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Spr1
01-07-2012, 05:03 PM
My P30 LEM 9mm suffered some sort of breakage. I have 17,124 live fire rounds and perhaps 1000 dry fire cycles on it. The hammer will cock, but will not fall. At the range when it first happened, I felt something odd and stopped pulling, when I cycled the slide it worked properly for one round and then would not go off.

At this point the internal hammer is cocked and the mainspiring compressed, the external hammer will move back to the fully rearward position with the trigger, but releasing the trigger will cause the hammer to just track the trigger movement back forward. It will not engage the internal hammer and drop energetically. Both visible legs of the sear spring are in position and the small mousetrap spring appears intact.

What happened? Thanks in advance.

ToddG
01-07-2012, 05:12 PM
My first thought would be sear spring, but you say it's good. With the slide off the gun, when you pull the trigger does the sear move?

Spr1
01-07-2012, 05:20 PM
A little. Not sure what it should do with the slide off. It does not move enough I would imagine.

ToddG
01-07-2012, 05:41 PM
First, get a pair of tweezers and very gently lift each leg of the sear spring toward the top of the gun. Does it move around or does anything come out of the gun?

Second, verify the mousetrap spring for the internal hammer is at tension.

Third, check the trigger movement. Does it float freely or is it moving normally? I'm just wondering if somehow your trigger bar plunger got dislodged or failed and now the trigger bar isn't actually being kept in place to contact the sear properly. Though that's doubtful if pulling the trigger is moving the hammer back.

Have you disassembled the gun beyond field stripping ever?
Is the gun new to you or pre-owned?
Has the gun been properly cleaned and lubricated per the manual?

YVK
01-07-2012, 05:51 PM
Spr, I hope nothing is serious, and even if there is, I am sure H&K would fix it. I just couldn't pass an opportunity to highlight this quote from Todd...



Has the gun been properly cleaned and lubricated per the manual?

Spr1
01-07-2012, 05:51 PM
I will go play with the tweezers. The thought occurred to me that the sear spring may have broken but be reasonably in place. There appeared to be tension on the mousetrap spring but I will play with that some more.
The trigger/hammer movement seems really normal.
I have a spare sear spring, but not a mousetrap spring.
New to me.
Properly lubed.
The back end has never been disassembled other than a mainspring swap when new (new firing pin block spring at the same time).
I changed the trigger return spring 7000 rounds ago when it broke.

I will report back as I learn more.

Spr1
01-07-2012, 07:10 PM
Mystery solved.

I played with it with the slide off and with a little manipulation of the sear, etc., I could make the hammer fall, properly.

Once down, it would cycle every time as a double action.

The sear spring was intact and firmly seated, the mousetrap spring had full tension.

I played with the (not sure of the proper HK name) trigger bar plunger and was not happy with it's action. I detailed stripped the back end and removed the trigger bar plunger and spring. Bingo. Broken coil spring. It had broken almost in the middle and had overrun itself (looking like a double wound spring..... "hey, that looks f'd up...."), I unwound the pieces off the plunger and bagged all the parts.

Looks like a call to HK for a new one (and while I am at it all the other springs) on Monday.

I am quite certain that if I had just left the gun in the safe and wiped it down gently once a week, this would have never happened..... It's all my fault, I was shooting it....... :)

JM Campbell
01-07-2012, 09:12 PM
Rinse and repeat. (Stolen phrase from JodyH i believe)

Glad you found the problem and also something to look out for on my own set.

Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket

ToddG
01-08-2012, 11:13 AM
That's a pretty odd thing to break. When I went through "armorer school," the instructor didn't even cover removal of the plunger. That spring wasn't something they recommended replacing and both my P30 endurance gun and HK45 endurance gun ran the original spring throughout.

Bad luck, dude.

JodyH
01-08-2012, 11:19 AM
That's a pretty odd thing to break. When I went through "armorer school," the instructor didn't even cover removal of the plunger. That spring wasn't something they recommended replacing and both my P30 endurance gun and HK45 endurance gun ran the original spring throughout.

Bad luck, dude.
I wonder if it was kinked on install at some point?
That's about the only way a coil spring in compression will break.
Especially when the spring is supported on the inside and the outside.

Spr1
01-08-2012, 12:31 PM
Coil springs can break from fatigue just like anything else experiencing cyclic stress. But, I agree, it is likely it was damaged in some manner prior to or during the factory installation as it most certainly is a low percentage thing to have fail.

When I first got my P30, I spoke to Travis at HK and asked him what springs to order and have on hand. To Todd's point above, that was NOT one of the springs he mentioned and it was therefore one I do not have on hand.

Spare pistols are the ultimate spare part for a pistol.......

JohnN
01-08-2012, 04:37 PM
Coil springs can break from fatigue just like anything else experiencing cyclic stress. But, I agree, it is likely it was damaged in some manner prior to or during the factory installation as it most certainly is a low percentage thing to have fail.

When I first got my P30, I spoke to Travis at HK and asked him what springs to order and have on hand. To Todd's point above, that was NOT one of the springs he mentioned and it was therefore one I do not have on hand.

Spare pistols are the ultimate spare part for a pistol.......

Do you mind sharing the list of parts that Travis recommended?

Sent using Tapatalk

JodyH
01-08-2012, 04:54 PM
H&K CS told me that the trigger return spring and flat spring were the recommended spares to keep on hand.

Spr1
01-08-2012, 04:59 PM
As I recall, he prefaced his remarks, with "you should not need anything for a long time, but you might want to have".... And I ended up with the firing pin spring, firing pin block spring and the leaf spring style sear spring.
To be honest, it is a little blurry to me, as I also ordered extra of some of the parts to convert to the Todd special...

The trigger bar plunger spring was definitely not on the list, or I would have had one.

Also, Travis did not know if my gun would be seeing "a whole box of ammo when I get out to the range" or a thousand rounds a week.

I will ask some more questions when I order my plunger spring.

Edited to add (after seeing Jody's post) - yes, the trigger return spring was one where I ordered several extras.

JV_
01-08-2012, 05:53 PM
Do you mind sharing the list of parts that Travis recommended?

I would change the trigger spring every 10K.

Spr1
01-26-2012, 08:39 PM
I finally got the needed parts this week and put it all back together. I would certainly be dramatically faster the next time around, as I was taking time to look everything over repeatedly. Quite an exercise compared to a Glock. I think I could have put 4 or 5 Glocks together from a bag of loose parts in the same time.

Al T.
01-26-2012, 08:59 PM
Spare pistols are the ultimate spare part for a pistol.......

Sig line material right there. Seriously.