BACK FROM THE RANGE.....

[44terryberry]

I have been shooting the Colt and the Smith  .22 tacticals side by side for about 1000 rounds now,long enough to see a pattern.At 100yds., the Colt will outshoot the Smith every time,with any ammo.Much tighter groups with the Colt.BUT! The Smith has never jammed,even once.Not so the Colt.The Colt  prefers federal bulk.Mini Mags are so-so,and remington is just a disaster,although all three brands group about the same. I polished the feed ramp on the Colt,and it works better,but those Remingtons jammed every 3rd shot.Many chambered, but failed to fire. They fired perfectly in my Ruger MK 111,so I know its not the fault of the ammo. The Colt seems to have a very light firing pin strike.Wish I cud bump it up a little...

[wobblinwheel]

Shorten the firing pin recoil spring. might help. the only other cause is the rounds not seating FULLY into the chamber. This also causes what appears to be a "light strike". If the rim of the cartridge is not fully seated against the chamber face, the firing pin just knocks it in further, not hard enough to set-off the primer. Alot of times when this happens, the round will be very difficult to manually extract. Because it's STUCK! Undersize chamber is the culprit here, but I think it improves accuracy.

[techmike]

You can, look at your owner's manual, I think it is part # 44 - the firing pin spring. Of course you have to disassemble the bolt, or as Umarex calls it the slide. I cut one coil off that spring, and the reliability increased significantly.

Don't forget to clean your mags - they do get dirty and can affect feeding.

[wobblinwheel]

In my opinion, the Colt firing pin spring is a little too STIFF for it's intended purpose. If I remember correctly, the pin is an "inertia" type deal. Meaning when the pin is pressed flush against the bolt surface (on the HAMMER side) the pin does not even contact the cartridge rim. The inertia of the hammer strike has to overcome the tension of the spring, therefore a SOFTER spring may help even more. While shortening the existing spring surely helps, I often wonder if shortening it even MORE would be more effective? I wonder if a much harder strike from the firing pin might help "drive in" a slightly un-seated round? One day, when I have the time, I'm gonna experiment with shortening the existing spring even more, AFTER I order a new spring for backup! Many times when this happens, I can drop the magazine, and pull the charging handle back and slam it shut again (most of the time the extractor won't pull out the stuck round the FIRST time) and the bullet will fire. This is where a FUNCTIONING forward-assist would really come in handy! I've been looking real hard to see if the one on the Colt could possibly be modified into something that works. Doesn't look easy, but anything's possible!