rare s40 range report

bigtaco,
Thanks for the techincal info on the trigger mechanism. Very interesting about the FP spring washer being used to balance the force of the lever spring. Never would have figured that one out since all 3 of my Steyrs only have one washer.

Please provide more info on the trigger click with the slide off. I have that click with my S9 but doesn't appear to affect anything.

Do both your Steyr's have a clean trigger break or do you sometimes get some creep before the trigger breaks and sometimes during the creepy breaks the trigger pull also is much higher at the break? Any ideas on fixing that? I have that occasional creep with my M9, S9 and M357. I've done some polishing and there are no burrs on the drop safety, level, catch, transfer bar and the surfaces that those parts contact. Haven't checked the FP spring guide yet. Is there a trick to removing the FP sring washer?

Also, any ideas on reducing the trigger pull force? Thinning that FP spring washer should reduce the pull but might cause reset and light primer strike problems if I understand how the mechanism works.

as far as getting the weight off of the guide rod, just set the fat part of the base on something hard and pull the spring down, then pull the weight off. the spring is still captured slightly, enough that it won't instantly fly off. use a slight twist and gentle tug to remove it from the guide.

rather than mill the weight, just compress the spring. doing this on the guide rod will keep you from bending your spring into a 180 as it resists your efforts to squeeze it. it's the opposite of stretching it to add preload. measure length before and after, but any decrease in static spring length will result in less preload when it is installed. but that could result in failure to reset troubles. there's a better way to lighten the trigger pull below.



i'm almost certain your trigger grit is the result of a burr on the weight which has nicked your firing pin spring guide rod. i polished the entire guide rod since the spring will also have to slide down it as i pull the trigger. next polish the surfaces on the weight that will be in contact with the rod. i wrapped some 1000 grit around a small screwdriver and it was pretty simple. be sure to reinstall the weight with the beveled area towards the tip of the guide rod, not towards the spring. it engages with the beveled area inside the firing pin.

what follows is serious tinkering. i only did it to mine because i had nothing to lose since no one else could fix it and i could only work with the parts that i had. there are several springs doing several functions all working with one another. adjusting one could require adjusting another. once a spring is bent, it's bent. it worked out for me and i have two steyrs so i had spare parts to keep atleast one fully functioning. i say if it aint broke, don't fix it, but mine was broke. i'm not a gun smith, just a guy who ran out of options, but wasn't giving up. that being said...

i noticeably lightened my trigger pull but i have no way of measuring how much. maybe the gun smith at the range could tell me exactly where it is now. there is a spring (#13) that pushes the post (part #11) to the rear of the gun. the post is holding up the sear (or catch or little triangle thingie #10) when the pistol is cocked. the firing pin spring is holding the sear on the post. the drop safety ensures that this tender balance is upheld until the trigger pulls the sear far enough back to fall off the post. when you pull the trigger, you push the sear back, compressing the firing pin spring, until the sear falls off of the post. the reason the post doesn't continue all the way to the rear of the gun is because it dogs against pin #14. test it out, your gun won't do anything without #14 installed. the post will simply push the sear all the way to the back of the sub frame. anyway...

the included angle of the two arms of #13 is around 120 degrees. using two needle nose pliers i reduced this angle to about 90 degrees.
now, the sear can fall off the post more easily because it has less energy pushing it to the rear of the gun. incidentally, is was told that 90 degrees here would give you about a 4 lb. pull. but it might take more firing spring preload to pull the sear on top of the post. (mine didn't, bonus!)since we're pulling on the firing pin spring when we pull the trigger (proof positive it's a double action) any increase in this spring rate can potentially offset any decrease modifying the post spring gives us. i gotta believe steyr got it right. and i'm by no means advocating bending any spring on any machine ever in your life. steyr certainly did way more testing than i did. but my trigger is way smoother and definitely lighter. i could always order more stock parts and put it back, oh, wait a minute...

i also polished the top of the post and the mating surface on the sear. the sear slides off the post, smoother sliding... better feel. no grittiness.

i also noticed that my trigger bar was polishing itself from riding against the inside of the frame. if the frame is gritty enough to polish the trigger bar, then it's worth polishing the inside of the frame where the trigger bar rides. i feel that it helped.

if your gun clicks when you pull the trigger with the slide off, and you can clearly see movement of the sear. one of two things is up. either the bend in the trigger bar is not 90 degrees or your #19 trigger spring is SLIGHTLY too stiff. if you're holding the gun in your hand, the trigger bar runs vertical along the inside of the frame. after passing the magazine area, it bends 90 degrees to act on the sear and push it back. make sure this bend is 90 degrees using some combo of vise, squares or parallels. more accurate the better. i didn't have to bend mine, it was correct so i'm not sure how much force is required to bend it. be careful though, trigger bars aren't on sale at wal-mart very frequently.

if that's kosher, it's the #19 spring. with the trigger removed from the subframe, gently, i mean as softly as possible put the slightest of pressure on the spring. if holding the trigger in its natural vertical orientation as it is when in the gun, you pull the trigger bar down. this thing is delicate. i barely touched mine and it totally bent WAY too much. luckily it doesn't really matter because the inside of the frame guides the trigger bar and keeps it from falling anyway. talk about idiot proofing a gun. this spring pushes the trigger bar up so that when the firing pin spring pulls the sear onto the post, the trigger bar is high enough to engage the flat that it pushes against when you pull the trigger as you release the trigger to fire the next round. the click is a sign that it is pushing up too much. the trigger bar should be clear of the sear when the trigger is not set. the reason why is even more difficult to explain. here we go...

it is physically impossible to relase the trigger before the slide cycles. unless your slapping AT the trigger in a specific effort to do so. good luck hitting the broad side of a barn at point blank range using this trigger technique. with a smooth pull and a surprise break, the slide cycles before your brain could realize the gun has gone off, let alone tell your finger to stop exerting pressure. so, the flat on the sear that the trigger bar pushes against must at some point during resetting actually bypass the trigger bar. if the spring #19 is pushing up too hard, the trigger bar will engage this flat, not let the sear bypass, your sear doesn't get on top of the post and when you release the trigger, the mechanism is not reset. when you hear the click, you are verifying that with the sear in a non cocked position (sear can't be on top of post without the firing pin to push it there) the trigger bar is engaging this flat in the sear. this is all very clearly visible with the subframe removed.


incidentally, since you didn't mind the last long post and this is allready retardedly long, you can assemble and fire your weapon without the frame if you want. (good luck holding on!!!) no magazine of course, but the weapon does not need the frame to operate. the take down lever dogs on the magazine release spring and holds everything together. the gun will also function fully even if you completely remove all traces of the manual safety. and if you really wanted to, you could file the trigger safety nub off where it hits the sub-frame and render it moot. but don't actually do this.

anyway... with the slide on the sub frame while it is out of the main frame you can get a very good visual of how all these parts work together to reset the trigger and how far the sear goes back before breaking and how little the trap door falls. it's really pretty neat. it also put my mind at ease when i discovered that my s40 has the classic interior frame crack where the front of the sub frame rests. hey steyr, seriously, do a run of s model frames for all of us with cracks. i've fired thousands of rounds with significant portions of the interior of the frame completely missing, but it doesn't hurt anything because the only function the frame provides is grip and magazine retention.

if you made it this far, cool. i'm long winded, but this stuff works.

if you combine a nice polished and lightened trigger with idpasteyr's awesome grip tutorial, dry fire a bunch and hit the range at least once a week, you can out shoot any handgun short of a tuned up 1911. but the tuned up 1911 is gonna jam before the magazine is empty anyway.

Thank you very much. That is a lot of great info bigtaco. Great idea about operating the action without the frame to see what is going on. Maybe I can finally figure out the creep in my trigger.

I took apart the FP spring guide today. No nick, pretty dirty. After I cleaned it, the washer slid over the guide very smoothly so I didn't bother to polish it. Since the FP spring squims after it is installed on the guide, it creates quite a bit of friction against the inside of the FP. My FP bore appears to have rings or ridges in there from the machining. I might have to polish the inside of the FP bore to see if that does anything.

I've played with the #13 lever spring quite a bit already. I'd bent it to reduce the load initially but than I thought that a higher load might actually help reduce the trigger pull since the #13 spring helps to push the lever (#11) back against the catch ( until the lever is stopped by pin #14)which pushes to compress the FP spring during the trigger pull. But the #13 spring doesn't stayed bent out since the installation tends to deform it back to orignal spread. So I'm not sure if I can actually get higher load without a heavier spring. i probably just ended up reducing the cycle life of the spring with the plastic deformation.

One thing that did reduce the trigger pull a little bit is tweeking trigger spring #20 to reduce the trigger return load which adds to the overall trigger pull. The initial take up now is much lighter. Don't over do it or the spring wouldn't be able to return the trigger forward against the friction in the trigger assembly.

i see what your saying about the spring #20. i had always thought that it just pushed out the trigger safety, but it is clearly a spring force during initial takeup, and once taken up, that force is still present during the rest of the pull. i might try to tweak mine. i'll let you know.

i really think that reducing the angle of spring 13 is the way to go. the catch falls off the post, pushing it forward. the easier that the post can be pushed forward, the easier the catch will fall off of it.

i did polish the inside of my firing pin. i also polished the fp spring inside and out. making sure to polish it in the direction it will ultimately be traveling. which is why i polished my guide rod, because the slipperier it is, the easier the spring can squim down it. i also polished the two external raised rib type sections of the firing pin that ride inside the slide. the firing pin channel looked truly glass like so i didn't mess with it. plus, all these little parts are cheap, when we can get them, the slide on the other hand... $$$$$

a friend of mine polished the little slots that the sear rides in. but also opened them up in the process. i didn't do it because i'm not buying another sub frame. but his gun works great.