Spr1
07-01-2012, 12:25 PM
I decided to do a little preventative maintenance on my P30 today. I (log book not in front of me) have about 21K rounds through it now. At about 20K rounds I had the first malfunction, a failure to fully extract a case (WW 115 gr target). The round sounded normal, and the case was left in the ejection port in line with the barrel. I have been wondering since then if it was random, as this ammunition supposedly has shallow extraction grooves (I have never measured any for comparison), or a weak extraction spring, or fouling, or?
I decided today to look into it. When I removed the extractor I was surprised by how much fouling was in the groove and on the extractor. The spring actually measured .015" longer than the replacement spring I had, so the spring is unlikely to be the culprit. I thoroughly cleaned the extractor and groove, which easily had enough fouling to prevent full inward movement of the extractor and began to reassemble things. Now, I know HK has all sorts of jigs and fixtures for doing the assembly operations and I do not. Reinstalling the extractor is definitely a three handed job and being limited to two, I needed a trick. Looking through my parts bin I found a cotter pin that was a very close fit to the pin hole and held the extractor perfectly positioned to receive the new spring pin. Inverting the slide over a bench block with the cotter pin sticking into a hole allowed me to easily drive the pin into place using a roll pin starter and finishing with the 3/32" roll pin punch. Presto.
By the way, most of the crud was deposited by the same WW ammunition, as that is my typical practice ammunition.
I decided today to look into it. When I removed the extractor I was surprised by how much fouling was in the groove and on the extractor. The spring actually measured .015" longer than the replacement spring I had, so the spring is unlikely to be the culprit. I thoroughly cleaned the extractor and groove, which easily had enough fouling to prevent full inward movement of the extractor and began to reassemble things. Now, I know HK has all sorts of jigs and fixtures for doing the assembly operations and I do not. Reinstalling the extractor is definitely a three handed job and being limited to two, I needed a trick. Looking through my parts bin I found a cotter pin that was a very close fit to the pin hole and held the extractor perfectly positioned to receive the new spring pin. Inverting the slide over a bench block with the cotter pin sticking into a hole allowed me to easily drive the pin into place using a roll pin starter and finishing with the 3/32" roll pin punch. Presto.
By the way, most of the crud was deposited by the same WW ammunition, as that is my typical practice ammunition.