Cz 75 trigger return spring issue real?

You will hear about CZ trigger return springs breaking (and about CZ firing pin stops breaking) in competition circles where round counts are very high. In competition circles, every gun breaks things. Yes, even Glocks. Serious competitors take certain parts with them to their major matches to deal with the most likely broken parts. Including the guys who shoot Glocks. Glocks have their own "known issues" - i.e., the most common failure items. See, e.g., https://www.activeresponsetraining.net/are-glocks-truly-perfection

In my observation, CZ's are no less reliable in competition than Glocks. You might want to replace the trigger return spring and slide stop every 10k rounds or so if you want to avoid the anxiety.

One other observation: Tactical-oriented people love to pretend that competition shooters don't care about reliability. That's a farce. A gun that doesn't run makes it impossible to win in practical shooting games. Impossible. Guns that aren't reliable don't get big portions of the competition market, year after year.

Competition shooters are more willing than a lot of "tactical" guys to really get into a gun's guts and figure out what makes it tick - or what will make it tick better. So they're generally OK sorting out an issue of reliability that came OOB, or adjusting ammo to meet the gun's needs, etc. They're also OK with preventative maintenance and preemptive replacement of wear items. But they will not regard it as acceptable for a gun to be unreliable over the long haul.

Again, competition shooters know what breaks on their guns because they shoot enough to know what breaks on their guns. Don't confuse that level of shooting and the knowledge that comes from it with greater appetite for unreliability.

Well said, ATLDave!

I know that it used to be an issue. Not only that, but every spring in the firearms and magazines needed to be replaced after purchase. But that was in the 1990's. It was enough of an issue to turn me away from ever buying another CZ. But I suppose they have corrected the problem by now. I still think there are far better guns for personal defense.

CZ's do tend to be more accurate than average, especially at the price point. I think that is what makes them attractive to competition shooters. But even if one were as reliable as a Glock, (they're not) I'd still take a Glock 10:1 over anything CZ makes for personal protection.

jmr40 said:

But even if one were as reliable as a Glock, (they're not) I'd still take a Glock 10:1 over anything CZ makes for personal protection.

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Funny how my G35 hasn't left backup status in many years since swapping to my CZ TS for USPSA. Poor ol girl probably has Cobb webs growing on her. Although my CZ has had a few malfunctions due to sanded mags. (Ive also had that with my Glocks BTW). Its still been far more reliable than my G35 ever was.

Course sanded mags are more on me.. and my lack of cleaning between stages.

Any gun that has a trigger return spring will break it eventually... Is it a deal breaker? No not really. I dont drive my cars 50,000 miles without changing the oil either. Its a wear item. swap it out at routine intervals.

jmr40 said:

But even if one were as reliable as a Glock, (they're not) I'd still take a Glock 10:1 over anything CZ makes for personal protection.

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That's funny, because Glocks are particularly susceptible to trigger springs breaking too. So, in the context of the OPs question, it's really a wash.

To the OP, I wouldn't worry about it. There's a reason why the CZ-75 is one of the most cloned and copied guns of all time. Replace the springs on a regular cycle based on round count and the gun will likely outlast you.

Toss-up!

Let it go and enjoy your CZ!

TheProf said:

I'm probably over thinking this...

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Yes, or at least giving too much credence to some information/marketing that doesn't have much to do with practical reality. All three of the guns you listed are likely to be quite reliable and will have long service lives. All will benefit from preventative maintenance, particularly if you are subjecting them to high round counts. All of them have common points of failure, although uncommon failures happen, too.

I once saw a Glock barrel shear off its lower locking lug/cam during competition. Gun had to be field stripped just to get the round out of the chamber! Is this an indictment of Glock or Glock barrels? Absolutely not. It is proof that if you take enough instances, even very improbable events happen. I have seen larger numbers of Glocks fail due to various parts of the firing mechanism. Again, not an indictment. It's a myth that Glocks are indestructible or never fail. They are very reliable. So are some other guns. They are not "perfection," although they are a high-quality consumer product.

Like most myths, there is a small kernel of truth at the core. Glocks are among the most forgiving of abuse. Because they have generous clearances*, they seem to have a slightly higher willingness to run when packed with mud or sand. And their loose chambers and long lede/throat (until the 5th gen, maybe?) means that a wider variety of ammo will feed OK, whereas CZ's often have shorter throats and tighter chambers and won't necessarily shoot everything.

So, if your plan is to run around in some dystopian hellscape and feed your gun with the "pickups" from dead zombies (or maybe buy your reloads from a meth head who can't be bothered to case gauge stuff), and routinely wade through neck deep Carolina low country pluff mud... then, in that circumstance, I suspect the Glock would be a less-frustrating choice.

If your intention is to keep your gun moderately well cared for (and I don't even mean cleaning it every time you shoot, or anything close to that... I just mean not throwing the gun in an actual mud puddle or rolling it in used kitty litter) and relying on ammo that you have previously tested to play well with your gun, then there is no reason to expect any particular CZ to be more or less reliable than any particular Glock.

* A lot of people use the term "loose tolerance," but that's not exactly the same thing. Glock maintains pretty tight dimensional tolerances on their parts... they just design them to have a little extra room/slop to be forgiving of bad operating conditions.

I purchased my 6th CZ this week. I have never had a problem with trigger return springs. I did break a slide stop about 10 or 15 years ago at a steel match. I finished the match and found the stop was broken when I got home. I love my CZs and I don't worry about broken parts.

There are supposedly improved TRS available for the CZ75 series. I bought one as a spare a while back but have not use it yet and have no idea if it will impact trigger quality. Keep in mind that dry fire activity also should be counted as round count as far as TRS life. Once could also change that part on a regular basis if they have concerns about it's life span.

https://czcustom.com/cz-75-trigger-return-spring-trs-new.html

"These newly re designed spring have been made from a better grade of spring steel heat treated differently and tested by us. We have fired test sample to excess of 20,000 dry fires without breakage.
Will not work in tactical Sports."

I changed the one on my 75B early on...not because the spring broke but because the pin holding it in was walking out every couple of hundred rounds. The spring can be a real you know what to change and I went with a Cajun reduced power spring + their improved pin. With their pin future changes (if ever needed) are much easier and their pin can't walk out and doesn't require peening if it did.

Had my pin not started being a problem I would not have bothered.

TheProf said:

I'm probably over thinking this...

Between the three (CZ, Glock, M&P), which one is more likely to have a broken spring?

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Own/owned all three. (only M&P left is my wifes EZ) I have yet to break a trigger return spring in any.

You need to be realistic about your average round count per year.. If your shooting less than 1000 rounds per year. you are definitely over thinking it.

TheProf said:

It seems that the common consensus out there is you use CZ for competition and Glocks for self defense. Is this accurate?

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As you can see from the above posts, no it's not accurate.

ClickClickD'oh said:

That's funny, because Glocks are particularly susceptible to trigger springs breaking too. So, in the context of the OPs question, it's really a wash.

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I wouldnt say "particularly susceptible ". They do go, but not very often. My first was on my high round count 17 I use in practice, and that was at around 90,000 rounds. I replaced it, and the second one went at 120,000. As was mentioned in Daves link, the gun will still function if you hold the reset, or hold the trigger back when you drop the slide on a reload. So, even broken, the gun will still function if you understand what's going on.

Should it happen, its a $3 part, and easily replaced by the user.

tcj said:

I went with a Cajun reduced power spring + their improved pin. With their pin future changes (if ever needed) are much easier and their pin can't walk out and doesn't require peening if it did.

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I second CGW's trigger pin... so much easier and the fact that it is a free-float pin seems to make a difference in my CZ97 (same pin).

TheProf said:

I am trying to visualize the above post, having trouble understanding it. Let's see if I got that correct....

I fire a shot, the bullet leaves the gun but the trigger fails to reset in the forward position due to a broken TRS.
Would you still be required to push the trigger in the forward position so the can the next shot?

Would the same process work in a CZ?

I would like to know just in case... heaven forbid... that I'm in the middle of a firefight and my TRS is broken.

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I dont know if it works with the CZ's. It does work with the Glocks.

This will give you a better idea......

TheProf said:

I fire a shot, the bullet leaves the gun but the trigger fails to reset in the forward position due to a broken TRS.
Would you still be required to push the trigger in the forward position so the can the next shot?

Would the same process work in a CZ?

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What you describe is what happens with CZ's (and Tanfoglios)... if the TRS breaks, the hammer and sear still reset, but you have to push the trigger forward. Needless to say, this slows the effective rate of fire considerably!

If you're really, really fixated on this, then you could always go to a Tanfoglio (very similar ergos to a CZ, and similar - though not interchangeable guts) and install a Henning flat trigger. Instead of the TRS being coiled around the trigger pin (the axel of the trigger's pivot) and being coiled/uncoiled (by a small amount) with every shot, the TRS in a Henning trigger resides in a pocket milled into the front of the trigger and compresses, rather than torques, to store energy for the return. Of course, this only works with single-action only guns (doesn't allow the travel distance for DA). This puts very, very little stress on the Henning TRS spring. I have no idea what the useful life of that spring is, but I suspect it will outlive the barrel, and probably the frame.

I have Henning triggers on my competition Tanfoglios... but it has little or nothing to do with TRS breakage. Detail stripping Tanfos isn't hard, but reassembly is a little bit of a trick... and the hardest part is getting the trigger pin back through the frame while the factory TRS is trying to push the whole trigger up, and you're having to thread the pin back through both the trigger and the hole in the center of the TRS.

Anyway, that's all rather far afield. Again, my observation is that a CZ with proper ammo is just as reliable in high-round, hard-run, though not necessarily abusive, conditions as a Glock. I don't see any greater number of jams or guns conking out in USPSA matches when the competitor is using a CZ than when the competitor is using a Glock. Based on what I have seen, I'm personally satisfied that there is no functional/effective/measurable/real difference in the reliability of these different guns.

Oh, BTW: I don't own a single CZ. Nor do I own a Glock. But I have watched thousands and thousands of competitive runs by people using these brands of guns.

AK103K said:

I wouldnt say "particularly susceptible ". They do go, but not very often.

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To be fair, most broken trigger springs that I have seen on Glocks are from people that took the gun down beyond the scope of their skill and reinstalled the trigger spring upside down.

That said, I have seen a trigger spring break on a relatively new factory Glock. Just like I have seen one break on relatively factory new Ruger (that unfortunate owner also had her magazine release fail on her backup gun and it wouldn't hold a magazine in), and once some spring inside a Walther P22 that caused the hammer to flop around randomly. Guns break. Guns break more if you play with them more. Have I ever personally seen a CZ break a spring? No. But, for reference, the two most common guns I see go down in class are 1911s and Glocks. That's pretty much solely because the two most common guns I see are 1911s and Glocks. CZs are like ghosts at the level of classes I'm usually involved with.

I'm not going to lie or hide it, I'm a huge CZ guy. Have dozens of them. Only two of them though have ever passed the 10k round mark. My Phantom and my P-10C. I've never had either break down on me. I 100% mark that up to the fact that I replace their springs religiously every 3,000 rounds. Springs are pennies on the dollar compared the cost of the ammo required to wear them out. To me, waiting to replace the springs until the gun malfunctions is like waiting to change a cars oil until the oil light comes on.

On a side note, I have never, ever heard of a Glock with a NY1 trigger breaking a spring. I don't think it's possible.. but then again, you would need to put up with that horrible NY1 trigger.

Honestly, I kind of chuckle at the thought of CZs breaking their trigger springs being a common problem. Back in the day when CZs were made in a choice of all steel or all steel, they were known for coming from the factory with triggers that were on the gritty side of the sand paper scale. That wasn't really a problem, because all you had to do was put a snap cap or spent case in the chamber and dry fire it a couple hundred time and presto, the trigger turned to glass. It was just one of those CZ things. That and cutting the magazine brake to flatten it out.

The “problem” with CZ trigger springs came up in the early ‘90s, when CZ got a bad batch of springs from a supplier. They replaced quite a few at their expense. (I was a senior moderator on the CZ Forum at that time, and for a number of years.). While I’ve not been as active with that forum over the intervening years, I’ve NOT heard that the problem ever showed itself after that first 1990’s episode.

There was also a problem (much less difficult to address) with the extractor springs, which were a bit on the wimpy side, and if gunk built up under the extractor the spring wasn’t strong enough to keep its grip on the case rim. Wolff developed an extra spring extractor spring, and CZ later changed to a stronger spring for new production guns.

I don’t remember other spring-related problems, and only the trigger return spring was an actual breakage.

I’ve had a bunch of CZs over the years, and a bunch of CZs. They’ve both been very reliable for me, and the only actual problem I ever had with a Glock was a broken trigger return spring — quickly replaced by a local Glock armored. (I’d do it myself, now.) The only problem I ever had with a CZ was a weak extractor spring, and a slide stop that had to be sanded to keep rounds from nudging it when cycling (and prematurely locking the slide back.)