Black Snowman
Member
My friend Kamicosmos has an Automag II that's always been a little sqirly. Finally it started light striking every 2 or 3 rounds and so he just stopped shooting it. Recently Brownells has started carrying parts for them again so I ordered up a set of replacement springs and tore it appart to see if I could correct the problem.
The most noticable symptom that was contributing to the problem that I could find was that the hammer was catching up on something part way though it's travel. Examining where the parts were wearing it look like the hammer strut didn't have enough clearance to the frame.
After disassembly the hammer spring was noticably out of round make a few minor direction changes and no longer being a straight coil. The replacement spring had the same hang up issues. There were no clearance problems and the travel of the hammer was smooth without the spring.
So, I put a grinding bit in my drill press and tried taking down some of the offending metal in the frame at the back of the channel cut for the mainspring. I finally got the clearance I needed but other problems arose. The travel wasn't smooth and at full cock the hammer would stay on it's own.
So, I wrapped some sandpaper around a drill bit and smoothed out the surface I had just ground down. This gave the hammer back it's smooth travel and it no longer hung at full cock.
He just got the gun out today and put 28 rounds through it without any light strikes and only 1 failure to feed from a magazine known to be tempermental anyway. He's pretty happy with the gun now and all it really needed was a new hammer spring and the channel for it to be reshaped with about 1-2 mm of material removed at the deepest point.
Just thought I'd pass this along to anyone who might run into a similar problem with an Automag II. This hang-up could also result in the slide short-stroking from the extra resistance and other odd behavior. It didn't look like a casting or machining mistake, just poor design or implementation.
The most noticable symptom that was contributing to the problem that I could find was that the hammer was catching up on something part way though it's travel. Examining where the parts were wearing it look like the hammer strut didn't have enough clearance to the frame.
After disassembly the hammer spring was noticably out of round make a few minor direction changes and no longer being a straight coil. The replacement spring had the same hang up issues. There were no clearance problems and the travel of the hammer was smooth without the spring.
So, I put a grinding bit in my drill press and tried taking down some of the offending metal in the frame at the back of the channel cut for the mainspring. I finally got the clearance I needed but other problems arose. The travel wasn't smooth and at full cock the hammer would stay on it's own.
So, I wrapped some sandpaper around a drill bit and smoothed out the surface I had just ground down. This gave the hammer back it's smooth travel and it no longer hung at full cock.
He just got the gun out today and put 28 rounds through it without any light strikes and only 1 failure to feed from a magazine known to be tempermental anyway. He's pretty happy with the gun now and all it really needed was a new hammer spring and the channel for it to be reshaped with about 1-2 mm of material removed at the deepest point.
Just thought I'd pass this along to anyone who might run into a similar problem with an Automag II. This hang-up could also result in the slide short-stroking from the extra resistance and other odd behavior. It didn't look like a casting or machining mistake, just poor design or implementation.