Holy crap, you guys; everyone who hasn't sent their R51 back in needs to take it apart
now and put it back together. I don't know what metal shavings fell out, what burs broke off, or what misalignments were corrected, but the gun is tons easier to rack now, and the safety is no longer scratchy. As best I can tell, the disconnector pops up and down much more easily, pretty much on par with every other disconnector I've played with. It especially drops down much more easily. My thinking is the spring was possibly double-wound against the disconnector to more assertively drive it upward. But there's two reasons that's stupid and unnecessary; the gun won't fire until that piece returns, so if it arrives upward a millisecond later due to only 1lb of force on it rather than 5 the shooter's reaction time will never know (I'll verify this with testing, of course), and secondly, the more force that is required to drop the disconnector, the more it tilts, pivots, binds, and scrapes on everything in there. It's even possible an extra wind would cause the spring coils to bind, which would definitely explain the spongy yet stiff disconnector I originally had that felt like it was slipping over wet rocks when it was pressed with the slide off.
Anywho, it takes like 10lbs to rack the decocked gun now. And a function check appears to show all systems nominal
. I dunno, maybe I just forgot how much easier this gun was to rack than my other pieces (I don't remember it being like half the Hi Power or 1/3 the CZ52, though
)
Fun facts: the disconnector can pivot about 5 degrees side to side, and 5 front to back on its loose slotted pin holes (side pivot is limited by the FCG components it binds against
). The safety block can pivot about 30degrees side to side, and almost none front to back (it can actually tilt enough to
disengage both safeties but it appears its straddling the hammer strut blocks this motion (and what's a little binding gonna harm?
)
Reassembly notes:
Slave pins are not required, but you'll hate yourself for not having them (I know I do). The stippled sections of the pins are long enough to prevent lining up both sides of the hole before a hammer is needed to seat them; way to go Remington. Go slow on the pins or they'll miss their marks under spring tension and break stuff. The hammer spring cross pin is pretty easy for a pistol, but it
will launch the end cap at lethal velocity if you aren't careful; wear eye protection. The magazine catch is a pain to position, since its spring keeps trying to fall off (slave pin would make this loads easier). I had to use steel punches for everything; these pins are bound up tighter than Dick Tracy's hat-band (those "stars" you see are from metal swaging out of the hole around the stippling grooves
--totally awesome from a fatigue-cracking standpoint, I'm sure
)
TCB