Anyone ever experience a milspec AR trigger getting better?

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EchoM70

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I have a standard milspec lower that I have recently built and it's currently residing on a PSA upper. The whole assembly is fairly new, maybe 60 or 70 rounds through it. It's trigger is nothing to write home about. Creepy, gritty and heavy. What you would expect out of a normal milspec trigger.

Well tonight I was going over some dry fire drills while watching TV as I often do and the trigger while still just a little gritty is a lot lighter with no creep. It's crisply breaking around the 4 pound mark. Beforehand it was by my estimate breaking around 7-8 pounds.


So the two questions I have are; is it safe? And what caused it? I have not done anything at all to the trigger assembly since it was installed.
 
My Colt 6920s trigger got better but over a much longer time. Maybe yours had a small bur or something like that?
 
Few years ago there was a thread here about AR triggers. I remember one of the posts suggested just putting a good lube on the sear surface and dry firing a couple hundred times. Can help a lot

The surfaces on low end factory triggers are no particularly polished or well finished. Working the surfaces against each other smooths them out..

Just remember that the surface hardening may only be a few thousandths deep, so shortening the curve by using a Dremel to speed the process would be I'll advised

I had one with a typical low end milspec trigger. Put some PTFE Teflon on it and removed the upper, the dry fired . Helped a lot
 
A JP spring kit and a 1/4-28 set screw can make a stock trigger group quite tolerable.
 
They get better with use and they can be improved some. 4lbs is light for a standard GI spec trigger. Mine usually start out at 7-8 lbs and end up around 5-6lbs.
 
An in-spec "GI spec trigger" by definition cannot be 4 lbs pull weight. Minimum is 5.5 lbs

But most people don't have calibrated gauges for fingers so unless you are testing/measuring that with a reliable tool I would avoid throwing out numbers.
 
In one of my last units we had around 1,200 old M-16s which had super smooth and crisp triggers.

Later we replaced them with 1,200 FN made M-16A2s. They had crappy triggers until we had everyone over lube and shoot 800 rounds. Plus dry fire the heck out of them. Then they were much, much better.

A couple years later we did the same thing with 1,200 M4 carbines.

Anyway, yes the M-16 trigger system tends to smooth out with use and proper care.
 
They all get better with usage. Some of it is you getting used to it, but most is self polishing as the engagement surfaces "wear in"
 
An in-spec "GI spec trigger" by definition cannot be 4 lbs pull weight. Minimum is 5.5 lbs

But most people don't have calibrated gauges for fingers so unless you are testing/measuring that with a reliable tool I would avoid throwing out numbers.
Click to expand...

Well how about this. My trigger yesterday was heavy. And now today it is about half as heavy. Literally overnight. This trigger may have been pulled 500 times in the three months that it has been installed. Just all of a sudden it got real light, real quick.
 
Just to clarify.

I'm not wanting to make my trigger better or lighter.


It has already happened, randomly, overnight. For no real valid reason. The goal of the op was to get some insight on why my trigger got lighter literally overnight and should I have any concerns.
 
As Warp points out, if it is indeed 4 lbs. your trigger is no longer within the range specified for a mil-spec trigger (5.5-8.5 lbs.). I'd look at it, it may have indeed been a burr or something but a trigger going from heavy to light in one or a few pulls sounds a little hinky.
 
Most firearms start to perform more smoothly after a break in period.
I'm surprised you've seen such a drastic decrease in pull weight.
 
EchoM70 said:
Just to clarify.

I'm not wanting to make my trigger better or lighter.


It has already happened, randomly, overnight. For no real valid reason. The goal of the op was to get some insight on why my trigger got lighter literally overnight and should I have any concerns.
Click to expand...
Usually mechanical parts don't spontaneously change overnight, so I'll toss out a couple of suggestions with a high probability that none of them are correct:

if one of the legs off the hammer spring broke off it would make the trigger a whole lot lighter. I intentionally cut one off to improve my trigger. You might break the gun open, turn it upside down and see if anything falls out.

Maybe your gun came to you with some crud built op in the trigger area somewhere that has finally been dislodged. Or it was really dry and you lubed it and it took a little while for the lube to run into the trigger components.

Maybe the trigger fairy came while you were sleeping.
 
greyling22 said:
if one of the legs off the hammer spring broke off it would make the trigger a whole lot lighter. I intentionally cut one off to improve my trigger.
Click to expand...

That is a good way to decrease both reliability and accuracy
 
greyling22 said:
YMMV. Mine has been 100% so far. Also, how would a lighter set of springs affect accuracy?
Click to expand...

Uneven/inconsistent primer strikes. Mr. Geissele brings it up, references a test somebody did (US military somebody or other), in one of his 'installation' videos.

And I'm sure you can see how reducing the power behind the hammer can illicit lighter primer strikes.
 
oh sure, I get the light strike possibility. I reduce spring power on all my cowboy guns so much I have to run federal primers to get 100% reliable ignition, I just had never heard of lighter springs causing accuracy issues. I figured either a primer goes off or it doesn't, and I am a little skeptical of the source. I'm sure giselle is a terrific guy, and I'm not saying he's wrong or lying, but he is also a business man selling a product. And I am always skeptical of salesman claims. Either way, I have been very pleased with my amputated spring job.

But that is drifting off topic. OP asked for reasons trigger might have gotten lighter, not "the best way to get a lighter trigger" and I admit, it's a stretch that his spring broke. But I am interested in alternative ideas or in hearing his final conclusion.
 
greyling22 said:
oh sure, I get the light strike possibility. I reduce spring power on all my cowboy guns so much I have to run federal primers to get 100% reliable ignition, I just had never heard of lighter springs causing accuracy issues. I figured either a primer goes off or it doesn't, and I am a little skeptical of the source. I'm sure giselle is a terrific guy, and I'm not saying he's wrong or lying, but he is also a business man selling a product. And I am always skeptical of salesman claims. Either way, I have been very pleased with my amputated spring job.

But that is drifting off topic. OP asked for reasons trigger might have gotten lighter, not "the best way to get a lighter trigger" and I admit, it's a stretch that his spring broke. But I am interested in alternative ideas or in hearing his final conclusion.
Click to expand...

I don't know who you are referring to.
 
The best mil-spec trigger IME is the ALG Defense ACT trigger. I put together a lower and my budget didn't allow for another Geissele SSA or G2S so I got the ACT trigger and was impressed. It's very smooth, no grittyness at all.
 
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