My P30 broke

[Spr1]

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]

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]

A little. Not sure what it should do with the slide off. It does not move enough I would imagine.

[ToddG]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.