Saturday, January 23, 2010

Walther G22's 10 minute, 10 cent DIY Trigger Job 2

I was dry-firing the G22, and found that after the trigger break, there was so much overtravel with the tightened trigger, that I was tilting the rifle to the right on my follow through (I shoot left handed). When I slowed down, I could just barely hit the break without too much overtravel or tilt, but the heaviness of the trigger made it hard. The G22 needed a trigger stop.

After looking at the problem for a while, I figured the easiest way to get results was to get a short wood screw behind the trigger.


This trigger stop only works on G22s that have already had the 5 minute, 5 cent trigger job. The trigger break on a stock G22 is too far back to be able to use the trigger stop. Tighten it up to somewhere around here, and you should be good to go.

It was a little fiddly to get the hole started inside the trigger guard, but I did it. I wound up using a small drill bit, and turning it between my fingers.

It was slow going, but without a longer bit, attaching it to a drill would have made me approach the hole from a much steeper angle, and I wanted the hole as straight through as possible. I used the seam in the plastic body to find the center, and switched from right side to left when hand drilling (finger drilling?) the hole. Just make sure you don't go too deep, and start the hole at an angle.

Once it was deep enough to get the wood screw started, I screwed it in a little bit at an angle, just to get it started.


Then pushed the screw straight.


Then finished screwing it in straight with the screwdriver at an oblique angle.





Obviously, it took a little bit of time to adjust it properly. Taking it apart, turning the screw a quarter turn, putting it back together, testing, then doing it over again. Once you're pretty close, you can use needle nose pliers to make eighth turns while it's completely assembled.




When I was done, I had to leave a couple millimeters of overtravel because even through the trigger was tighter, the break was still mushy. Make sure you don't set the screw so far out that when you hit the screw there is a fraction of a second of hesitation before the hammer drops. Set your screw a bit past that, so you can pull straight through for a predictable break, but not so much that overtravel causes noticeable movement in your follow through.

When I was done, I could get somewhat clean trigger breaks, with no additional movement after the hammer drops. In fact, with this addition, I daresay the G22 trigger qualifies as "acceptable."

Not bad for a few minutes work and a screw I found in a jar.

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.

1 comment:

Gareth said...

Hi, I've had a G22 for a couple of years and apart from the first 3 - 400 CCI standard, it just refused to shoot straight!
Mine is chipping a lump out of the lead after the first shot - which sounds similar to the problem you had :(
I hope Walther in the UK are as good as your US counterparts..!