Para firing pin safety system

[flintknapper]

Frankie, you have PM

[frankie_the_yankee]

Flint,

Check your PM's.

[frankie_the_yankee]

I figured I'd update this thread to sort of close out this issue for now.

Para sent me a new firing pin, a new firing pin safety plunger, and a new plunger spring. I had to polish the plunger hole a bit as it was buggered up some from the original damage. A little bit of fine grade automotive rubbing compound did the trick. Then I installed the new parts and set the rear sight to be in the center of the slide as close as I could tell by eye. I verified that the plunger operation was smooth with no hangups.

So now I have a gun that works like God and the design team intended. Time for a range test.

When I first range tested it, the gun would go bang every time, unless it failed to feed. Then a round would just get hung up halfway into the chamber and bring everything to a halt. This was with both 230 gr. FMJ ammo and 185 gr. JHP rounds.

Some experimenting revealed that the problem was magazine related. The original 6 round mag that came with the gun NIB had a metal follower and functioned flawlessly. A second 6 round mag that I bought from the gun store had a plastic follower and would occassionally hang a round halfway into the chamber.

A 7 round mag that I got directly from Para also had a plastic follower. It would hang almost every other round. It was basically useless.

Then I got an idea. I took a couple of Wilson Combat magazines I had and tried them out. Of course they were too long for the grip frame, but they would feed perfectly. Then I swapped the followers and springs into the Para mags. Again, no failures to feed occurred.

At that point, I ordered a few sets of followers and springs from Wilson Combat. I installed them yesterday and range tested the gun today. Feeding 185 gr. JHP rounds, I had no failures to feed in either of the 3 mags.

I'm not exactly sure just what it is about the Wilson stuff that makes it work better. But I noticed that the contour of the top surface of the Wilson followers placed the rounds at pretty much the same angle as the trouble-free metal follower on my "good" Para mag. The Para plastic followers have a contour that is a little "flatter" or more horizontal than the Wilsons. I think this affects the angle at which the rounds enter the chamber (or try to).

See the photo below comparing the Wilson and Para followers.



I'm going to shoot the gun in an IDPA match at Texas Tactical tomorrow using 185 gr. JHP rounds very similar to my carry load. We'll see how it works. Right now, I think that using the Wilson springs and followers does the trick.