P38 Safety Question

[Kaiser715]

Hi all I recently acquired an AC41 off a member here and finally got around to trying to fix the safety so it would stay in the fire position under recoil. I quickly realized the safety lever detent spring had broke off inside, not wanting to try and source a wartime safety assembly I found a cheap P1 assembly and was wondering has anyone ever taken the detent and spring out of one of these? If so please share some tips as I’m wanting to get this back to functional. Note that I am not trying to make the decocker functional again only trying to keep the safety held in where it’s supposed to.

 

[bigwagon]

Looks like you would need to uncrimp/recrimp it to retain the spring. I'd probably try to fit the complete P1 safety to use for shooting it and keep the original with the gun.

 

[biggymu]

Since there is no practical way of repairing the original safety, you could have a machinist open the spring hole from the opposite side, thread it for an Allen plug. replace the spring, plug it and grind the plug flush.Just a Hail Mary

 

[Kaiser715]

Since there is no practical way of repairing the original safety, you could have a machinist open the spring hole from the opposite side, thread it for an Allen plug. replace the spring, plug it and grind the plug flush.Just a Hail Mary

Went ahead and tapped the original detent out along with the replacement from the p1 safety. Got it in and peened it, works great now hopefully this helps anyone else who happens to have the same issue the original’s spring was completely collapsed in on itself.

 

[Kaiser715]

Looks like you would need to uncrimp/recrimp it to retain the spring. I'd probably try to fit the complete P1 safety to use for shooting it and keep the original with the gun.

You can’t fit a p1 safety to a wartime slide even with a p1 firing pin installed the tolerances are different and it won’t work. I went ahead and managed to swap the detent and spring from the p1 over to the p38 safety works great now

 

[biggymu]

Went ahead and tapped the original detent out along with the replacement from the p1 safety. Got it in and peened it, works great now hopefully this helps anyone else who happens to have the same issue the original’s spring was completely collapsed in on itself.

Very cool. And as long as it’s installed and under pressure, there should never be much pressure on the area peened. Thanks for the tip!

 

[Kaiser715]

Very cool. And as long as it’s installed and under pressure, there should never be much pressure on the area peened. Thanks for the tip!

Yep wasnt too hard either used padded vice jaws with a small pin to compress the detent down under tension then proceed to peen the edges and afterwards carefully take off any raised edges that would interfere with decocking