Walther GSP Trouble Shooting?

[Gwhite]

The collegiate team I help coach mostly shoots Benelli MP90/95's, and a handful of Pardini SP's. We have two Walther GSP's that mostly collect dust. However, we have one young woman who shoots great, but didn't have the hand-strength to work the action on the other pistols. She's been shooting one of the GSP's for about 3 years now.

She hasn't had any trouble with it until last week. She cleaned & lubricated it the same way she always has, and it suddenly started having serious problems. She's been shooting CCI standard velocity ammo all this time without any issues. The symptoms are:

Failure to eject: Either trapped brass (stovepipe), or occasionally, the fired case gets pushed back into the chamber.

Failure to feed: It ejects OK, but the bolt doesn't come back far enough to pick up the next round and the bolt closes on an empty chamber

We had the collegiate Sectionals yesterday, which determine who gets invited to the National Championships. She shot both Standard Pistol and Sport Pistol. The pistol started messing up immediately, but I managed to get her through both matches by having her put a drop of thin oil on the top round of every magazine. We've never had to do that before. It wasn't a total cure, and she ended up losing one shot in each match. I still think she did well enough to qualify for Nationals, but we clearly need to fix her pistol. I took it apart between the two matches, and we went over it carefully together. Every thing looked fine, and we lubricated it and the bolt cycled nice & smoothly by hand. The functioning problems were not noticeably better or worse afterward.

I know next to nothing about GSP's (last night was the first time I'd ever taken one completely apart...). There is clearly something subtle going on. I don't know if the fact that it died after cleaning last week is a coincidence or not. Everything points to there being too much drag during the extraction process, but it feels fine. She has used thin oil (RemOil) in the past. I added a tiny bit of thin grease in a few spots that I thought might need it, but that could have made things worse, but not significantly.

Several questions for the GSP experts out there:

1) Should we stick with oil & skip the grease?

2) Any likely points/parts I should check?

3) We have the 2nd GSP. How interchangeable are the parts? For example, can I swap bolts and barrels back & forth to try to narrow down the problem, or are they fitted & matched?

One other option would be to switch her to Winchester T22, which has a bit more kick than the CCI.

I've got less than a month to sort this out before the National Championships. Any help & suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[David Levene]

Are you sure it's not just a case of too much oil on the slide.
I've seen that before. Worth checking.

[fc60]

Greetings,

I have several GSP 22's. The bolts interchange. You can swap barrels too they just do not match the contours of the upper housing. They are marked on the bottom with assembly numbers.

I clean the pistol well and coat with CLP wiping away the excess.

Examine the ejector to see if it is broken or loose in the frame causing weak ejection.

Also take a close look at the bolt assembly to see if the extractor is damaged or the firing pin broken.

As a rule, the GSP is one of the most reliable pistols we own.

Please report back with your findings.

Cheers,

Dave

[-TT-]

She's been shooting CCI standard velocity ammo all this time without any issues. The symptoms are:

Are you certain it's a good batch of ammo? The guys on my club who shoot CCI have noticed some issues lately, not enough to point a clear finger, but (for example) we've had two different shooters see dented brass, right out of fresh undamaged boxes. Might be worth ruling out. I'm not sure I'd suggest T22 in a match! Might have more kick, but it's dirty/irregular in my experience.

[Gwhite]

First, thanks to everyone for their input.

The T22 is from an old lot, and it's been quite reliable in many pistols. The CCI has also worked well. We get it direct from Federal through a special program. The first batch of 5 cases was shipped heavily overpacked on a small pallet. Last year, we got 5 cases shipped individually, and every case showed signs of being dropped on at least one or two corners en route. We mark the corner bricks for practice only, and save the inner bricks for matches. So far we haven't had any issues.

I am going to the range in about a half an hour, and may have time to do some more investigating on the GSP. We have a free pistol match tonight, so I won't be able to do any test firing.

I also need to check our supply of GSP spare parts. I have no idea what we might have on hand. I'm guessing we should make sure we have a spare extractor, recoil spring, magazine & firing pin. Anything else I should pick up? I will have to check what sort of springs the firing pin & extractor might use as well.

[fc60]

Greetings,

The firing pin should be a kit. The firing pin and a new tapered retaining pin. (Might be two pins, I cannot recall)

The extractor also used to come with the extractor, spring, and new pin.

The ejector was shipped with a new rivet. This is a bit tricky to install as you need an anvil and small punch to set the rivet.

I have some parts, send me a PM if you get in a pinch and I will put them in the mail. Just return the like parts when you get a chance.

Cheers,

Dave

[Gwhite]

Greetings,

The firing pin should be a kit. The firing pin and a new tapered retaining pin. (Might be two pins, I cannot recall)

The extractor also used to come with the extractor, spring, and new pin.

The ejector was shipped with a new rivet. This is a bit tricky to install as you need an anvil and small punch to set the rivet.

I have some parts, send me a PM if you get in a pinch and I will put them in the mail. Just return the like parts when you get a chance.

Cheers,

Dave

Thanks for the offer. I'm sure I can get all I need pretty quickly from Earl's. I didn't get a chance to examine the pistol this evening, but I checked our supply of spare parts and found one new recoil spring and an old bolt we can cannibalize for some parts. I'll try to put together a parts order tomorrow once I examine the exploded diagram a bit more carefully.

Wednesday the student will be available for testing and we will try different ammo & lubrication schemes. If there is time, we may also try swapping sub-assemblies with the other GSP.

[jaxontarget]

Not mentioned, perhaps because its painfully obvious, but since its a feeding/extraction issue - Have you checked the breech for any anomalies such as indentation from any errant dry-firing? If you have a reamer you could try a few rotations on the breech just for good measure. Otherwise my money's on the recoil spring and or extractor.

[Gwhite]

The mystery continues... The student fired 60 shots of CCI without a hitch on Tuesday, but had a few problems with it on Wednesday. We have determined that we have two different lots of CCI, and we will be experimenting to see if that is the issue. We've also verified that it will run flawlessly on Winchester T22, so we have a fallback solution.

Now that it looks like it is vaguely functional, I'll order a good supply of spares parts from Earl's. Unless we can pin it down to something specific with the CCI, I'll have her shoot T22 in matches.

I'm also going to heed David Levene's advice about too much oil, and have her lighten up on the amount of oil. I'll also have her use RemOil instead of Breakfree CLP. The RemOil is like water, and is a lot less viscous than BreakFree. I know that some Benellis don't like BreakFree, and the Benelli factory oil is also very thin.

[fc60]

Greetings,

Good news on the field test.

Try and locate someone with a bore scope. Then have a good look at the barrel to see if there is any erosion in the chamber throat. Also, check to see if there is any Lead fouling. Yes, the 22lr does foul with Lead. I have cleaned several barrels with an electronic bore cleaner.

Isolating the CCI lots is a good idea. Any lot of CCI I have that fails to function in my Haemmerli gets donated to the Walther GSP.

In the past, our GSP's have been one pistol that will consume most any ammo.

CCI has had issues in the past with too much lube on the bullet.

Again, looking forward to your next field report.

Cheers,

Dave

[jaxontarget]

The current batch of CCI SV I've been running through has had sporadic issues with wax (too much) on many boxes in the case - usually it seems like half the rounds in the affected box are overly waxed (requires pushing the rounds out of their plastic tray manually scraping off wax in the process) . This has lead to some feeding issues in all of my pistols, including my GSP. A drop of lube on the tip of the first round has helped the rest of the mag feed smoothly. First round, cold breech and wax build up ain't much fun otherwise. Previous batch to this case had no wax issues whatsoever.

[john bickar]

The current batch of CCI SV I've been running through has had sporadic issues with wax (too much) on many boxes in the case - usually it seems like half the rounds in the affected box are overly waxed (requires pushing the rounds out of their plastic tray manually scraping off wax in the process) . This has lead to some feeding issues in all of my pistols, including my GSP. A drop of lube on the tip of the first round has helped the rest of the mag feed smoothly. First round, cold breech and wax build up ain't much fun otherwise. Previous batch to this case had no wax issues whatsoever.

I think this happens when the case gets overheated at some point in transit. The wax melts and then pools on some of the rounds in each box.

[SamEEE]

If it got better with oil on the bullets then check for carbon ring in chamber, I had trouble with that in the past. Real easy way to check is to drop a good quality (to dimension) cartridge into the chamber and it should just fall in and seat. I've also have had trouble with a sludged up magazine. Finally I managed to create a shitty gas-piston by over oiling so when the bolt cycled it was creating a bit of a gas seal slowing down the works.

I had similar problems described, and it was just a shitty chamber. Brass brushed (carefully) it out and sa'll good.

On lube: No grease on the bolt. I use a smudge of grease on the tips of the trigger plunger pins (non-sprung side), as it came from the factory. Splash of oil on the precision ground surfaces of the bolt, and bright worn points.
I probably use too much but doesn't seem to matter; I use bunker-busting CCI Standard.
Chur.

[Gwhite]

The first thing I suspected was a dirty chamber. We have 25 caliber rifle brushes bent at a right angle to ensure that the chambers are spotless, and that didn't help.



I'll have her give it a good cleaning and go easy on the oil this time. She's test fired it enough that it might need another cleaning anyway, and I want to start the next round of experiments from ground zero.

[Lukas90]

Check the firing pin spring. If broken or bent, it can protrude from the top of the bolt and slow down bolt movement.

[Gwhite]

Thanks! That's something specific to the GSP that hadn't occurred to me to check.

A guy in my club had a Pardini SP that suddenly wouldn't feed reliably. It shot just fine, but it turned out to be a broken firing pin. The busted off tip would occasionally stick out the bolt face & prevent the rim of a round from sliding up into place. It would do this primarily on the third round for some reason, so we were looking for magazine issues. Weird stuff happens...

[Alexander]

I shall ask in a German target shooters' forum on your behalf. Although the GSP is not seen so frequently today, it is still much used on the lower echelons.

One aside note though, preliminarily. As a coach, you will ensure that your shooters will use the best available ammo for the National Championships. That means not, repeat _NOT_ CCI SV, or Winchester T22, or in fact any (!!) US-made rimfire ammunition.

Alexander

[Gwhite]

Expensive European ammo doesn't mean a thing if it won't cycle the pistols reliably. We have RWS Target rifle, which some Benellis prefer. Not even our best shooters will notice the difference in "accuracy" (which we don't have time to test in a rest with over 40 firearms). We've won multiple National Championships with CCI, Winchester T22 and (some) RWS. We now shoot a lot of Aguila, and it is plenty accurate and quite reliable. The students compete with the same ammo they train with so there are no surprises. If we find a lot that is flaky, we reserve it for practice. That is a very rare event these days. What isn't rare is shipping damage. Bricks from the corners of cases are usually visibly damaged, so they are also marked for practice only. Even then, it's very unusual to have an issue.

To put it in perspective, a really good collegiate free pistol score is a 510. At that level, minor differences in ammunition are meaningless. Major differences in cost ARE an issue. We have more important places to spend our limited budget than overpriced ammo that will make NO difference down range.

[Alexander]

Gwhite: declaring so little knowledge about firearms and ammunition, you really should NOT endeavour to coach. Not beyond scouts level.

[john bickar]

Gwhite: declaring so little knowledge about firearms and ammunition, you really should NOT endeavour to coach. Not beyond scouts level.

No, he really should endeavor to coach.

Gwhite is doing something (actually, a hell of a lot) to keep the sport going in the US.

On the other hand, Alexander, you complain on the Internet. Stop acting like a jerk.

Keep it up, Gwhite.