PPKS Springs

[dmharvey]

Just wondering if anybody has input on spring options (weights) for the S&W PPKS.

Took mine to the range tonight and had my pistol fail to fire the first round (double action) about 25% of the time. A second pull of the trigger seemed to touch the rounds off fine. Also had a couple of rounds fail to fire while firing single action. All of these rounds had a light dent on the primer.

While at the range I switched between a stock (20 pound) recoil spring and a 17 pound recoil spring but it didn't really seem to have any affect, rounds failed to fire at about the same rate with either spring.

My question is this...what can I do to help eliminate failures when firing double action? I guess I'll start by trying different brands of ammo but should I consider changing springs and/or spring weights?

[karcent]

Recoil spring has nothing to do with primer strike, which seems to be your problem.
PPK/s manufactured by Interarms are notorious for malfunction. The S&W manufactured PPK/s are usually better.
Get your pistol to a competent gunsmith.
Dick Williams is close to you. They do good work.

[dmharvey]

I was thinking more along the lines of the firing pin and/or hammer spring. If the problem persists with other brands of ammo I'll probably take it to Dick Williams. The ammo I ran into problems with was Magtech. I did fire some other brands and they seemed to cycle/fire pretty good. Just want to be as sure as possible that I can rely on this weapon to function properly if I ever need it. Thanks for your input!

[karcent]

Is it a S&W or Interarms?
Could just be hard primers, but the PPK/s is not known to have a weak hammer spring. Is it new or has some trigger work been done to it?

[dmharvey]

It is a S&W. I got it used and I don't think it has had any trigger work done (contacted last owner to find out for sure but haven't heard back yet).

I guess I'll take it to the range one more time to do a little more testing before I make a move. After surfing the web it looks like the only option for after market hammer springs is to go lighter which doesn't sound like it would help this problem. We'll see...

[Imshootin]

When I first bought my S&W PPK/S I fired all the Russian and other misc. stuff through it that my P3AT wouldn't digest. I started having the same problems you were. I flushed out the firing pin channel with some brake cleaner as it was nasty dirty. It's been a 100% since. Easy enough to try.

[karcent]

It is a S&W. I got it used and I don't think it has had any trigger work done (contacted last owner to find out for sure but haven't heard back yet).

I guess I'll take it to the range one more time to do a little more testing before I make a move. After surfing the web it looks like the only option for after market hammer springs is to go lighter which doesn't sound like it would help this problem. We'll see...

I was wondering if the previous owner had put a softer spring in it. That may be causing the problem.
Too much lube on a very cold day (shooting outdoors) could also do it.

[Donzie]

Recoil spring has nothing to do with primer strike

if the round is not chambered fully the round may absorb some of the firing pin strike. this may be caused by weak spring, or cheap ammo.
try to polish your feed ramp and chamber, or use quality ammo.

[Graydon]

I have run a few boxes of Magtech through my "Walther USA" PPK. I have actually tried just about every brand of cheap ammo and it has all fed just fine.

The firing pin and the "round-in-chamber" indicator pin can get gunked up. They're not too difficult to remove. Try taking those out and cleaning really well. If the firing pin is too gunked up, I could see that preventing a good clean strike. It may be too that the spring on the hammer is weak.

[dmharvey]

Thanks again for all the replies, they are truly appreciated. Just a quick update...went to the range and fired a variety of ammo with no further issues, I guess the pistol just doesn't like MagTech ammo.

[indy1k]

cool glad to here that my brother primarly uses winchester i looked in his safe and im pretty sure thats what he used in it (had a couple hundered rounds of 380)good luck keep me posted i know a couple smiths is you need