Hammered

Reassembling a SIG P220 is Murphy's wet dream... wait he warned us about this kind of crap.  Not a wet dream, direst prediction.

There are simply too many parts that can go in backwards.

I started with this:

 Because I'm concerned that the, pretty, wood stocks are fragile having had to WECSOG glue them back together...  I'd resolved to get some plastic stocks.

Because SIG changed the mainspring twice since this gun was made, the plastic grips I can afford required changing the mainspring, strut and retainer.

The new strut required changing the hammer.

The new hammer required changing the hammer stop and adding a hammer rebound spring.

The parts came in today and I took it all apart!

Only one thing was even half hard to get out and that was the trigger bar.  Happily I'd watched a video and knew it came out in just one way so you fiddle around until it passes through that space and falls out.  A lot like a Garand bolt, come to think of it.

Reassembly went smooth until it was time to put the locking insert back in.

There are little notches in the trigger pin that accommodate the grooves in the locking insert and hold the trigger pin in place.  You have to have the trigger pin aligned just-so with the slide stop just-so with the trigger bar just-so and then insert the locking insert just-so while holding the slide-stop/take down retainer spring in place.

If everything is aligned perfectly, it falls right in.  If not...

Did I mention you cannot see the grooves as they hit the trigger pin?

I revisited the video and saw the trick and everything went click.  Thanks YouTube!

Once that was in, it was easy to finish.

This is also when Murphy strikes.

There's a long wire spring that curves from the frame to the trigger bar.  There's a hole drilled in the bar that sure looks like it's for the spring end.

It is not.

There's a little notch, lower and farther aft.

The spring works just fine in the hole until you put a magazine in the gun.  Then the tip of the spring drags on the magazine.

Easy fix, especially with Willard's P220R to compare with.

Another gotcha is on the frame end of that spring.  It sits in a groove inside the magazine well and is easy to get so it sits proud of he frame and drags on the mag.  Also easy to make sure it's down where it's supposed to be once you realize it needs to be.

I think it was worth it!

The complete Hammer, strut, Wolff spring and retainer bring the double action pull from 11 lb. even to 8-1/2 lb.  Single action is barely changed going from 4 lb. to 3-15/16 lb.

Just one, teeny, oddity.  The rebound spring doesn't quite pull the hammer to half-cock.  I don't think this will be a problem in practice because the only time it shows up is when I'm doing repeated dry-fire shots in double action.

The decocker drops it to half-cock and the slide puts it at full cock.