Posted: 7/28/2017 9:29:31 PM EDT
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My son's RIA 1911 went UNSAFE on him at the range Thursday. It looks like the sear stopped working AT ALL, and this happened as he was trying to fire it. When it finally fired, the hammer did not reset, following the slide forward. After that, the hammer would not cock at all.
I checked it out, and sure enough, nothing was catching the hammer and nothing I could do manipulating the gun changed that. I tore it down and after several attempts, got it fully reassembled with the sear spring finally consistently operating the sear, and now I'm not sure I trust it. I have a Wolff sear spring inbound, but I wonder if this is a common thing with RIAs. This pistol is a standard, full-size model with ambidextrous safety (a PITA to get apart the first time!) and a full-length recoil spring guide with open ended recoil spring plug. Aside from this "OMG" episode, it's a nice gun. |
| I've had multiple RIA's in 45 and 9mm. I've never had a problem other than the extractors are usually a little tight. The fingers on the sear spring are sometimes a bear to keep in place when sliding the main spring housing in place. It is possible it was a little out of place at the factory and stopped working after a while. Also a bad spring is always possible. Unless someone has done any work on the hammer hooks or sear I'm sure a new spring will take care of it. When you get it all back together and it function tests just fine I would only load 2 rounds per mag to shoot until you are comfortable with it. David |
| Since I finally did get the spring to stay put, I'm pretty much convinced that it was just jostled out of place somehow. But I'm going to put the Wolff spring in anyway. And the cost of the Wolff spring, including shipping, is much less than shipping the gun to RIA would cost. Now if the Wolff spring doesn't permanently fix this, that pistol is going back! |
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I had a new RIA compact not reset the trigger on second shot. Racked the slide back and from then on no problems. I dont know what the problem was. I function checked the pistol for days playing with it before I shot it. I didnt tear it down to the springs before shooting. Just did the normal tear down and inspection, cleaned and re-oiled for the range.
Even if it was a sear spring I wouldnt send it back. A $6.00 part to go through the shipping hassle to the factory for warranty work is not worth it to me. I put mine up to a new gun having a small glitch learning to walk for the first time. I ran about three hundred rounds through it and it never did it again. |
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Got the spring and changed it out. The only issue was tweaking the grip safety finger on the spring to get the right tension.
And that #%$&*ing ambidextrous safety is going to require 10 or 20 more disassemblies before it becomes easy to do. I'm not a fan of the ambi, partly because the right-side extended lever likes to bump my right index finger's first knuckle... My Series 70 Government Model has a low profile, left-side only lever and I like that MUCH better. Anyway, I'm going to take it to the range and run a bunch of rounds through it to make sure it stays, but that may only be an excuse to shoot my son's pistol... 
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