I purchased a December 2012 BC model of the P22 Q in black. $345 for the pistol. There were three BC models to choose from, I chose the latest serial number not that that amounts to much but I did inspect the chamber at the extractor cut of all three to make sure there was no factory damage from the lower lip chamfer. In fact, all three pistols had very good work in this area. One mag and everything else felt pure P22. Fit and finish is excellent as always. The three slots in the rail are a big improvement for those who add accessories. I don't, but I do remember on the earlier pistols that some accessories were a tight fit. Does the pistol overall look better? That is a tough one...the A series pistols looked pretty good. The matching grip material to the bigger brother 9mm is a good thing for those wanting matching pistols in .22 and 9mm. I'd have to say I like the looks of the new slide a bit better but won't loose sleep over either style. These remain great looking .22 pistols.
The new P22 Modell Q in black. Hand fitted in Germany. Well, uh....that last part is just to aggravate those purists with their steel Walthers.
Upon disassembly I noticed that the slide has indeed been beefed up, in fact it is almost twice as thick at the area where some of the previous A series pistols had cracked. Oddly, my front sight blade did not have any ears on the bottom to hold it in place. The other sight blades were properly molded with the expansion ears that hold the sight in place once snapped through the slide. I have already received a package full of replacement #2 sight blades from S&W and for free. I expect the Arkansas plant will provide service in the near future. The entire slide is not twice as thick but it seems Walther has re engineered the slide and beefed it up in the area where problems were occurring.
In order to understand improvements sometimes you need to look at the history. Originally the feed ramp and chamber entrance looked like the above. I never had any issues with this set up but a lot of pistols would have the slide hang up as it bagan the forward journey. I think is was assumed the nose of a round, especially a hollow point was hanging up. I never experienced this. The problem was the hammer catching in the gap between the rear of the breech block and the safety drum.
But, having nothing better to do one day, I reprofiled the chamber entrance and polished the feed ramp as above.
Somewhere along the line Walther began to also chamfer the chamber entrance. I don't know what was being used but the polish/grinding job was less than perfect in my opinion.
Later someone began polishing the entire chamber entrance. This seems to have led to cutting the chamber steel at the extractor cut too thin. Above is a picture of my new, stock AK model. The now too thin steel allowed the extractor tip to break off several pieces of my chamber here. I had to clean it up a bit. Anymore and I would have encountered the problem as seen below. There would be no fix for this except for replacement of the barrel.
Above is a picture I lifted from a thread somewhere and photoshopped the words on it. A failure of the chamber wall resulted here and CCI Stingers were blowing out the casing.
Happily, as can be seen above on the new Q model pistols Walther has sorted this issue out and the ramp and chamber entrance are both machined very nicely and with a polished finish. No further work necessary here. Thanks Walther for getting it right. I'm not sure I have seen any better manufactured chamber and feed ramp in a stock pistol of any make.
So how about those trigger bar ears? The gun shop wouldn't let me take off the slide so I had go by luck here. When I purchased the pistol I popped off the slide and had a look at the underside and trigger bar ears. The slide was good to go with only the one shot. The ears had been banged upon by some contraption at Walther in an attempt to round the top front edge but the end result was pretty poor. I had hoped to fire this pistol stock and assess if it had any of the old P22 issues. But, I just couldn't fire it with these ears. This is so easy to properly fix.....12 years down the road and the ears are still not acceptable in my opinion. This is still the only part that can actually damage the pistol...sharp or rough steel trigger bar ears impacting the zinc slide each time a shot is fired. Only the outer 1/8" of the top, front edge of the ear touches anything. That is right where mine were sharp. I soon had them polished.
Ears after polishing. An easy way to get the taper on the front to match the ramp angle under the slide. Turn the ears upsode down and polish the front edge on 600 grit then 2,000 grit emery paper. Then buff with a dremel and polishing compound to remove any rough spots. Do not shorten the width of the ears from left to right.
The rear of the trigger bar on the other hand was the best I've ever seen. The legs were cut neat and square. The center portion between the rear legs was even cut neatly. All that remains to be done here is some light polishing. There are five areas that require polishing for smoothest results. In DA the hammer strut acts as the sear and breaks from the center section of the bar. The two legs engage the lower legs of the sear and rotate it in DA and SA. The top of the outer two rear shoulders, bend at the rear corners, engages two slanting steel pins which cause the trigger bar to disengage from the hammer strut. All of these areas should be buffed to a high shine and very slightly have the edges polished by the buffing. Do not file or grind any material off of these areas. Very good effort here Walther......now get after those trigger bar ears and polish them properly.
The sear remains unchanged. The two legs shown at the bottom are where the two rear legs on the trigger bar engage the sear to rotate it. As you pull the trigger the rear of the trigger bar rises and the rear face of the two legs press against the legs shown above to rotate the sear when firing. I square them up with 600 grit or finer emery paper to remove any rust, roughness and whatever else might be on the face of them then polished them to a mirror finish without rounding the edges. Do not file or sand off much material here. Note, upon reassembly, the longer leg of the sear spring rests against the frame. The shorter leg rests against the sear. If you reverse this...the longer spring can drag on the underside of your breech block.
The breech block remains unchanged as far a I can tell. The original breech blocks did not have the firing pin support that can be seen on the right side of the front of the firing pin channel. This firing pin no longer has a rough sheared side. The sheared side is what I have photographed. I'm not sure what Walther has done here but the firing pin has a very good finish. You can still dress it up a bit with 600 grit emery paper or finer but that isn't really necessary. Good going Walther.
The two faces of the sear were a bit rough so they got the mirror polish job also. There was what seamed to be a slight seam on the face of one. I lightly pulled these across some 600 grit emery to remove any imperfections and then polished to a mirror finish. These are what engage the cocking notch on the hammer and must slide off the notch when firing. I like these and the cocking notch to be very smooth. I've recently learned that the parts a fully hardened throughout and not just suface hardened so I will continue my sear experimenting as soon as stoning guides arrive.
Pictured above is something new, at least this is the first I've noticed it. Walther has added a small pin above the slide stop spring to help retain it. As you might learn when you pull the grip housing down this little spring can fly off never to be seen again. It is easy to keep it in place with a thumb.....that is....if you know you need to. But, why be so stingy with the zinc.....if you're going to install a spring stop....put in a big one that won't break off. In any event Walther has addressed an issue to keep the spring from slipping out of the shallow recess provided for it and to help keep it from flying off. This spring holds the slide stop arm down and away from the slide until the follower button on an empty mag forces it up to engage the slide after the last shot is fired.
Here are the two frame screws and as you can tell some type of thread locking material has been applied. I found this on the barrel nut and safety lever screws. Good going Walther...no more screws coming loose...if only I didn't have to take the frame apart to fix a couple of things that is. And Walther has returned to the smooth roll pins, not the serrated tooth ones, for holding the grip housing on the frame. Why, beats me. I never had any issues with either but these are easier to remove.
The breech block on the other hand still has the alligator tooth pin. For those of you that have a hard time removing this pin this is how it do it. I support the slide on something like a roll of tape, safety ears just off the edge. I then tap the retaining pin down with a square nose drift. I reinsert the pin from the opposite side when reinstalling. This is required should you ever break a firing pin, a firing pin spring or to modify the breech block. Separate thread on that already exists and goes into detail about all of that. New gun measurements are as follow: These are my measurements using a digital caliper. 0.001" measurement tolerances are pretty tricky but these should be close enough. M1911
The new P22 Modell Q in black. Hand fitted in Germany. Well, uh....that last part is just to aggravate those purists with their steel Walthers.
Upon disassembly I noticed that the slide has indeed been beefed up, in fact it is almost twice as thick at the area where some of the previous A series pistols had cracked. Oddly, my front sight blade did not have any ears on the bottom to hold it in place. The other sight blades were properly molded with the expansion ears that hold the sight in place once snapped through the slide. I have already received a package full of replacement #2 sight blades from S&W and for free. I expect the Arkansas plant will provide service in the near future. The entire slide is not twice as thick but it seems Walther has re engineered the slide and beefed it up in the area where problems were occurring.
In order to understand improvements sometimes you need to look at the history. Originally the feed ramp and chamber entrance looked like the above. I never had any issues with this set up but a lot of pistols would have the slide hang up as it bagan the forward journey. I think is was assumed the nose of a round, especially a hollow point was hanging up. I never experienced this. The problem was the hammer catching in the gap between the rear of the breech block and the safety drum.
But, having nothing better to do one day, I reprofiled the chamber entrance and polished the feed ramp as above.
Somewhere along the line Walther began to also chamfer the chamber entrance. I don't know what was being used but the polish/grinding job was less than perfect in my opinion.
Later someone began polishing the entire chamber entrance. This seems to have led to cutting the chamber steel at the extractor cut too thin. Above is a picture of my new, stock AK model. The now too thin steel allowed the extractor tip to break off several pieces of my chamber here. I had to clean it up a bit. Anymore and I would have encountered the problem as seen below. There would be no fix for this except for replacement of the barrel.
Above is a picture I lifted from a thread somewhere and photoshopped the words on it. A failure of the chamber wall resulted here and CCI Stingers were blowing out the casing.
Happily, as can be seen above on the new Q model pistols Walther has sorted this issue out and the ramp and chamber entrance are both machined very nicely and with a polished finish. No further work necessary here. Thanks Walther for getting it right. I'm not sure I have seen any better manufactured chamber and feed ramp in a stock pistol of any make.
So how about those trigger bar ears? The gun shop wouldn't let me take off the slide so I had go by luck here. When I purchased the pistol I popped off the slide and had a look at the underside and trigger bar ears. The slide was good to go with only the one shot. The ears had been banged upon by some contraption at Walther in an attempt to round the top front edge but the end result was pretty poor. I had hoped to fire this pistol stock and assess if it had any of the old P22 issues. But, I just couldn't fire it with these ears. This is so easy to properly fix.....12 years down the road and the ears are still not acceptable in my opinion. This is still the only part that can actually damage the pistol...sharp or rough steel trigger bar ears impacting the zinc slide each time a shot is fired. Only the outer 1/8" of the top, front edge of the ear touches anything. That is right where mine were sharp. I soon had them polished.
Ears after polishing. An easy way to get the taper on the front to match the ramp angle under the slide. Turn the ears upsode down and polish the front edge on 600 grit then 2,000 grit emery paper. Then buff with a dremel and polishing compound to remove any rough spots. Do not shorten the width of the ears from left to right.
The rear of the trigger bar on the other hand was the best I've ever seen. The legs were cut neat and square. The center portion between the rear legs was even cut neatly. All that remains to be done here is some light polishing. There are five areas that require polishing for smoothest results. In DA the hammer strut acts as the sear and breaks from the center section of the bar. The two legs engage the lower legs of the sear and rotate it in DA and SA. The top of the outer two rear shoulders, bend at the rear corners, engages two slanting steel pins which cause the trigger bar to disengage from the hammer strut. All of these areas should be buffed to a high shine and very slightly have the edges polished by the buffing. Do not file or grind any material off of these areas. Very good effort here Walther......now get after those trigger bar ears and polish them properly.
The sear remains unchanged. The two legs shown at the bottom are where the two rear legs on the trigger bar engage the sear to rotate it. As you pull the trigger the rear of the trigger bar rises and the rear face of the two legs press against the legs shown above to rotate the sear when firing. I square them up with 600 grit or finer emery paper to remove any rust, roughness and whatever else might be on the face of them then polished them to a mirror finish without rounding the edges. Do not file or sand off much material here. Note, upon reassembly, the longer leg of the sear spring rests against the frame. The shorter leg rests against the sear. If you reverse this...the longer spring can drag on the underside of your breech block.
The breech block remains unchanged as far a I can tell. The original breech blocks did not have the firing pin support that can be seen on the right side of the front of the firing pin channel. This firing pin no longer has a rough sheared side. The sheared side is what I have photographed. I'm not sure what Walther has done here but the firing pin has a very good finish. You can still dress it up a bit with 600 grit emery paper or finer but that isn't really necessary. Good going Walther.
The two faces of the sear were a bit rough so they got the mirror polish job also. There was what seamed to be a slight seam on the face of one. I lightly pulled these across some 600 grit emery to remove any imperfections and then polished to a mirror finish. These are what engage the cocking notch on the hammer and must slide off the notch when firing. I like these and the cocking notch to be very smooth. I've recently learned that the parts a fully hardened throughout and not just suface hardened so I will continue my sear experimenting as soon as stoning guides arrive.
Pictured above is something new, at least this is the first I've noticed it. Walther has added a small pin above the slide stop spring to help retain it. As you might learn when you pull the grip housing down this little spring can fly off never to be seen again. It is easy to keep it in place with a thumb.....that is....if you know you need to. But, why be so stingy with the zinc.....if you're going to install a spring stop....put in a big one that won't break off. In any event Walther has addressed an issue to keep the spring from slipping out of the shallow recess provided for it and to help keep it from flying off. This spring holds the slide stop arm down and away from the slide until the follower button on an empty mag forces it up to engage the slide after the last shot is fired.
Here are the two frame screws and as you can tell some type of thread locking material has been applied. I found this on the barrel nut and safety lever screws. Good going Walther...no more screws coming loose...if only I didn't have to take the frame apart to fix a couple of things that is. And Walther has returned to the smooth roll pins, not the serrated tooth ones, for holding the grip housing on the frame. Why, beats me. I never had any issues with either but these are easier to remove.
The breech block on the other hand still has the alligator tooth pin. For those of you that have a hard time removing this pin this is how it do it. I support the slide on something like a roll of tape, safety ears just off the edge. I then tap the retaining pin down with a square nose drift. I reinsert the pin from the opposite side when reinstalling. This is required should you ever break a firing pin, a firing pin spring or to modify the breech block. Separate thread on that already exists and goes into detail about all of that. New gun measurements are as follow: These are my measurements using a digital caliper. 0.001" measurement tolerances are pretty tricky but these should be close enough. M1911