HK firing pin PITA

P

pdmoderator

New member
The firing pin on my USP .45 broke during dry-fire practice this morning.

AAAAAUGHHHH!!!!! I thought they'd had this problem fixed!

And HKPRO is semi-down so I can't even bitchundmoan about it there!

Anyone else here still having firing-pin breakage problems with HKs?

:mad: :eek: :mad: :eek: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :rolleyes:

- pdmoderator
 
I'm really curious; I've only had my USPc .45 for under a month. Is the firing pin breakage common in older/newer models - did it snap in two or what?

:(
 
Yep. I racked the slide and three little pieces of metal (firing pin retainer, about 50% of the pin, and a spring) fell out.

There are a lot of reports about people breaking USP firing pins by dry-firing. I thought HK had cured the problem, but either they haven't or I got an old firing pin.

I've been dry-firing probably an average of 50 cycles per day for a few months.

As Dr. Ruth the Schniper would say:
Are you usink a schnap cap? Alvays use a schnap cap!
Click to expand...
- pdmoderator
 
I dry fire without a schnapps cap. No problems so farrrr...

Did you try to contact HK?

If they are having problems with these things, it seems a combo of two problems:

1) First and foremost an improper heat treat of the pin. If it's treated in such a way to increase it's hardness, the toughness will suffer and thus pin becomes more brittle. If they lower the toughness you will have a softer but far less brittle pin. Seems like they are too brittle!

2) An overly forceful mainspring. From what I have heard the Match trigger upgrade uses the 12lb mainspring as opposed to the factory 14lb. I recently bought a 12lber from Wolff, will install it and test for reliable primer strikes, but still at 12lbs I doubt that would be an issue. Lighter the hammer strike, lighter the force on the pin or so I think...

Please post results of your dealings with HKs customer service should you go that route.
 
BTW, far as I know the firing pin breakages are pretty much limited to the full size. Could be wrong!
 
Nope. Haven't contacted HK. Did call the dealer and it'll be repaired under warranty.

The only problem may be getting the replacement firing pin from HK. We'll see how that goes.

Back when I was trying to special-order the USP (I wanted a var7), they always referred me back to the dealer. I learned that HK wasn't shipping the gun because they'd run out of mags because they'd stripped the mags out of the kits to fill a big police department order for spare mags. :rolleyes:

- pdmoderator
 
The firing pin problem in the H&Ks seems to me about as elusive as the Kb! problem in GLOCKs. People talk about them all the time, but rarely does anyone give a firsthand account of it happening.

The few firsthand reports of breakage (I've found four or five between TFL and HKpro.com) included three compacts (.45s ?) IIRC.

I wouldn't hesitate to send it to H&K. I've had excellent service form them the few times I've needed it.

What is the date code of your USP?

Shake
 
The HK USP 9 c at my range is out of service due to a broken firing pin. I really want to give this pistol another test fire. The only time I shot it I shot it better than my Glock 17.
 
I don't use snap caps and I have no problems with my USP9F and 40 in 11K+ rounds... And none of the other LE/civvie owners I know (FYI, HKs are more popular here than Glocks) had this problem even with the compacts...

I read only about a few firing pin breakages, and all reports came from US owners. IMHO it must be a bad batch, not a design problem...
 
No problem here. I've been dry-firing my USP9 regularly w/out a snap cap ever since I bought it last year. Mine is date-coded "KK". :D
 
You should see two letters on the left side of your USP (example KH) The letters correspond with numbers that indicate the last two digits of the year it was manufactured.

Date code works like this:

A B C D E F G H I K
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Thus KH=97 (manufacture date of 1997). Note that the letter "J" is skipped. . . don't ask me why.

Shake
 
50 times a day for a few months? That dosen't seem like a problem to me, that seems like being too cheap to buy snapcaps. Dryfirring is bad for any gun out there, if you had dryfired 100 times total that would be one thing, but you are talking 1500 times a month for a few months. I won't dryfire one of my pistols that many times in it's life without snapcaps.

Sounds like a guy we had in the range a few months back, was complaining that the barrel bushing on his kimber just broke, we had to cease fire and go get the pieces of his pistol that went down range. He was going on and on about how they are crap, then someone asked him how many times he fired it. "Oh hundred and twenty.... hundred and thirty thousand rounds."
 
great....

This may sound trivial, but I just spent so much time an research (shooting and whatnot) on which .45 to get and got an HK USP .45. I wanted a RELIABLE gun for the home and fun at the range. Should I sell this gun and go w/ my 2nd choice??? I know machines aren't perfect, but I at least want some customer support for my gun and available parts if something goes bad on the weapon. Man, I'm frustrated!!!!
 
Relax meat. Don't second guess yourself, you chose wisely, my friend.

HK's service is exceptional so in the very unlikely event that something does go wrong it will be fixed. They don't even care if you're the original owner or if you bothered to send in the registration card, they will fix it. And fix it fast.

And lets just suppose HK's suddenly service goes to shambles: well you call Fountain Firearms and they will get the firing pin to you probably the next day. Installation is a snap.

I dry fire (w/o snap caps) and shoot the snot out of my USP45 and wife's 45C with no problems, as do thousands of other users. I think it was very well stated above: HK's firing pin problem is like the kB problem in Glocks: well documented and discussed ad-nauseam, but hardly anyone has actually seen it happen. (but don't buy a Glock because they always blow up in your hand; happened to a friend of a friend's third cousin :D ).
 
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