Granted, I paid less than $250 for this pistol, but I was hoping to have a reliable platform for suppression. It completely sucked out of the box. I couldn't even get through a mag without jamming. Those with limp wrists had even more trouble.

It now runs very close to 100%, and here's what I did. My problems may have not been your problems, but this is what worked for me. For reference, here's a parts diagram

(0) Disassemble the gun. Take off the slide, pound out the 2 roll pins holding the action in the plastic lower. You may need to unscrew the two halves (sideplates) of the action to do some things.

(1) Ditch the stupid mag safety. I removed part #23, and the gun actually works like a normal handgun.

(2) Ditch the slide stop spring. This kept slipping out from under the slide stop and making the last-round-hold-open nonfunctional. In the hundreds of rounds I have shot since then, the mag spring has been plenty strong enough to lock the slide back.

(3) Tweak the extractor spring. Push out (mine is just held in place by the tension of the extractor spring) the pin holding in the extractor. Gently stretch the extractor spring with some pliers. Exceeding the elastic limit of the spring does weaken it in theory, but I haven't noticed any ill effects yet. I get much more reliable extraction with this mod. I can't remember the last time I had an FTE, but I had them all the time before doing this.

Well, that's it. It worked for me, and I hope it's of help to you.

oh dude, THANK YOU. I will now de-crapify my walther.

After I get the stuck casing removed from mine I am gonna try this..............

I'd caution against removing the slide stop spring.

It holds the slide stop DOWN, not up, and without it, recoil can lock the slide.

Other good fixes:


1. Take a dremel with a tapered stone and just "touch" the edges of the back of the chamber. Its got a sharp edge on lots of guns, which impacts feeding. Just polish and slightly chamfer the edge.

2. Dress the ejector face. You want to scale back three of the four corners on the face so that it ejects sharply to the side, instead of back into your face. Diagram: members.aol.com/snick24392/p22e.gif

3. Add a trigger stop. I put mine right at the very bottom, in the frame of the gun and not on the trigger itself. Works great. The P22 is so light that any tiny amount of overtravel by the trigger will throw off point of aim. My grouping is MUCH MUCH better since I did this. Some folks use rubber O rings around the trigger for the same effect (nice non permanent mod).

4. Slightly (very slightly) radius the part of the hammer that rubs against the slide during the forward chambering / into battery phase of the cycle. You'll feel a point where the hammer's edge catches on the place where the safety bar and the steel insert in the slide meet. You want to round and smoothen the hammer to keep this "hang up" from happening. Don't remove too much material, or the hammer won't lock back and you'll have a double action only Walther. (alternatively, maybe that's what you want -- hey, to each is own).

5. Add a little bit of cornstarch to the threads of the barrel nut, fire 2 mags, then cinch the barrel nut just a "hair" tighter. Poor man's loctite and it lets you remove things if need be without heat.

6. Remove the firing pin. You'll see that the front has both the machined "dash" shape of a rimfire pin, and ALSO a square flat area that hits the breach face and prevents over penetration. Well, you can take just a HAIR of material off of that square part to give deeper firing pin hits. Especially once you've got some milage on the gun, the hammer spring may not have enough oomph to light off some brands of primer in D.A. (where the hammer throw is shorter).

7. This one is VERY IMPORTANT: Take a dremel and radius the FRONT edge of the two ears that stick up from the action and interact with the slide as disconnector ears. That piece is SHARP from the factor and really beats the hell out of the indentations on the slide. You want to make that into a "rounded" nub by removing the sharp edge from the front, top, edge of those little ears. (take a look at how they interact with the slide and you'll get the right idea).



I'm at 2000 rounds through my P22 since I did most of these mods, and I've literally gone about 1500 rounds without a jam, failure to fire, or other malfunction. I've left the mag safety in my gun. But some prefer to take it out.

Hmmm. May have to tinker around with mine now.

Thanks Gonzo and fizassist, I just bought my P22 last night. Most of what I have read here and at rimfirecentral gave me the confidence to buy and enjoy. I'm going to clean up the grease the darn thing is soaked in and shoot a little, then apply some of these "fixes".

tag 4 home

Originally Posted By bruh44: Won't all this void out the facotry warrenty though?

Well, yeah.

I'd rather have an unwarranted gun that WORKS than send it back to S&W on my dime six times for repairs though.

I must be lucky, I have had my p22 for about a year and haven't had any problems with mine. Mine shoots everytime, I will of source be checking out all of your recommendation. I just have to tinker.

Cazio

Originally Posted By BlammO: FWIW, I mine has a serial number in the "unreliable" range and I have the "bad" A mags. 550 rounds so far and the only jams I've had were a couple of subsonics after the gun was thoroughly filthy. I'm so happy to be rid of the mag safety. We'll see how it does . . .

What #s are in the "unreliable range," and how do you know if the mags are "A" mags????

Thanks!!! !

Originally Posted By BlammO: I have the "bad" A mags.

Bad "A" mags? The "A" mags are the improved ones with the slots.

Check:

Walther P22 Fixes

Originally Posted By BlammO: Ahhhh, thankyouberrymush! I stand corrected. Do you have any idea why the "L" series guns are supposedly less reliable? Mine fires fine, but if the slide doesn't return to battery at full speed, it sometimes hangs halfway open. Not a problem when shooting -- just odd.

I'd still like to see a database of S/N vs. reliability. Most claim that one doesn't exist, but at least I'd like to see the dates of manufacture for various S/Ns.

So far, mine is great. Just one dud round which I attributed to it being a bulk pack of Winchester Dynapoints.

tag