S&W PPK safety issues

[Echo9]

I was handling my dad's S&W PPK and noticed that when pressing the safety lever down, you can very easily leave it in between on and off. In my experience, the safety is spring loaded and if you press it down, it snaps down pretty quickly.

It's having the same problem pushing the safety up. If you don't manually drag it all the way up, it'll stay wherever you leave it.

A couple other things seemed odd to me. If you leave the safety on and rack the slide, the hammer follows the slide -- that's normal. But with my dad's, it's not until the slide is completely in battery that the hammer violently snaps up. I'm pretty sure that isn't normal.

Also, when you decock, the trigger stays back instead of moving fully forward. And decocking visibly shifts the entire slide on top of the gun.

I'll post pics later and I'll be registering on the Walther forum, but does anyone have an idea what the problem could be?

 

[dfariswheel]

There is no problem, your dad's Walther is working exactly as designed.

The safety on the PP series is not spring loaded. It will stay right where you leave it, even if half way between safe and fire.

On most PP series guns the hammer will stay cocked until the slide is almost fully closed.
The design uses a trip lever in the frame that's activated by the safety. The safety can only contact the trip when the slide is almost closed.
I haven't seen a PP series in which the hammer follows the slide unless something is wrong with it.

In the PP series, the trigger stays to the rear if the safety is applied and the slide is closed. When the safety is turned to fire, the trigger moves forward.

Since the safety systems interact with parts in the frame, it's normal to see some movement of the slide and frame when the safety is operated.

Here's a Walther PP series schematic.
As you can see, the safety has no spring on it. The only spring pressure is from the detent and spring which gives it the "snap" when it's turned fully on or off.
These are parts 4 and 5. These also power the extractor and plunger parts 2 and 3.

The hammer trip lever is part number 37. When the slide closes, the safety contacts that trip, which raises the sear, part 40, and allows the hammer to drop on the locked firing pin.
I don't know what's going on with your Walther, but the hammer should not be riding the slide down. The hammer should stay cocked until the slide is almost closed and can contact the trip lever.

http://www.stevespages.com/ipb-walther-pp.html

 

[Echo9]

Ok.

I don't actually own one myself, my memory of how they handle was just a little off.

Thanks for clearing that up. Now if I can just make it stop misifring......