Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Daisy 717 Trigger Refinement Part 1

I've been procrastinating over several airgun projects lately and my lack of posts shows. It's been about 10 degrees in the garage and I can't get any enthusiasm to freeze my tail off. I need to finish the Daisy 717 that Nick sent. With the valve repaired, I've been shooting it almost every day. The trigger is almost the only thing holding it back from being a good cheap 10-meter contender. (OK, it also could stand another 50 fps to cut cleaner holes for scoring)
There's a well-known trigger modification out there credited to the late Don Nygord. Nygord was a world-class pistol shooter. When the best shooter in the world says "do this to the trigger", we should pay rapt attention. By the way, Nick previously covered this trigger modification. Why am I covering it again? Well, I haven't done it, my gun needs it and I'm not working on much else.

Pulled the grip frame and removed the grips.

Knocked out the pin holding the sear, sear block, and cocking link,

and they pull right out.

Removed the sear spring from the two parts. The sear is on the right and goes to the front of the gun. Cocking link on left. The spring had flaking red paint all over it. I removed the paint and lightly greased the spring.

Polished all the contact surfaces on the buffing wheel.

Before going right to the Nygord modification, I wanted to see what a polish and lube would do for comparison.

Greased the sear/cocking link interface with some Psycho Lube.

Also greased the pivot pins and the sides of the bosses where they pivot against the inside of the grip frame. Reinstalled and ready for action.

One more thing while the grips are off. The top edge of each grip is supposed to fit under the receiver snugly. These don't and the grips are quite loose.

Cut a strip of rubber splicing tape...

Yep, you got it.

and notched it to fit around the small post at the top.

The rubber makes for a crush fit at the top.

No more play! Hit the right grip with the same treatment.

The trigger pull is much smoother but it still has a fairly long take up. So, I brought the drill press into the house to warm up. Nygord, you're up next.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I found that the only issue with the trigger is the spring as the factory spring seems to be an automotive suspension part.