My issue is resolved, but in an unexpected way. After hooking the spring back into the Sear Bar and putting the grip panel back on, everything seemed fine. Dry fire resulted in perfect trigger reset. Off to the range on Saturday. Second shot and no trigger reset. I drop the mag, and rack the slide to remove the live round. I open the grip panel and the spring has come off the Sear Bar. So I re-attach the spring and screw on the grip panel. First shot is fine, but no trigger reset - darn it. I rack the slide, ejecting the unfired round, then fire the next round, and again the trigger fails to reset. I unload and make the R9 safe. Then take off grip panel and re-attach the spring, then re-attach grip panel. First dry fire is fine (because I racked the slide to make the gun safe) but now trigger does not reset for the second dry fire. Unscrew grip panel and the spring as detached from the Sear Bar - this after a simple fry fire. OK so it's it's off to Williams then.
At home on Saturday I remove the grips, which look fine. But remember that Eli sold me two other sets of grips. So I put the original seemingly brand new grips back on, with shiny brand new grip screws - this after once again re-attaching the spring to the back of the Sear Bar. The trigger now resets when I dry fire the R9. So maybe I just needed a new grip (see pic below with new grips installed - the old grips next to the R9). Back to the range on Sunday because there is no place in my town to take a pistol and squeeze off a few rounds. And I don't want to chance finding some woods and getting caught by the police, so I had to wait.
Sunday at the range the R-9 worked fine - but with the different (I think the original) grips back on. I much prefer the original grips because they are thinner, so besides concealing a bit better (the former grips bow out a little) the original grips also have a nice grippy texture which allows me to actually keep my ring finger on the R9 for almost all five shots. The other grips were slick and my ring finger would slide off after each shot. Not sure why, but the brand new original grips keep the spring in place - I fired 20 rounds with no trigger reset issues. I wonder if anyone here has had the same problem. Their grips 'wear out' and they experience trigger reset issues due to loose grips. I am thinking the inside of my right panel was ground down enough so that the spring was not being held into place on the back of the Sear trigger Bar.
First pic is after the Sunday range session. R9 next to my Tactical Supergrade and my 4 inch Colt King Cobra. Old, seemingly worn out R9 grip panels lying next to the R9.
Second pic is taken with the top slide removed, looking down into the grip. Note that you can see the Sear Trigger Bar. I show this because two years ago, I pulled a cleaning rag thru the magazine well in order to 'clean' it. What I did was knock off the spring which lead to me opening up the grip panel, with the ensuing 30 minute struggle/panic to get everything re-assembled without knowing how it should look.
