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M & S Series Trigger Tune Up.

By BigTaco

Disclaimer: There is no one to whom you can send your big pile of disassembled parts. I believe
this disassembly is pretty straight forward. Please read the whole thing before you tear yours
apart. I would hate to be blamed for causing unimaginable pain when your pistol doesn’t go right
back together and you have to find someone else to help you. If you have questions, please ask
them before you tear it down.

That being said…

First off is a dose of reality. Any double action trigger will feel sub-par to a tuned up single action
trigger. If you really love that STI that your favorite gunsmith wrenched on for a week, you will
likely not love any safe action trigger system’s pull.

There’s a reason why speed shooters and target shooters shoot single actions, they feel crisper,
or more crispy as I like to say. But, they require either a thumb cock to fire (slow to do, and
impractical in defense situations) or a safety of some sort (which is one more thing to think about
in a gunfight) making them less than ideal for carry or combat.

Steyrs are made for carry. When some big dude is running at you with a machete screaming that
he’s going to kill you, what are you thinking? I’m thinking one thing: pull trigger.

Be it officers or citizens, they’re meant to be out of the holster, on target and slinging lead post
haste when called upon. Usually within 10 yards. For this purpose it’s hard to beat a “safe action”
pistol.

That being said, the Steyr is undoubtedly and irrefutably the best of the safe action triggers. This
is due nearly in whole to being pre-cocked to 72%. This allows a very short pull, so short that
some mistake it for a single action pistol. I must assume that Steyr did extensive testing and
concluded that the firing pin being released with 72% of total force is not enough to detonate a
primer.

A word of caution. You can seriously screw stuff up if you’re careless or get carried away. I only
offer this up as stuff that has worked for me and improved my two Steyrs. You’re taking matters
into your own hands, and you can’t expect Steyr to replace parts that you tinkered with for free.
Little parts are cheap, that’s why I mess with them. Sub-frames, slides and barrels are
expensive, which is why I don’t mess with them.

Again, if it aint broke rules apply. Some people just like to tinker, and if you’re gonna tinker… try
this stuff!!!

There are a couple of annoying symptoms that 100% functioning guns can suffer from that can be
almost completely alleviated if you know where to polish.

Trigger smoothness is a friction thing.

By far the biggest complaint seen on the website concerning the trigger is that of an “inconsistent”
trigger pull. Meaning, sometimes it’s smooth, sometimes gritty, sometimes light, sometimes
heavy, but never the same. Assuming the pistol is cleaned and lubed properly, this can almost
always be attributed to a burr on the trigger weight (part #45) which has scratched a groove onto
the guide rod (#44) at the exact location where the trigger breaks.
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This burr puts a nice scratch in the guide rod. When you are firing the weapon, the weight spins
around the guide rod at random when the firing pin is traveling forward and back and forward
again. Where the weight is captured determines how the next pull will feel. If the burr is not near
the groove it created, it will slide right down the guide rod just fine. If the burr has made a bunch
of scratches, and runs over these, the trigger will just feel gritty, like it has a lot of creep. You can’t
pull it smoothly and your trigger break will truly be a surprise. If the burr has made one big
scratch and you’re trying to pull it through the big scratch, you’ll feel like the trigger is never going
to break.

FIX

Remove the weight and spring from the guide rod. Look for signs of a scratch on the guide rod.
Polish the area closest to the small end with 1000 grit until all visible lines running perpendicular
to it are gone and you see a nice bunch of shiny lines moving with the guide rod. I polished mine
along its entire length, because the firing pin spring will be bunching and rubbing against it as you
pull the trigger and I want as little friction as possible.

Now, polish the interior of the weight. Take a piece of 1000 grit and wrap it around something
small enough to get in there. Rub it in the same way it will be sliding down the guide rod.

Next, angle the tool, so that you’re taking off the hard edge all the way around, both sides.
Finally, hit those little places where the slot is cut into the disk. Somewhere in here is where the
burr will be hiding.

It’s small parts and big fingers I know, but it’s worth getting in there and really getting these two
parts to slide smoothly.
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Assemble and test. What do you think? Time will tell, but this made the biggest improvement in
trigger feel. And it’s really easy to do!!

The next place to look for smoothness is where the sear falls off of the post. This polishing is
covered in section 4 of the previous tutorial. Once you see how the two parts interact, it’s easy to
see where to polish. Make sure to polish in the direction the part will ultimately be traveling
during trigger pull.

Also polish both sides, top and bottom of the drop safety. It moves rearward with the sear and
rubs against the inside of the sub-frame rail.

You could try to polish the little slots that the sear rides in. I didn’t do mine, because I was
concerned about opening them up. My buddy did his, and opened his slots up quite a bit as
compared to mine, and his gun runs 100%. If you were to do this you could just tear up a piece
of sandpaper and wrap it around a little screwdriver or punch and rub back and forth.

If you remember from the “how it works” section, your trigger bar rides in a slot molded into the
inside of the frame. (the black grip) I noticed that my trigger bar was polishing itself, so I helped it
along. I polished the two ends, where it was obviously rubbing. Then I went further and polished
that slot, which the trigger bar was rubbing against. It’s kind of a pain, and I’m not sure if it was
appreciably better. But it is something to think about and/or try.
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Also, the little triangle part on top of the sear pulls against the firing pin tang. I polished these two
surfaces, but as the firing pin and sear both move straight back until the trigger breaks, it isn’t an
incredible difference in feel.

Polish the inside of the firing pin, as the spring will be bunching inside of it.

I actually polished the inside and outside of the firing pin spring.

Also, the firing pin has two raised sections that slide in the firing pin channel which is integral in
the slide. I polished these raised sections and it was a pretty dramatic change. I wrapped
electrical tape around the parts I didn’t intend to polish because I didn’t want to polish anything
but the raised sections. I didn’t polish the firing pin channel because it’s already very smooth,
and I don’t want to mess up expensive parts.
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As an aside, if parts become readily available, I’m going to try cutting slots in these raised
sections to find out if: 1) it will eliminate the over-lube hydrolocking problem that keeps the gun
from functioning when there is too much lube in the channel and 2) if it will allow the gun to
function under water as the Glock and XD claim to be able to do. I will keep you posted.

Trigger pull weight is all about spring force

When you pull the trigger, you’re actually tugging against quite a few springs. The trigger spring
#20 during first trigger take-up, #19 starts to resist as the trigger rotates towards the rear, the
magic spring #12 which is always working to pull the sear forwards and up, and the firing pin
spring.

#20 offers minimal resistance, as can be proven by pulling the first trigger. Nothing to it. right?
Even though this spring force continues and grows as you pull the trigger, in the end it has little
effect on overall pull weight.

#19 offers very little resistance. It’s a very lightweight spring. Don’t worry about it.

#12 actually has a little meat to it. Though I haven’t tried, I’m convinced the gun would function
normally without it. I say this because in my buddy’s gun, spring #12 doesn’t even really exert
any force, the sear is not pulled up at all, it is resting on pin#14 and his works 100%. I see it as
an insurance policy that the sear gets onto the post. This is an insurance policy I can live with.
Having spent so much time getting my Steyr functioning excellently, I’m not willing to play with
this #12 until I have reason to believe it is causing grief. That being said, if you attempted to
lighten its effect on trigger pull, I’m not sure that you could remove any appreciable trigger weight
without compromising its ability to do its job.

By far the strongest spring you’re pulling on is the firing pin spring. If you have one weight on the
rod, your trigger should be around 5 or 6 pounds, if you have two weights, it’s more like 8. It’s
called a weight because it increases spring preload, therefore affecting trigger pull weight.

I’m not convinced this is a place to look for trigger weight concessions though.

The problems you will likely run into are:

Insufficient force to detonate the primer.

Insufficient preload to pull the sear onto the post. Remedied by adding back in more preload.
You can see how you could run in circles with this.
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If you want to mess with it AND you have spare parts to mess with AND you just have to tinker,
here we go. By the way, I haven’t experimented with this personally. It is hypothetical
speculation.

We know we can tug and stretch the spring to increase preload and ultimately trigger weight. It
seems the opposite would be true. We could shorten that static length of the spring. The easiest,
way to do this would be to compress the coils of the spring. If you’re going to try this, step one=
have a spare spring. start small, and don’t compress it too much. Let me know if any of you
have success or problems with this. My concern is that by the time you have a 2 pound trigger,
said trigger will no longer reset.

DECREASE TRIGGER PULL WEIGHT

Those are the springs that you’re pulling against. But check out that spring #13. It seems like it’s
helping you pull the trigger. And it is, during the initial take-up, until it hits pin #14. Pin #14 stops
the posts’ rearward travel, at which point the sear begins to fall off of the post. As the sear falls
off of the post, it actually pushes the post and this spring forward. Therefore, if you lighten this
spring, the sear can fall off the post more easily, hence the trigger pull is effectively lightened.
The factory spring has an included angle of approx. 120-130 degrees. I decreased this to approx.
90 degrees and the decrease in trigger pull weight was dramatic. So much so that taking up
initial slack quickly resulted in a very light, clean, crisp and initially very surprising trigger break.
After a few magazines getting used to this completely new trigger, it just feels really light and
really smooth and really good and I actually will encourage you to try out this mod. Once bent,
that spring will never be the same, even if you bend it back. If you’re unsure and you want to
hedge your bet, have a new one on hand.

Use a couple of needle nose pliers, one to grab the coils of the spring and one to bend the arm to
90 degrees. Upon assembly, it won’t matter if the bent arm is placed against the sub-frame or
against the post. At least it hasn’t in mine. And it’s been 100% reliable in my experience. I’d
estimate pull weight around or under four pounds. I’ll get it tested and let you know.

So this is some rainy day, winter morning type stuff to mess with. I find tinkering almost as much
fun as shooting and I hope you’ve got some tinkering to do. I wish you success and as more
people try these mods, more people will be around to assist you get your Steyr tuned just the way
you like it. There’s every potential that I have completely missed or forgotten something that
would dramatically help smoothness, crispness, or pull weight. I’d love to hear about it.

As a final thought, these parts will wear in, not out. The more you fire and dry fire your pistol, the
more that these parts will polish themselves to ultimate perfection.

BigTaco
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