P365/365XL Recoil Springs

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TomJ

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I've mentioned in other threads that I've been having light primer strike issues with these guns. Per Sig's customer service it's been due to the recoil springs. It's happened with new springs and springs with a few hundred rounds on them, so it's not a case of the springs being worn. Is anyone aware of someone who makes aftermarket recoil springs for these guns? I really want to keep these guns but given the number of issues I've had with them I've lost confidence in their quality control in regards to these springs and won't carry them.
 
Did you send it back to SIG? Might be something else. I have 2 of these and zero issues with the springs and light primer strikes. I use Win SPP
 
Did you send it back to SIG? Might be something else. I have 2 of these and zero issues with the springs and light primer strikes. I use Win SPP

I have, in fact I just sent one back yesterday for the same issue. They changed the recoil springs for last two I sent back. In addition to the guns working now, my concern is that if they're having quality control issues with the recoil springs, what happens when it's time to change them? My understanding is that there were issues in the past that have been corrected, so I'm hoping the ones I get going forward will be the corrected ones.
 
I’ve got a one year old 365 and a 3 month old XL. The 365 has 2600 rounds through it with one slight feeding bobble shooting weak hand only the first range trip. (I recently did my first recoil spring replacement on that gun.) The XL has 460 rounds through it. I had one light primer strike (at about 300 rounds) with a handload that fired on restrike. The guns are totally different animals in terms of springs. The 365 has a dual recoil spring that is much stronger than the single recoil spring on a guide rod found on the XL. The spring tension appears correct on the 365, but the XL may be slightly undersprung. If I chamber a round from a fully loaded magazine and do a press check with the 365, it will spring back easily. The XL slide springs back slowly with a clean gun to barely, or not at all, with a gun that has been shot a bit. However, even with the XL, it does not appear to matter as long as the slide has enough momentum from the slide cycling. The hotter the ammo, the greater the slide momentum going backwards and forward. I learned a lesson with 9mm Glocks, which are somewhat oversprung, to shoot duty strength ammo right from the box, then work into lower strength ammo after the gun has broken in. That practice appears to have worked with my Sigs, and the only exception has been one of my IDPA handloads in the relatively new XL. (They run fine in the 365.) I have no concerns carrying either gun with self-defense ammo.

A couple of other points. First, some have mentioned on forums that the striker channels on some 365s have lube in them, which should be cleaned out. Second, Sigs generally are tighter than some other guns and they have much longer rails than, say, Glocks. I use more lube on Sigs than I do on Glocks.

I suspect that Sig will do a rolling upgrade with the XL recoil spring. I say this because the slide is optic ready, and the first Sig red dot sights are about to be shipped. Adding any weight to the slide can only complicate cycling with an undersprung gun.

I hope your situation gets resolved satisfactorily. I would be interested in the details of your malfunctions, including ammo used and round counts.
 
I’ve got a one year old 365 and a 3 month old XL. The 365 has 2600 rounds through it with one slight feeding bobble shooting weak hand only the first range trip. (I recently did my first recoil spring replacement on that gun.) The XL has 460 rounds through it. I had one light primer strike (at about 300 rounds) with a handload that fired on restrike. The guns are totally different animals in terms of springs. The 365 has a dual recoil spring that is much stronger than the single recoil spring on a guide rod found on the XL. The spring tension appears correct on the 365, but the XL may be slightly undersprung. If I chamber a round from a fully loaded magazine and do a press check with the 365, it will spring back easily. The XL slide springs back slowly with a clean gun to barely, or not at all, with a gun that has been shot a bit. However, even with the XL, it does not appear to matter as long as the slide has enough momentum from the slide cycling. The hotter the ammo, the greater the slide momentum going backwards and forward. I learned a lesson with 9mm Glocks, which are somewhat oversprung, to shoot duty strength ammo right from the box, then work into lower strength ammo after the gun has broken in. That practice appears to have worked with my Sigs, and the only exception has been one of my IDPA handloads in the relatively new XL. (They run fine in the 365.) I have no concerns carrying either gun with self-defense ammo.

A couple of other points. First, some have mentioned on forums that the striker channels on some 365s have lube in them, which should be cleaned out. Second, Sigs generally are tighter than some other guns and they have much longer rails than, say, Glocks. I use more lube on Sigs than I do on Glocks.

I suspect that Sig will do a rolling upgrade with the XL recoil spring. I say this because the slide is optic ready, and the first Sig red dot sights are about to be shipped. Adding any weight to the slide can only complicate cycling with an undersprung gun.

I hope your situation gets resolved satisfactorily. I would be interested in the details of your malfunctions, including ammo used and round counts.

Thanks for that information. With any mechanical device intermittent problems are the most difficult to reolve, and that's what I'm experiencing. Between my 2 P365's and 2 P365XL's (I have a backup for each) failures have occurred within the first couple of hundred rounds and with one of my P365's after 2000 rounds. I clean the guns after each time I shoot them regardless of how many rounds I put through them and clean the striker channels each time. They've had issues with multiple types of ammo, including HST, PMC, Tullammo (I'm aware that it's cheaper ammo) and my reloads. All ammunition I use has functioned perfectly in my other guns, including a full size and compact M&P, 2 Shield's, a Glock 19, 2 Dan Wessons, 3 CZ's and a P320RX. I've had guns which have had problems, but those problems tended to show up consistently and once resolved they did not reoccur. With the P365's and XL's I've shot hundreds of rounds through them after they were repaired, thought they were good to go just to have another failure, which is what's concerning. The difference you pointed out between the 2 recoil springs makes sense and gives me some, if not complete confidence in the P365's. I'll wait to see what Sig says regarding the XL I just sent in for repair I like and shoot the guns well enough that I'm leaning towards keeping them and working out the issues, but I'm picking up a Gen 5 Glock 26 today which I'll carry for now and am holding off deciding what to do with the P365's.
 
Thanks for that information. With any mechanical device intermittent problems are the most difficult to reolve, and that's what I'm experiencing. Between my 2 P365's and 2 P365XL's (I have a backup for each) failures have occurred within the first couple of hundred rounds and with one of my P365's after 2000 rounds. I clean the guns after each time I shoot them regardless of how many rounds I put through them and clean the striker channels each time. They've had issues with multiple types of ammo, including HST, PMC, Tullammo (I'm aware that it's cheaper ammo) and my reloads. All ammunition I use has functioned perfectly in my other guns, including a full size and compact M&P, 2 Shield's, a Glock 19, 2 Dan Wessons, 3 CZ's and a P320RX. I've had guns which have had problems, but those problems tended to show up consistently and once resolved they did not reoccur. With the P365's and XL's I've shot hundreds of rounds through them after they were repaired, thought they were good to go just to have another failure, which is what's concerning. The difference you pointed out between the 2 recoil springs makes sense and gives me some, if not complete confidence in the P365's. I'll wait to see what Sig says regarding the XL I just sent in for repair I like and shoot the guns well enough that I'm leaning towards keeping them and working out the issues, but I'm picking up a Gen 5 Glock 26 today which I'll carry for now and am holding off deciding what to do with the P365's.

Wow. I don't know what's going on with your guns. I don't clean out the striker channel except for, maybe, once a year. I have had better performance out of the Sigs than my last few 9mm Glocks with dual recoil springs. In May, my Gen 4 19 sent a hot case from a fired Speer Gold Got under my eye protection and into the cornea of my dominant eye. I also get malfunctions with Blazer aluminum in the Glocks and an occasional light primer strike. (Hence, my comment earlier about them being oversprung.) I will be putting a bunch more rounds through the Sigs in the next few months, so I will see if I run into that trouble you are experiencing. Best of luck to you.
 
It looks like we're halfway there. With new recoil springs, one of my P365's and a XL had no malfunctions yesterday. My other P365 had no light primer strikes, but the slide failed to lock back once and I had another instance where the slide did lock back, but when I inserted the magazine the slide slammed closed on it's own. I'll shoot it some more this weekend to see if these things reoccur or if this was a one time glitch. The other XL is at Sig, so hopefully it'll be fine when I get it back.
 
I posted this on another thread, but thought I'd post it here as well as an FYI. I just received a call from a supervisor at Sig. They've made changes to their recoil springs for the XL, as the previous (or current, depending on how you look at it) springs worked well with +P ammunition but caused light primer strikes in standard pressure ammunition. If you're having light primer strikes I'd recommend sending your gun to Sig, and they'll install the upgraded recoil spring.
 
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I have, in fact I just sent one back yesterday for the same issue. They changed the recoil springs for last two I sent back. In addition to the guns working now, my concern is that if they're having quality control issues with the recoil springs, what happens when it's time to change them? My understanding is that there were issues in the past that have been corrected, so I'm hoping the ones I get going forward will be the corrected ones.
Are you sure that is ALL they did? I have two P365's from early on and I at 7000 rounds fired I changed the recoil spring just because. My guess light strikes could also be caused by crud in the striker channel. This came out on mine after the first 100 rounds. I never had any light strikes but thought it was good preventative maintenance just to run a swab down the channel.
striker_channel.jpg
 
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Are you sure that is ALL they did? I have two P365's from early on and I at 7000 rounds fired I changed the recoil spring just because. My guess light strikes could also be caused by crud in the striker channel. This came out on mine after the first 100 rounds. I never has any light strikes but thought it was good preventative maintenance just to run a swab down the channel.
View attachment 867017

They said that's all they did. I have been cleaning my striker channel every time I clean the gun, which is after each time I shoot it, so that wasn't an issue. Per Sig's supervisor they were having issues with the recoil springs for the XL and modified them. He didn't mention anything about the P365 recoil springs, and in reading what I previously posted I didn't specify the XL. Sorry. I corrected that.
 
I posted this on another thread, but thought I'd post it here as well as an FYI. I just received a call from a supervisor at Sig. They've made changes to their recoil springs for the XL, as the previous (or current, depending on how you look at it) springs worked well with +P ammunition but caused light primer strikes in standard pressure ammunition. If you're having light primer strikes I'd recommend sending your gun to Sig, and they'll install the upgraded recoil spring.

I guess I called that one in post no. 4! Thanks for the info. I will give Sig a call and see if they will ship a recoil spring. I don’t want to send the gun to Sig since it isn’t giving me trouble at this time.
 
I noticed that Glocks and especially my S&W Shield 9 have VERY HEAVY recoil springs and they work with all types of loadings to ensure reliablity.
Sig needs to get on the heavy spring bandwagon!
 
This entire thing is really unfortunate. I liked the P365 I shot and I know there are a lot of good ones out there. But still seeing this reoccurring issue here, and in other threads just has me wanting to hold off. That may be a good thing in the end as other options come on the market I may like better. But I don't envy the people having problems. Warranty work is fine, but I have an 80 mile round trip to get to the only shipper in my area. I'm reluctant to dive in with potential problems.
 
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They said that's all they did. I have been cleaning my striker channel every time I clean the gun, which is after each time I shoot it, so that wasn't an issue. Per Sig's supervisor they were having issues with the recoil springs for the XL and modified them. He didn't mention anything about the P365 recoil springs, and in reading what I previously posted I didn't specify the XL. Sorry. I corrected that.
Thanks for the information.
 
This entire thing is really unfortunate. I liked the P365 I shot and I know there are a lot of good ones out there. But still seeing this reoccurring issue here, and in other threads jus has me wanting to hold off. That may be a good thing in the end as other options come on the market I may like better. But I don't envy the people having problems. Warranty work is fine, but I have an 80 mile round trip to get to the only shipper in my area. I'm reluctant to dive in with potential problems.

I'm the same way. I had a Sig 365XL on preorder when they first were announced as I liked the feel of the P365 but liked the idea of a longer barrel and sight radius on such a thin platform. My carry position lends itself to hide easily more barrel, so I gravitate towards the G19 length barrels. My gut feeling got the better of me and I canceled my preorder and decided to get a G48 (it was what I was in between in trying out for CCW, my current carry piece at the time was a CZ PCR which I still love but wanted to shed some ounces). I may get a Sig P365XL at a later date when things calm down and Sig gets some things figured out, as it is a very nice feeling gun in the hand. But I'm pretty impressed by my G48 so my buying a XL may not come to fruition.

And with CZ/Dan Wesson coming out with their DWX, I may be saving my pennies for a compact version of that, it seems like a great complement to my CZ PCR, sharing magazines and such.

In the end, I feel for those who have gotten a problem child with their P365/365xl, but it seems like there are quite a few that have not had problems. These manufacturers nowadays are so inclined to rush a product to the marketplace to beat the competition to the punch, that I think their QC isn't as thorough as it should be. In today's marketplace in firearms there are new models coming out all the time and competing for customer attention, and when one of the manufacturers has a hot model, I think their more incline in today's market to just push them out the door and let their warranty department take care of the potential fallout. I particularly don't like having to send a gun back to the manufacturer, especially right after getting it, but at the very least it looks as if Sig is taking care of their customers.

It doesn't help matters that there are so many of these Sig's out there now, it's what everyone is talking about, good and bad. But Sig better get their QC fixed as they are headed out the door, or they are going to damage their reputation.
 
I noticed that Glocks and especially my S&W Shield 9 have VERY HEAVY recoil springs and they work with all types of loadings to ensure reliablity.

At least with respect to 9mm Glocks later than Gen 3, that is not close to my reality.
 
I am a true believe in cleaning the striker channels on a regular basis.One feature I really liked about the Mossberg MC1 was he easy removal. I use to just clean by spraying down some cleaner and blowing out. That is until I took one apart and found out it was a mess.
I saw this photo on the Kahr forum and it is kind of scary to think a gun could be like this. The owners was shooting Aguila ammo. (Brass Shaving).

View attachment 867251

I also saw a post where the owner was using a round stone to debur any rough edges that might be in a new gun or just polish.

View attachment 867252
 
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I got the XL back from Sig with the new recoil spring, and it's noticably stiffer than the old one. Hopefully that will resolve the last of the issues. I also happened to be driving by one of our LGS's today on my way to a meeting and stopped in. They had the Hellcat. I like everything about it: the grip, which is slightly larger than the P365's, the sights and the trigger. I wound up buying it and can pick it up after Monday. I should have a chance to get to the range later next week or next weekend and will post something once I had a chance to shoot it.
 
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