I have looked at my P3-AT's and have assembled them with out the springs and with only one spring. I can not see why there would be the raised lip evenly around the slide. Is the smaller spring too long and being used as a slide stop? And thats why it will come out the end? Whar about making a slide buffer to cushion the slide to frame impact, has anyone looked at that? Why couldn't the slide end be hardend more? Just thoughts????
how about: why is the hole on MOST slides drilled with a tappered bottom? wouldn't that wedge the inner spring through the clearance? Why not make the bottom flat, and while at it, add a lip so that the outer spring is held in place and doesn't put any side force on the inner? Why won't Smalley make a 1/4" OD flat wire spring? Now to discuss your questions to see if the springs are going solid, Put slide on frame without barrel and springs. look between grip and slide and notice daylight pull the slide back near full recoil and notice the gap between the end os the slide and frame goes metal to metal at full recoil. Now assemble with spring being tested, pull back and see if there is any gap when all the way back. becarefull not to pull to hard and cause the spring to jump a coil once it goes solid. some time back i posted the spring dimensions which included solid lenght. If i recall the outer is longer than inner. And for mine with a 0.045" thick flat bottomed, my springs went solid before slide hit the frame by a couple hundredth. with the nylon washer it went solid by a couple more hundreths and resulted in outer spring jumping a coil when fired. Are you aware of the nylon washers?
