First range report and some potential problems!

[superferrite]

Took my "new" 1973 P64, my commercial Makarov, and the trusty ol' Nagant to the pistol range today.

I had swapped the recoil and hammer springs and polished a gritty looking feed ramp prior to this trip and was looking forward to it.
I had a couple of instances when the sear was completely disengaged after racking the slide and engaging/disengaging the safety. The trigger simply pulled to the rear without any resistance. Strangely, I could cock the pistol manually but the trigger still wasn't catching anything.
This is really disconcerting, as I was thinking of carrying this little guy.

After popping off the slide for inspection and starting over, things functioned normally. In all instances except for one stovepipe, it was a real pleasure to shoot. It is really snappy, but handles well otherwise, and was as accurate as my Mak--and that's a good thing!

I'll re-install the standard recoil spring next time for an A/B test.
Haven't done the firing pin spring replacement yet. That looks hard!


BTW, my Nagant works fine, as well. Love that old beast.

[Hinermad]

I don't know if what you're seeing is the same problem I ran into a while back after disassembling my P-64, but the symptom is similar - pull the trigger, nothing clicks. In my case the trigger bar wasn't being held up properly by the trigger spring, allowing the back end of it (the part that pushes and/or releases the hammer) to drop down and not engage anything important.

Here's a thread about it with more detail, and a link to the online assembly manual:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4144

If that is indeed the problem it's not a hard thing to fix, it just requires proper reassembly.

Dave

[juniustaylor]

Toward the bottom of this topic (link at the end) are 2 videos that I posted. One is a method using forceps to hold the firing pin out of the way. Another video is if you don't have forceps and it's a bit more difficult. You can watch those videos and think if you'd like to do the spring change on the FP. On page 2 of the topic, there are some decent photos I took on putting the safety back in place after taking it out to do whatever with the firing pin. It's not a difficult task to do and only requires minimal tools.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4231

Here you can find videos I've put together to show how to take apart and put together the frame components. You can find the part about the trigger spring going under the trigger bar in the reassembly video @ 2min 20sec. I think there is a picture floating around somewhere on here that shows just the spring inside that little peep hole that you find when you take off the slide stop/ejector lever. I'll see if I can find it on here.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4200

[juniustaylor]