Ask ECR

[johnny]

 Eric,
 Vintage recording equipment?What did you purchase?

[ECR]

Hi Eric,
 The accounts posted about hammer struts prompted me to disassemble my R9 and inspect the strut.
Looking at the strut with a eye for stress riser points the area that is relieved to clear the hammer pivot pin looks to be the failure point..Did the 5000+ round count R9 get to the number with the original strut?
 What was the material used on the struts?

Mich

Yes, it did Mich. The hammer struts were made out of 17-4ph stainless steel. There was a batch that were heat treated and they just put them in an oven all together in a relative pile. The few that have come back broken, of which there may have been only about 7 to 10 R9s in total, had a heat treat that was higher on the Rockwell scale than they should have been. We were asking for them to be around 40-42 and the broken ones were up around 47-49. At that point, 17-4 becomes more brittle and subject to failure. Thank goodness it seemed to have been held to just one batch of about 500 pieces. With only 7 to 10 coming back out of around 7,000 or so guns, I'd say we are OK overall on those. If it's mechanical, it will break. . . . Keeping that to a minimum is what every manufacturer wants to do to remain competitive and profitable and hold the public's trust.  ;-)

Eric R.

[MICHPATRIOT]

Thanks Eric I cannot believe the wealth of information, appreciate it a lot.

Mich

[tracker]

Eric,
Just curious, but was this steel type and hammer strut heat treatment concurrent with the few hardened slides that cracked or was that a different time frame and issue?

[ECR]

It was different time frames and even different heat treat companies. The slide issue was earlier and was a problem for us where we actually had to scrap a few hundred slides, which was quite costly as you can imagine. Then we changed companies and the new company went just over the specification we set for them one time on the hammer strut heat treatment, but was rectified on the next immediate batch. Not all broke by the way, but just a handful, which brought it to our attention and the problem was remedied immediately.

Eric R.

[tracker]

Thanks, Eric.

[guncats]

Hi Eric, can you shed some light on the life expectancy of R9 firing pins? Thanks.

[ECR]

Hi Eric, can you shed some light on the life expectancy of R9 firing pins? Thanks.

If you use snap caps when you dry fire the thing, it should outlast you. lol. Dry firing is not a friendly procedure for your R9 pistol!

[CaptBW]

Good to know. Thanks.

[ECR]

Eric,
 Vintage recording equipment?What did you purchase?

Otari "Half-Track" Reel to Reel Mastering deck, Teac A-3440 4 Track Reel to Reel, Tascam 512 & 520 Mixing consoles, Yamaha Rack Mount Professional Stereo Power Amplifier w/ Meters, Echoplex, Multivox MX-312 Echo (Pink Floyd).

Now to release the thread highjacker in me. . . . . lol

[tracker]

You must have very little hearing loss to enjoy that set-up.

[ECR]

My ears work fine tracker. . . . . My brain has malfunctioned though!  lol

[tracker]

You could have fooled me. There is nothing wrong with your recall capability.

[ECR]

LOL