Posted: 1/20/2008 7:59:29 PM EDT
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Something I have been wanting to do for a while. I had a jarvis .22 conversion kit laying around, and I found stripped API park'ed frames at the Houston gunshow for $140. I bought $35 worth of parts from an Austin gunshow guy, including having him staking the plunger tube on for me. The rest I got from a neighbor. The grips I had laying around. I think I paid $150 for the .22 kit. Total build cost so far is about $325. I had a bit of fun polishing the mag catch to slide freely. Also had to trim approx .5mm off of the grip safety to let it clear the trigger when depressed. I need to put a lighter mainspring in it, as well as clean up the trigger linkage. It has horrendous trigger creep and pull. Here's a couple of pictures: www.125gp.com/~jester/pics/gun/1911_22-1.jpg www.125gp.com/~jester/pics/gun/1911_22-2.jpg |
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Well, I put 150 rds through it yesterday, lots of that was one at a time. A few issues to sort: 1) Disconnector prevents slide from returning to battery while the trigger is still pressed. You can push the slide past it, but not on it's own. #1.5) Trigger pull is HEAVY. 2) cci-mini mags fail to extract, stovepipe, or shortstroke. 3) remingtons sometimes fail to feed, but reliably extract #3 I believe caused by a misbehaving colt .22 magazine. I need to get another couple to try. Other than that, it's decently accurate. All of the machining on the frame is very VERY sharp. I have 4 or 5 cuts on my left thumb/forefinger from the slide serations. It likes to run very wet and is fun to pull back past the hammer when oily. J |
These are both a likely result of having excessive tension on the middle finger of the sear spring. |
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Ok, per ken-may's suggestion, I swapped out the flat leaf spring to a different one that had thinner and less tension on the middle finger. This eliminated the slide catching on the disconnector, and also seemed to reduce trigger pull. However, trigger pull is still very heavy. I intend to buy another spring. A 3.5lb was suggested. Also, I picked up a kimber .22 magazine. The bullets sit a bit farther back in it than they do in the colt mag, but they seem to feed better. I didn't have any failure to feed problems with it. Rounds will not feed dropping the slide from the release. You must fully pull it back and then let it go. This upper does not like CCI mini-mags or rem subsonics. It loves the bulkpack golden bullets, as well as remington thunderbolts. *phew* at least it likes cheap ammo, but why? Is the remington stuff hotter? I thought the cci minimag was supposed to be the hottest? Thoughts & suggestions? J |
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To lighten your trigger pull, you will have to manually adjust (read: bend) the left and middle legs of the sear spring. You generally can't just buy a pre-tuned spring because the spring should be tuned to your specific gun for best results. You want enough tension on the left leg to keep the hammer from following when the slide's dropped from slidelock onto an empty chamber. It's safer to err on the side of more tension versus less, because too little tension can cause doubling and other unsafe operation. You want enough tension on the middle leg for the disconnector to reliably pop up every time after being depressed. You also want the trigger to reliably return forward after being pressed. The trigger bow presses indirectly against this spring via the disconnector, so excess tension will be felt here. Another way to get a bit of improvement on the trigger is to replace the mainspring with a 19 # spring. This may also help the reliability, since the slide won't have to expend as much momentum to cock the hammer. When it comes to choosing ammo, having the conversion work with all ammo just isn't going to happen. Even .22 pistols designed for the round won't work with all ammo. Try all the brands you can find, and hopefully several will work well enough for you. |
Check to make sure that the sear doesn't have a burr on the mating surface. This will make the trigger pull extremely heavy with just a tiny burr. Just stone it lightly while keeping the same angles that are already present. -Jbot |