Pardini SP 22 FTF, light strikes after barrel change

Anthead · Post by **Anthead** » Sat May 26, 2012 3:25 pm

I have an older pardini sp (#B37xx - see picture), bought used 2 years ago.
Recently, i have had problems with irregular holes in targets at 15m, recrowning the barrel didnt help, so decided to have the barrel replaced.

I now have an old Pardini with the barrel assembly of a SP new - looks good too.

The problem now is that i am getting several (related) problems:

- Failures to feed - when dropping the slide on a magasine, the bolt "binds". it appears to be the round scraping on the lower edge of the chamber.
- light strikes - 3-4 out of 5 shots produce a click instead of a bang - there is a dent in the rim, but not enough to fire. pushing the bolt forward by hand does not change rate of misfires

I suspect several causes:
- tight chamber
- Magasine sits too low compared to new barrel assembly (are mags for SP new of different lenght?) - thus getting the feed angle wrong and causing the
- Broken firing pin? (not likely - gun was firing perfectly before going to the gunsmith)
- ejector hits the end of the ecector slot in the breechface before bolt is 100% closed - producing light strikes?

A fellow clubmember has offered to bring a chamber reamer (for CCI SV) and ream out the chamber - possibly improving feeding. (do/don't?)

Any advice from you gentlemen and women would be much appreciated

j-team · Post by **j-team** » Sat May 26, 2012 6:39 pm

My advice would be to first remove the firing pin and 100% check that it isn't broken.

Then if that's OK, take it back to who ever supplied the new barrel and ask them to fix it.

Don't ream the chamber out in the new barrel. Even if the chamber is wrong, get them to give you a replacement barrel and supply you with a functional pistol.

orionshooter · Post by **orionshooter** » Sun May 27, 2012 7:40 am

I agree with jteam ...don't ream until you eliminate all other possibilities including different ammo.

Misalignment of the magazine to the new chamber could very well be the cause of ALL the issues you described.

Gwhite · Post by **Gwhite** » Sun May 27, 2012 6:49 pm

They definitely changed the magazine design at some point. My wife has an older SP, and I have an SP New. It's been a while since I looked at the differences, but my recollection is that the tab in the front of the SP New magazines that forms a sort of feed ramp is longer & wider. My magazines will not fit in her pistol, although I think they could be altered to do so.

Whether this is involved in the OP's problems or not is unclear. It could affect the feeding, but if closing the slide manually still produces light hits, there is something else going on as well.

One other thing is that some (all?) of the Pardini barrels have the bottom edge of the chamber radiused slightly. Depending on the amount of radius, this would also affect the cycling/feeding.

John J · Post by **John J** » Mon May 28, 2012 9:48 am

Regarding the possibility of a tight chamber...remove the barrel and drop in a live round..does it slide in ok...tip the barrel up..does the round fall out on its own? If it goes in and out easily it is not a tight chamber. If it doesn't, take it back to the gunsmith.

As for misfires...it is possible that the barrel is to long from the shoulder stop in the shrowd to the chamber..therefor holding the bolt back a bit more than it should be and not letting the hammer come past 90 degees resulting in the light hits...this could also contribute to your feeding problem.

A quick check would be to place a bussness card between your barrel shrowd and the frame..this would move the barrel forward.

I measured the distance form the barrel shrowd to the end of the chamber on a 1st and 2nd gen and they are 2.136 and 2.134

hope this helps a little bit...or just something else to think on.

John J