The Walther G22 has a terrible trigger, lots of take up, and a very mushy break. I saw it as an opportunity to practice my trigger control, and got pretty good with it. After a recent trip to the range I took it apart for cleaning, and decided to spend a bit trying to figure out a cheap, reliable, effective way to shorten the trigger pull. Previous attempts had been fruitless, but this time I actually figured something out.
Here's the problem with the G22's trigger;
The trigger bar is bent. I assume this is because it's easier to release the hammer when the right side has upward pressure, but since it's bent, and the break is hard, the bar bends under the pressure resulting in the most mush you can work into a trigger without actually trying to make a mushy trigger.
I had been focusing on thinking of a way to fashion a new straight trigger bar, but this time I thought about stopping the trigger bar from bending so much.
Enter cardboard;
To get the thickness of the cardboard right, keep rolling it up until there is significant drag on the trigger reset, then make it a bit thinner. The cardboard will be very snug because it'll be pushing downward on the trigger bar, but the horizontal motion of the bar isn't that affected.
Ideally, you would use something more solid like a small piece of wood with channels cut in it to hug the barrel profile, and the trigger bar.
At this point the trigger was much tighter, but after reassembly, I noticed it was even tighter. The break was still a little heavy, but now you knew where it was going to break and it was much easier to manage.
Here's the trigger breaking point before the cardboard;
Here it is, after;
I popped off to the range to put 100 rounds through it, and found no functional problems, and the tighter trigger made my groups noticeably smaller.
Not bad for a few minutes work and a bit of cardboard...
I will of course, update this post if I find any problems with this modification. If you do this, and find issues, please let me know.
8 comments:
Great tip. I don't know why so many people dog this little plinker. It's a fantastic gun never had any problems with it. And it sure does look sexy compared with those Ruger 10/22's which people spend $000's on to make them look good. No longer a 10/22 after you change everything!
Keep those G22 tips coming, they are always appreciated.! Dan.
it actually works! i covered the cardboard in contact with the trigger with scotch tape so i can put a drop of oil to lessen the friction, works too... but will not really make a difference with the original idea.
john
this works very well
i have a different mod you may like to try.
i cut 20mm out of the middle of the bar. i threated the bar with a die one end normal thread and one end opposite, i used a 35mm nut from a diy store that is used for joining threaded bar.
this means i can assemble the action with the trigger bar in 2 halfs then tighten up the slack with the large nut. it prevens and slack and unwanted travel.
i will try and loads some pictures of it. so far have fire a few hundred rounds and it seems to work well.
regards chris. uk
good idea Chris, use my G22 for doing rabbits, thought of making a nylon block to replace the cardboard idea, then retain this using a longer capscrew that currently hold the barrel retaining plate.
I would say that may be a good temporary solution. I really recommend you take your G22 to the gunsmith if you have any problems like that.I would not say install cardboard into your gun,inless you needed a quick fix and right then. I brought my gun to the gun smith and it turns out a couple things were inhibiting my rifle from working optimally. 1:my gunsmith had to dremel and remove some plastic that was pushing against the pull bar,and this can happen from tightening your sheath on too much. Also he had to get the sear welded in order to catch the slide properly. My guns works good now,I love my gun alot although I hate the mis-fires. What kind of ammo do you guys use? I e-mailed walther about it,and all they would say is that I should use CCI-stinger ammo. Granted It has not mis-fired once with that ammo. But the ammo is $6 bucks for 50 rounds,way too expensive for my taste in plinking. Has anyone thought about removing some plastic that push's on the pull bar? and where do I buy cheap stinger ammo in bulk?
Shaphan, was your G22 working properly with quality ammo before you took it to your gunsmith?
I noticed the issue from tightening the sheath on too much, but I was wondering if your gunsmith was able to lighten the trigger pull.
Sadly it seems the fate of most .22 autos to be picky about ammo. Usually we just deal with it. Obviously when hunting you should use quality ammo, but if you're just plinking the occasional misfire is not a big deal. As I understand it, inexpensive ammo has poorly seated primers that can come loose if jarred in delivery, or upon chambering. Not much you can do except pause for a possible hang-fire, eject the dud round and move on.
You might consider cleaning out the channel the firing pin travels in along the bolt (you have to remove one pin to get it out of the bolt), I found that crud accumulates in there and can cause light strikes. But even after the channel is cleaned and lubed, I still got misfires I could only attribute to the ammo.
Feeding issues seem to be mostly related to using lead bullets instead of copper jacketed ones. I often find FTFs with the lead bullet sheared slightly on one side. If you get this problem very consistently Walther may accept it for warranty work and open the chamber a bit wider, but it sounds like it's working fine with their preferred ammo.
I liked your idea, but I thought of one that worked quite well for me... Take out the rod and turn it around.
When I tried that, I found it just made the trigger worse.
Perhaps there is a difference in quality of my bar and your bar.
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