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New P22-Q Assessment; Photos & Measurements

13K views 9 replies 7 participants last post by  1917-1911M 
#1 · (Edited)
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
 
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#2 · (Edited)


The cock notch on the hammer. This is where the sear catches the hammer when in SA mode. I clean this up and highly polish but do not change the angle here or shave off any material other that what is necessary for smoothing and polishing. a mirror finish is good.



Way back with the original hammer the tip would catch in the small gap between the safety drum and the rear of the breech block. I modified the top of the hammer to eliminate the tip so that the face of the hammer would span this gap. In about 2007 Walther finally re-profiled the hammer to achieve the same thing. Above is how I imagine they designed the hammer to fit against the bottom of the breech block. Unfortunately the angle was wrong and is still wrong and a tip still exists that can catch the slide and stop it from chambering the next round. It should be understood that the hammer spring on the P22 exerts maximum pressure against the hammer when the slide presses it back which in turn causes the hammer to drag with considerable friction along the bottom of the breech block. This is why the tip/notch issue needs resolving on many pistols.



What actually happens is shown above. When the hammer is cocked the flat area lies parallel with the bottom of the breech block but, when the slide moves over the hammer it presses it down an additional appx. 0.030" and in the process tilts the rear of the flat area down and once again creates a tip that catches. So, I recommend you still polish off the tip with some 600 grit emery and then polish to a mirror finish. All of this has been gone into in great detail in earlier threads. The new breech block mod thread eliminates most of the hammer's drag.



New hammer profile, point removed.



This is all it takes to remove the point. Can be done with hammer in the pistol. Clean thoroughly afterwards though.



I should have put this picture of the underside of the new slide in earlier but it shows a couple of things and a couple of things it doesn't. First the extractor looks good but it was one of the worst I've ever had. It appears Walther lengthened the extractor spring or made it stiffer. I will have to check this but this pistol threw appx 50 spent cases straight into my face out of 600+ rounds. I removed this extractor and put in a custom one furnished some years ago by 1DogFish, a member here, and they work perfectly. I have since fired the pistol about 30 times and ejection direction is as it should be....out the right side of the pistol and not into my face.

Next you can see that both ears are hitting the slide and impact peening is minimal with the one round that has been fired. What is not good in my opinion is that the ears are running right along the inner edge of the slide and scuffing zinc off the area in front of the slide ramp. Reshaping and polishing the ears will all but eliminate any marks here. My latest scheme is to lay the ears back so that the top front edge matches the slope of the ramp under the slide. This maximizes steel to zinc contact for minimal peening. My '09 pistol with about 12K or 14K rounds fired through it looks much like this new slide.

Looking at the rear of the breech block, this is the first P22 I've ever had where the stock hammer was running flat across the breech block and not down the left side only.



Looking at same slide after 700 rounds. No additional peening of the slide due to polishing the trigger bar ears. 1DogFish extractor installed to correct ejection direction.



New hammer measurement. If re-profiling the hammer to remove the tip the hammer must remain over 1/2" thick or the slide won't cock it and you will have to do a little work on the cocking notch of the hammer. So, just remove the tip and nothing else. Then polish.



New hammer measurement face to rear.



There seem to be some owners getting into trouble with the width of their trigger bar. This is how wide a stock one is and the sides are square and parallel. There is just a bit of extra room between the inside of the frame and the outside of the trigger bar rails. So, spreading them gets you into trouble really quickly if you widen the ears and bend these arms out. Of course they are easy to bend back in. Factory specs for resetting if you have issues here.



The stock trigger bar ears are this wide. You may take off any rough area on the outer edge but only a very minimum amount.....do not shorten the ear width. They are barely wide enough stock. Work done to the ears is primarily on the top, front edge as no other part of the ear touches anything. M1911.

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.

A new recoil spring is 4 3/8" long
A new magazine spring is 4 3/8" long
The frame rails are 0.114" tall top to bottom
The slide grooves are 0.115" top to bottom
Total width of frame at the rails is 0.682"
The total width of the slide grooves left side to right side is 0.702"
The firing pin reset spring is 0.51" long
The A series pistol's slide measures a thickness of 0.068" just behind the muzzle cup
The Q series slide measures 0.112" thickness at the same location, almost twice as thick as the older pistols.
A fully cocked hammer is pressed down an additional 0.030" when the slide is moved over it.
The hammer requires 8 lbs of pull to reach SA locked position, Lyman digital. Loop of string through the hole in the hammer attached to pull gauge.

A much older pistol now requires 7lbs of pull to cock the hammer.
I notice that SA trigger pull is 2 lbs 14 oz also.

Next project......lowering trigger pull in SA from the current new polished pistol from 4 lb to 2.5 lb or so. Do the parts have a Rockwell hardness to allow this? I don't know. One time I did a Rockwell hardness test on a number of parts and posted. Now to study up on sear work.
 
#5 ·
Next project......lowering trigger pull in SA from the current new polished pistol from 4 lb to 2.5 lb or so. Do the parts have a Rockwell hardness to allow this? I don't know. One time I did a Rockwell hardness test on a number of parts and posted. Now to study up on sear work.
1911, very excellent information, well presented. :bthumb:

FYI, (you probly already know this) hardening on these parts is generally measured in microns, IIRC. the difference between polishing, & stoning (even with a hard arkansas fine grit stone) can make the diff between maintaining & losing that surface hardness. I am not an engineer, BTW. it is amazing how precisely the mfg's can control how high heat/length of treating to such a small degree! I look forward to reading your posts on "sear work". congrats on being such a help.
 
#6 · (Edited)
Well, lowering the trigger pull was easy enough. Stoned both sear and hammer. The hammer is fully hardened so it will hold up. And, I'm waiting for a guide from Brownell to get this right. I did go to an engineering testing facility one time that a friend owns. He had a RH machine. I tested the hardness of a number of parts on the P22. The slide was too soft and the diamond just keep pushing deeper and deeper. Tested ejector, hammer, sear, trigger bar, can't remember what all but I still have pictures of assembled pistols showing internal components with indentations in them. :p

But, back on topic....I tested the hammer then cold ground...with running water on the stone to keep the metal from getting hot. And, in comparing a couple of cock notches on different stock hammers....there was some difference in angle.

My Q model had what I believe is very positive engagement. An earlier hammer was more square with the sear. Both stock. It is my understanding from reading about the hammer/sear on a 1911 ( about the only thing there seems to be any serious discussion on regarding hammer/sear fitting) is that the sear is to be square if a line is drawn from the center of the pivot hole to the end of the sear. The sear tip would first be stoned to appx .030" wide and then the inside of the sear tip would be stoned at 45 degrees until the sear face is appx .020" to 0.025" inch. This creates a breakaway angle.

The hammer cocking notch on the other hand is to be cut or stoned at an angle that approaches a 1 degree positive engagement. I've seen videos where the hammer hooks were cut at a 89.75 degree angle with the sear being square. This gives a very slight positive engagement with no creep. Without a special bit and a high dollar milling machine...I'm not sure how you get this angle. Brownell sells squaring files and fine stones with accurate 90 degree sides. No 89.75 degree items as far as I can tell. A slightly positive engagement angle is safer, eliminates creep and gives a smooth release.....at least that is what I understand.

I might have to file my own hammer and sear out of a camshaft or smooth a 1911 hammer and sear down to P22 specs if the stock stuff doesn't work out. Some of the good 1911 sears are mim'd steel from what I understand. My stock Colt carry has a mim'd sear and disconnector. At least they sure look mim'd to me. Thanks for the info. You can add a lot more if you know it....or anyone else. Is it possible to reharden the outer steel on a mim'd part? M1911
 
#7 · (Edited)
I had picked up a P22Q just before Christmas which turned out to be a CA model (I didn't know there was a difference before reading these forums). The dealer exchanged it for a non-CA model today (new 4473 and all). One difference between the two is that this one has a machined area on the inside edge/corner of the slide right over (below) the ramp that engages the trigger bar ear in the left side. I plan to do all the mods on this one and will try to photo document it and post it all in a thread. It looks about 45 degrees and runs the length of the ramp. This one is a bit rougher in the mag release and the safety, but that will hopefully smooth out some.

 
#8 ·
Fantastic work here. I have a newer one ( 2013 ) and the gap is good but still the hammer drags on the breach block and the tranistion from the safety bar . Since the hammer is cocked by the back of the safety bar I should be able to do the old mod. of reducing the breach block by .020??? and the "front" of the safety bar ?? I have done the hammer mod. and it works well but still to much friction.
 
#9 ·
You can buy a tin of goop for hardening steel parts. You heat them up and then drop them in the tin. I don't know the specifics of it, but that will be in the instructions with the tin. I don't know if there are any peculiarities to doing this to a mim part as opposed to cast or forged. Perhaps the instuctions would enlighten there as well.
 
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