Is Springfield Armory bringing the Hi Power back?

[Elwin]

Tiger McKee posted some info on his SA-35. Changing to a stronger extractor spring seems to have cured his gun's extraction issues. He was seeing a 10% failure rate with the stock spring.

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This doesn't surprise me. I know it's a totally different gun and design, but I have one of those totally awful, no good, might as well throw it in a dumpster external extractor Kimbers. It ran fine with factory parts using soft target loads and a light recoil spring. Switching to 230gr ball and HP and an appropriate recoil spring for those loads, it had extraction issues. An extra power extractor spring from Wolff turned it into a very reliable gun.

Just to note that I think it's fairly easy for a company to design a gun with a properly shaped and installed extractor but then fail at selecting a spring for it.

Also, I've probably triggered some dark magic ritual by bringing up a Kimber that works in a thread where people have already mentioned HKs that don't. Whoops.

[CSW]

I must have had one of "those" Kimbers as well, a CDP II, that just ran and ran and ran.

[oregon45]

The SA-35 made the cover of "American Rifleman" and the article is a pretty favorable review, although the author did note that in the 780-rounds he fired he had one failure to extract of the same type shown by Garand Thumb and others.

I'm still planning on buying several of these when the begin selling for less than MSRP. I figure the extractor issue should be solved (either by Springfield or by installation of commonly available replacement parts) by then.

[JonInWA]

Did they ever determine exactly what you had done wrong?

Wiseass....Lumps of bituminous German coal in your stocking, Sparky!

What it was was my triggerbar on my VP40 was slightly out of spec, so I had to actuate the trigger to field-strip, a la Glock...

HK discovered it when THEY disassembled it to perform a courtesy upgrade on the trigger return spring bearing; I'd gotten used to my "Glock" HK VP disassembly...

I think they simply adjusted/modified the OEM triggerbear to properly perform the function, but they might have totally replaced it. Whatever they did brought the VP field-stripping back into HK manual of arms compliance.

As ToddG said, nothing, and nobody in the gun manufacturing world is perfect. HK has been superb in overall intrinsic quality of components, manufacturing processes, and after-market support, seeing things in a holistic sense. I'm impressed and appreciative.

Best, Jon

[Dorsai]

I'm sending mine back to Springfield and give them a chance to make it good. I have several issues.

1. I haven't heard of anyone else experiencing this. Hopefully, that means that mine is a bit unique and not an issue for most. Specifically, about half of my BHP mags, FN OEM mags, didn't fit. After comparing an FN BHP mag well to the SA-35, they aren't the same. The BHP mag well opening is fairly rectangular while the SA-35 is rounded at the front strap corners. The mags that had problems were binding on those corners. It looks to me like some file work to open those corners and square them off would solve the problem. Which also suggests that it could have been missed in the quality control check since the Mecgar mags fit fine.

2. Extraction issues. Garand Thumb reported it in his video as did BH Springs. This issue at least appears more widespread, but easily fixable.

3. I haven't heard anyone else experience this. BH remarked on the fact that the safety could move up when the hammer was down and potentially interfere with the movement of the slide. I checked that and while the safety could move up enough that the hook on the safety could start to enter the notch, manually cycling the slide pushes the safety back down with little effort. What I hadn't seen on the interweb was that rotating the safety up just a little farther than desired resulted in a much harder trigger pull. I experienced this several times and while the trigger was heavy, it could be powered thru. I believe that because my thumb is under the safety lever, it pushes the safety up a little and the inside part, where it rotates to make FCG safe, under these circumstances, that process makes the trigger press heavy.

[jellydonut]

The SA-35 made the cover of "American Rifleman" and the article is a pretty favorable review, although the author did note that in the 780-rounds he fired he had one failure to extract of the same type shown by Garand Thumb and others.

I'm still planning on buying several of these when the begin selling for less than MSRP. I figure the extractor issue should be solved (either by Springfield or by installation of commonly available replacement parts) by then.

I see gun rags have made no progress in the past 30 years. Imagine believing 780 rounds is a useful test.

[Tensaw]

Does anyone have an educated guess on how many of these pistols SA produces each day? Idle curiosity.

[mmc45414]

Wiseass....Lumps of bituminous German coal in your stocking, Sparky!

Guilty!

As ToddG said, nothing, and nobody in the gun manufacturing world is perfect. HK has been superb in overall intrinsic quality of components, manufacturing processes, and after-market support, seeing things in a holistic sense. I'm impressed and appreciative.

Yes, I agree. I also think the enthusiastic consumers like we represent here might also be a bit of a fringe element, not like that is a bad thing. Probably lots of these SA-35s have been to the range and are back home resting comfortably in the safes of people that are perfectly happy with them.

Back to this extraction thing, this is just a pretty straightforward coil spring, is it gun industry practice to have something like this made specifically? Would Browning and Saive have designed a spring to be made to fit the hole, or would they drill a hole that fit a common spring? I would not expect that SA is building springs, it would seem like that is something acquired.



The Tiger McKee picture shows springs that look to both be wound from the same diameter wire, just one is longer at rest. Is this something where SA buys a box of springs of a known size, or do they have somebody make a bunch of SA-35 extractor springs? Maybe a supplier that was making a buttload of springs made them all bad, or maybe just some of them bad? Just seems too bad that something this simple would knock the wind out of the sails.

[RevolverRob]

Guilty!


Yes, I agree. I also think the enthusiastic consumers like we represent here might also be a bit of a fringe element, not like that is a bad thing. Probably lots of these SA-35s have been to the range and are back home resting comfortably in the safes of people that are perfectly happy with them.

Back to this extraction thing, this is just a pretty straightforward coil spring, is it gun industry practice to have something like this made specifically? Would Browning and Saive have designed a spring to be made to fit the hole, or would they drill a hole that fit a common spring? I would not expect that SA is building springs, it would seem like that is something acquired.



The Tiger McKee picture shows springs that look to both be wound from the same diameter wire, just one is longer at rest. Is this something where SA buys a box of springs of a known size, or do they have somebody make a bunch of SA-35 extractor springs? Maybe a supplier that was making a buttload of springs made them all bad, or maybe just some of them bad? Just seems too bad that something this simple would knock the wind out of the sails.

They undoubtedly source springs elsewhere.

But I think we're overlooking that BH noted the extractor channel seems to not be milled deep enough. Which is a much bigger concern. It's possible that fitting a different extractor or a heavier spring overcomes this issue thereby "fixing it" by band aiding the symptom not solving the underlying problem.

If folks are fine regularly replacing extractor springs, cool. But if not then it could be a problem long-term.

[Jim Watson]

This is disturbing, it is getting to be like the 1911 mantra, "a good gun once you have worked on it."

It seems we are getting to a Dark Age, defined by Poul Anderson as a time when you (manufacturers) not only cannot do what used to be done, you don't even know that it had been done.

Would Browning and Saive have designed a spring to be made to fit the hole, or would they drill a hole that fit a common spring?

Mr Browning and Msr Saive didn't put no stinkin' little coil spring in a hole in the first place; that was a bean counter change years later.