Colt Officers (Compact) - Trigger Job

[Hawkmoon]

With guidance from Wichaka and John here on the forum, I have been attempting my first trigger job. The victim is a recently acquired 1991A1 Colt Compact of 1991 vintage. Trigger pull when I got it was a rough, creepy 7 pounds.

I have replaced the trigger with a Greider/Videcki-style trigger, polished as much as I could polish, recut the secondary angle on the sear tip, replaced the hammer spring with a new Wolff 20-pound spring -- and the trigger pull is still at 6-1/2 pounds. Cleaner, but too heavy.

Playing around this evening, I can see that the resistance increases exponentially as soon as the trigger bow starts to move the lever for the series 80 firing pin block mechanism. For liability reasons I would prefer not the remove that, and it shouldn't be necessary since Para Ordnance uses the same system and their guns are around 4-1/2 pounds out of the box.

Who has tinkered with this mechanism? How do I reduce the drag it imposes on the firing controls? Can I replace the plunger spring with a weaker spring? If so, from what source? Can I just snip a coil or two off the plunger spring?

Please help me make this little pistol shoot as nicely as it should.

[OD*]

Hawkmoon,

If you were to completely removed the trigger bar lever, plunger lever, plunger spring F/P and firing pin plunger, you'll find it has a lot less effect on your trigger pull than some folks would have you believe. I found it to be true, but try it for yourself.

[Hawkmoon]

That's what I have always read, OD*, but it's hard to escape the fact that this particular pistol, after cleaning up the disconnector paddle, sear tip, and hammer hooks as well as replacing the trigger with a new one that rides in the frame like it's on ice, has a 5+ pound trigger pull when the hammer strut isn't touching the mainspring.

Yet I have two Para pistols that use the same system, and they're both at 4-1/2 pounds. I know the series 80 system CAN yield an acceptable trigger ... the problem is how to get there with this particular specimen.

4 to 4-1/2 pounds is what I'm looking for, both because it'll match up with my other primary carry pistols, and because it will be used for carry so I don't want one of those horrible "hair triggers" that we keep reading about in guns that go out and shoot people with no human intervention.

[OD*]

Hawk,

How do the hammer hooks look?

[wichaka]

A lot of it depends on the quality around the plunger area.

I've done 3.5lb trigger pulls on Series 80 guns and have never messed with the firing pin safety.

Try what OD* mentioned, remove all of it and try it. If it makes it lighter, there's your problem. But me thinks that its still in the hammer - sear engagement, unless the firing pin safety area has some burrs, needs to be cleaned, or something of the like.

[John]

Since this is a new (for Hawkmoon) pistol, and we do not know much of its past, I would suggest that we do some troubleshooting.

Remove the upper S80 lever in the frame and the plunger and spring from the slide. Test the pistol in that condition. If trigger improves, it means something in that mechanism is creating unnecessary drag or pressure. Clean up the areas where those parts are, and especially the tunnel inside with the firing pin plunger moves. Make sure there is nothing there to create unnecessary pressure, which increases your trigger pull weight.

After everything is nice and clean, and when you replace the trigger parts in their position the trigger pull goes skyrocketing again, then one of the removed parts is the culprit. Maybe someone replaced the spring with something too stiff? Maybe the lever is dragging in the frame? Maybe the plunger is not moving freely inside the slide?

My 2 Eurocents.

[CJR]

Hawkmoon,

Assuming you have a Kuhnhausen book on the 45, I've found the following to work for me with Officer Models:

1. With an empty gun, go to full cock and see if you can rock the hammer laterally. If so, the hammer pin and possibly the sear pin have sloppy fits in the frame and the trigger pull will vary all over the place. Oversize pins are readily available.
2. With a feeler gauge and a stone, insure the hammer hook is 0.020 inch deep for a carry piece and at 90 degrees.
3. Back -cut the sear as you've already done. Lightly polish the tip of the sear.
4. Polish all Series 80s frame levers and button in slide to a mirror finish.
5. Polish the top, bottom, back and sides of the trigger bow to a mirror finish. On a stripped piece, the trigger should slide out of the the gun freely when you tilt the muzzle end up. Likewise, there should be no vertical slop in the fit between trigger bow and frame.
6. Change-out the hammer spring to a Wolfe Officer's spring, which I recall as being 21 pounds.
7. With the proper stones, final being a black stone, stone the hammer hook so it is a true 90 degrees. This may take 200 or more stone strokes.
8. Go to a four leaf spring, i.e. Clark, and adjust the trigger return leaf and sear leaf to give about 4 Lbs with no hammer follow-through.
9. Polish the bottom of the sear and the sides and top of the disconnector to a mirror finish.
10. Polish disconnector cavity in slide.
11. Clean everything up, use a good quality oil, equivalent to FP-10, and measure the trigger pull with a good gauge like the Lyman electronic gauge.

Hope this helps. Polishing to a mirror finish hardly removes any material and will not change the geometry of the parts. Good luck!

Best regards,

CJR

[Hawkmoon]

CJR --

Thanks for the tips.

I have replaced the el-cheapo factory plastic hammer with a new Greider aluminum unit, and exchanged the hammer spring for a Wolff 20-pound spring. That made essentially zero difference, though.

In the end, I gingerly bent back the sear spring a bit. Trigger pull now is just about 5 pounds (with a mechanical trigger scale, not electronic). What remains, though, is to get it to the range and shoot it to ensure that it's not going to go full-auto on me. If it works, I'll leave it there and not try to get it down to between 4 and 4-1/2, even though that's what I'd prefer. It's a carry pistol, not a target pistol, so 5 pounds will be satisfactory. The work I've done did clean up the trigger considerably, and that's all to the good.

[wichaka]

Go to the tech section and do the safety checks.

Take your sear back out and look at the primary angle..........is it getting nicked? Is it looking rough?


Make sure your trigger isn't adjusted too tight, if so the sear will not completely clear the hammer hooks, and the pull will go up a bit..........and worse case get rougher.