Replacement recoil springs for semi-compact, 9mm Baby Eagle II

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rpenmanparker

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i have seen other threads on this topic, but I think I need “special help”. I was given a semi-compact, 9mm Baby Eagle II which seemed to work okay when I first tested it out. I will say the force required to rack the slide seemed excessive to me even with the hammer pre-cocked.

Never one to leave well enough alone, I promptly installed a Vortex Venom red dot on a Burris mounting plate attached to the rear sight dovetail. Now the gun is giving me an occasional light strike mid-magazine in single action. So not when I cock the hammer by hand or when I recock the hammer after a failure. I’m thinking the slight extra weight has put me on the edge of full recoil and is causing the hammer to occasionally not be fully cocked. So far this hasn’t happened after the last round though, so I haven’t seen a failure of the slide to lock back.

If I’m right, a simple fix for most guns would be a very slightly lighter recoil spring, but this isn’t most guns. There are two recoil springs nested together and the weights of them are not known by anybody at either Magnum Research, the importer, or IWI USA, the domestic affiliate of the Israeli manufacturer.

Wolff lists the single spring used in the full size version, but nothing for the semi-compact. Magnum has the identical replacements, but that doesn’t help me as I want to do some experimentation with spring weights.

Does anyone have any idea what I can do? Thanks.
 
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Well hopefully you can get a recoil spring figured out. For the meantime could you a hotter round? Would that cure you're problem?
 
Could you post a picture of the internals of your Baby Eagle II please (under side of the slide with it removed and where the recoil spring is seated) ? The spring you describe sounds a lot like those in a full size DE.

My hunch is that lighter springs won't help.

I do not understand how you could fire a pistol without the hammer fully cocked? That d oes not make sense to me.

When the springs on a full size DE start to wear the slide doesn't return to battery 100%. Instead the slide returns to like 99.5% of battery position... Far enough that you can pull the trigger but just shy of full battery enough that you get a lite primer strike. When the springs wear a but more the slide stops returning far enough into battery that the trigger will not engage until you manually push the slide into battery with your thumb.

Having never seen the internals of a Baby DE I do not know if it shares these traits with its big brother.

The first thing I would do to test is remove the accessories and see if the,problem goes away?
 
Well hopefully you can get a recoil spring figured out. For the meantime could you a hotter round? Would that cure you're problem?
Yeah, maybe so, and that wouldn’t put me at risk of the slide not being pushed forward hard enough to go into battery. Thanks.
 
Could you post a picture of the internals of your Baby Eagle II please (under side of the slide with it removed and where the recoil spring is seated) ? The spring you describe sounds a lot like those in a full size DE.

My hunch is that lighter springs won't help.

I do not understand how you could fire a pistol without the hammer fully cocked? That d oes not make sense to me.

When the springs on a full size DE start to wear the slide doesn't return to battery 100%. Instead the slide returns to like 99.5% of battery position... Far enough that you can pull the trigger but just shy of full battery enough that you get a lite primer strike. When the springs wear a but more the slide stops returning far enough into battery that the trigger will not engage until you manually push the slide into battery with your thumb.

Having never seen the internals of a Baby DE I do not know if it shares these traits with its big brother.

The first thing I would do to test is remove the accessories and see if the,problem goes away?
I don’t think not being fully in battery is the problem since recocking by hand without touching the slide fixes it. What I am suggesting is called a short stroke. It is pretty common in 1911-22 pistols that have to have a very light slide because of the low power of the .22 rounds. Sometimes the slide short cycles and doesn’t fully cock the hammer or maybe even lock back the slide on the last round if you put extra weight on it like a red dot.

Besides the force needed to rack this slide is huge. I can’t see how it wouldn’t jam the slide into battery coming back forward.
 
Or maybe you could get real fancy and send the slide out and have some fancy machine work done and the slide lightened. Could take out about the same material as the red dot weighs (or maybe not?). Than you could roll factory springs :thumbup:. But it's not my money so it's easy to suggest LOL.
 
I don’t think not being fully in battery is the problem since recocking by hand without touching the slide fixes it. What I am suggesting is called a short stroke. It is pretty common in 1911-22 pistols that have to have a very light slide because of the low power of the .22 rounds. Sometimes the slide short cycles and doesn’t fully cock the hammer or maybe even lock back the slide on the last round if you put extra weight on it like a red dot.

Besides the force needed to rack this slide is huge. I can’t see how it wouldn’t jam the slide into battery coming back forward.

All my 1911's won't fire (the trigger can not be engaged) if the hammer is in half cocked position... but I know nothing about Baby DE's or 22lr 1911's so I certainly won't tell you that you are wrong. :)

I would still remove the RMR and see if the problem goes away as a first step. Maybe there is a reason the Baby Eagle was given to you?
 
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First thing I would do is try different ammo (an occassional poorly-seated primer would cause something similar, and it might take a while before it showed up somewhere other than the middle of a magazine). Second thing would be to look at the firing pin and clean the FP channel.
 
Or maybe you could get real fancy and send the slide out and have some fancy machine work done and the slide lightened. Could take out about the same material as the red dot weighs (or maybe not?). Than you could roll factory springs :thumbup:. But it's not my money so it's easy to suggest LOL.
No, that's a good idea. But I have a lot more investigating to do before I spend any real money.
 
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All my 1911's won't fire (the trigger can not be engaged) if the hammer is in half cocked position... but I know nothing about Baby DE's or 22lr 1911's so I certainly won't tell you that you are wrong. :)

I would still remove the RMR and see if the problem goes away as a first step. Maybe there is a reason the Baby Eagle was given to you?
There is a reason it was given to me, but I don’t think that was it. I wish I were confident about overhauling the firing pin myself.
 
If a weak hammer spring isn’t the problem, maybe changing that to a lighter one would be a better plan than lightening the recoil spring. That way the resistance on the slide moving backward would be reduced without the forward impetus into battery not being affected.
 
Oh boy, I think I am totally FOS. I just realized and demonstrated on the gun that if the hammer is only half cocked, the trigger reverts to DA and finishes cocking the hammer before releasing it. So my original explanation for light strikes must be BS. I guess that leaves me the sticky firing pin, worn out hammer spring, gun not fully in battery and faulty ammo as the main possibilities for the problem.
 
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WELL! A little more research turned up the fact that my problem is very common and almost always due to a gunky firing pin. I was loathe to try to clean that up, never having removed a firing pin, but I found a YouTube video that showed the procedure. Piece of cake. Pin, spring, and channel all clean and freshly oiled now. I will be shooting this gun on Friday and will let you know how it goes. Thanks for all the input.
 
I was going to suggest the cleaning of the FPC, FP and spring as a first step but no need now.

however, I would suggest to take it all back out and wipe off that oil and keep it dry. (I do use Corrosion Block in there but I keep it apart for some time and it dries out completely because it's not specifically a particularly good lubricant and I don't use it as such).
 
I was going to suggest the cleaning of the FPC, FP and spring as a first step but no need now.

however, I would suggest to take it all back out and wipe off that oil and keep it dry. (I do use Corrosion Block in there but I keep it apart for some time and it dries out completely because it's not specifically a particularly good lubricant and I don't use it as such).
I appreciate that caution, but have to say my reading is turning up both extremes, your dry recommendations and others for well-oiled. Now that I know how to disassemble and clean the parts, however, it really is no great issue. If this doesn’t work out, I can always try it dry next time.
 
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