP, the advice from the other posters is all good.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: sigfreund,

The older gun and an SRT install raise a red flag to me. Check the firing pin block safety.

Gun empty, cock, push on FP with a stick etc, FP should only go in a little. Pull trigger until it stages against sear. If FP goes in at this point, all is well, but I'm guessing it may not.

Apply some back pressure on hammer, but not enough to lift it off sear. Continue pulling trigger slowly - does FP "unblock" before sear release? Check this several times to be sure. At the very latest, FP must unblock at sear release if not a little before.

I had one older P229 that would not fire at all after SRT install. The safety lever was not pushing FP block plunger up high enough to clear FP.

On another P229 with intermittent FTF, there was impact peening to FP block plunger from repeated hits from FP. I made new safety levers with higher lift to fix. Pics available if desired.

Another consideration is that CCI's are hard primers. A lighter mainspring combined with those primers may be the problem. However, since it only happens once and a while, have you examined your reloads for high primers? If a primer is not fully seated in the case, some of the firing pin energy goes into fully seating it, and that can cause the primer to not ignite.

I second inspecting the roll pins. I had them break on my folded slide 226 and it caused light strikes. I could tell they were broken because the breech block could be wiggled just a bit. There should be no movement of the breech block in the slide.

Well, I had some time to exam the P226 giving me the occasional light primer strikes. The breech block is in there right. No movement whatsoever. I did the FP exam like suggested and no problems there. I took off the e2 grips and noticed the spring did not have yellow paint. Looks nice and new with the plastic bottom part.

What say you? New mainspring/hammer spring?

quote:

Originally posted by 357fuzz:
However, every once in a while(sometimes more than others) I get light primer strikes. I shoot mostly my reloads.

(As JAFO also mentioned above)

Since you are shooting your reloads...Perhaps every once in a while you run into a primer that is not fully seated.

Do they usually fire on the second hit?

Yes they do fire on the second strike. I will check my hand loads to see if I have some high primers.

I know this is an old thread, but I was wondering if you ever found a resolution.

Yesterday I got some intermittent light strikes with my P228 (it was a bad day for me with Sigs, also had an extraction issue with my P229). I'd had problems with this gun in the past, but had thought that I'd fixed the gun with a new 20lb Wolff mainspring and a new barrel to fix some lockup issues, but apparently the problem persists.

Ironically I had started the range session with some small-rifle primed loads because I was trying to test reliability and figured if it would ignite those it would ignite anything. I had 20 of those, and it fired them all fine. Then I continued shooting with my standard loads, which were primed with CCI Small Pistol.

I was shooting my reloads, which I always inspect for high primers, so I know that was not the issue. I've also shot thousands of these through other guns with zero problems. I fired about 200 small-pistol-primed rounds total during the day, most of which were problem free. Somewhere about the middle of my range session, I had about 3 light strikes out of 5 rounds. The primer impression was markedly shallower than other fired cases, and all rounds fired on the second strike.

I checked the firing pin block timing, and it releases the pin completely before the sear disengages. Firing pin protrusion seems more than adequate. The breech block is secure with no wiggle, and I've had it apart in the past to inspect for debris and burrs, with nothing located.

I'm at a loss for what's going on with this thing.

When I told another shooter to flush out the firing pin channel of his P226 with a “scrubber” type product, he mistakenly used a different product that looked somewhat like the link to the product I was recommending. That evidently built up some sort of residue that hindered the firing pin force/speed. If it’s not an issue with the mainspring, a build up of lube and/or cleaning solvent in the firing pin channel would be my next thought.

Using a (proper) solvent type scrubber and straw nozzle, spray it into the firing pin hole in the breech block and even into the firing pin channel through the hole around the extractor. Be very generous and let the solvent drain out around the back of the firing pin. After my friend did that his light strike problems stopped.

Of course, if one type of hard-to-ignite primers fire okay, and another type of primer doesn't, I'd take that as a clue that it was a primer problem, not the fault of the gun.

It's the inconsistency that has me puzzled. I don't understand why only 3 rounds out of 220 (some of which were even small-rifle primed) wouldn't fire, and demonstrated a significantly lighter primer dimple than the other rounds. And why were those three rounds encountered so close together out of the total round count with no other problems? The firing pin channel was cleaned and inspected thoroughly about 750 rounds ago (not just with spray, but actually disassembled, clean, and degreased).

This message has been edited. Last edited by: 92fstech,

I took the breech block out of the gun this evening. There was some oil and crud but nothing significant. I cleaned and degreased it again before re-assembling, and measured the firing pin just for giggles. It's right at 2.325". Can anybody tell me if that's within proper spec for a P228 firing pin? It appears undamaged and seems to be protruding a reasonable distance out the front of the breech face.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
The primer impression was markedly shallower than other fired cases ....

My last guess here:
If nothing else has changed except for the individual cartridges and in particular their primers, that seems to point to the primers. I can’t think of anything about the mechanics of the pistol that would vary from one shot to the next in a string like that.

There have been reports that the quality of ammunition has been spotty, especially during the pandemic period, so perhaps that has been true of the individual components like the primers.
As for the cluster, that could have been nothing more than coincidence. Or it could have been due to a bad manufacturing batch; but that’s just speculation, of course, and coincidences do happen.

Re depth of primer strikes…ignition/recoil contributes to strike depth, so just looking at a dimpled but unfired primer doesn’t define the problem.

quote:

Originally posted by Chris Orndorff:
Re depth of primer strikes…ignition/recoil contributes to strike depth, so just looking at a dimpled but unfired primer doesn’t define the problem.

Thanks for that! I'd never considered that before, but it absolutely makes sense.

When the great primer shortage started several years ago, I have been using small pistol primers, small pistol magnum primers, and small rifle primers for my 9mm reload.
My general purpose 9mm reload uses a locally made 125 grain cast lead projectile, a minimum/starting powder charge of CFE pistol powder, and any functional/intact 9mm cartridge case.
So far, that reload has functioned 100 % in any hammer fired firearm that we have tried. Old school folded slide P226, newer P226, P224, P229 and a Ruger 9mm Police Carbine.

The only thing that reload won't work in is my HK P2000sk. It isn't that the pistol won't fire the round, the round won't fit in the chamber.
Standard jacketed 9mm projectiles are 0.355" diameter. The cast lead 125 grain projectiles measure 0.3562" diameter and won't chamber.

But as far as the hammer falling, hitting the firing pin, and assuming/checking that the firing pin block is being released correctly, I don't think you have a gun problem.
Newly manufactured primer quality is not what we have become accustomed to from prior decades.

quote:

measured the firing pin just for giggles. It's right at 2.325"

So in hunting for parts for my upcoming P226 build, I came across a spare P228 firing pin and spring that I forgot I had. It appears used. I measured it, and it came in at 2.329". I'm not sure that 4 thousandths would make that much of a difference...I'm going to try shooting it again as-is and if it acts up I'll tear it apart again and try the other pin.

Tried the other, slightly longer pin. Still getting light strikes. I'm gonna go full nuclear and stick a 24lb mainspring in this thing and see what that does. If that doesn't work I may throw it off a bridge. It's been a frustrating week with guns in the 92FSTech household.

Well, I'm an idiot. Got out my wolf spring packs and discovered that the 24lb spring is actually the factory weight. The 20lb was a reduced power spring..so I should have been at 24 the whole time. I guess we'll see if that solves the problem. I also have a 26 and a 28lber if this doesn't work, but I really don't want to go there.