The only thing I don’t like about my Colt AR15A4 is the Safety. It is wobbly. On the other hand my Sig M400 has a very tactile, firm and positive click when switching between safe and fire.
Is there anyway I can get the safety on my colt to have a positive firm click like my SIG???
I have the same issue. The safety on my BCM lower is perfect. Very positive click, but then travels very smoothly and easily between fire and safe. My other lower’s safety is very mushy. It would be a very inexpensive fix to install the same safety used in my BCM, but unfortunately I don’t know who makes it. BCM sells a few different safeties but I don’t know which one they use on their lowers. Or used about 4 years ago.
First thing I would try is a different safety spring and see if that solves the issue. If that doesn’t work, cutting a few coils off of the extra spring and dropping it into the spring hole in the grip to add extra pressure/tension, should make the click more positive.
My factory DD has a perfect crisp, almost sexy click to it. The aero lower i built has more of a rasp-rough feel, but it does go click.
That clickiness is a function of the detent riding along the track in the safety to find it’s recess, pushed up by the spring.
If it never was clicky, I’d say the safety recess is oversized/ sloppy.
Detents are pretty standard, and if the spring was worn out it would be a degenerative problem.
Are you ****ing serious?
I think it is more or less your luck of the draw. I have had factory ones that clicked solidly and B.A.D. ones that felt like the plunger was made of wood and the other way around. The ones that clicked were harder to move than the mushy ones. I have a new AXTS Talon I have been meaning to do a review of. The detent snaps into place but it is not difficult to move out of it. I am almost willing to bet all of them are not this good.
Yes, actually. And it has been something that others have offered as a possibility. In my experience the lack of clickiness you get with some usually falls to the grip and how deep the hole in it is drilled for the spring, unless the spring is short or worn, which can be the cause. Have taken grips off of lowers that had a positive click, and replaced them with other grips to get a less than positive click. Short of sending grips back to the company and hoping the next one doesn’t cause the issue, adding something that adds length to the spring is the only thing I have found, if you wish to stay with that grip(Not send it back hoping the hole is not as deep, and swapping springs doesn’t help.
This of course if having a super positive click is something you must have. Unless the safety is causing issues one way or the other, I generally don’t worry too much about it since I have rifles range from sharp and positive to being less stiff, but still locking into place. If it is loose to the point of being a concern then I will start screwing with it.
A stiffer spring will do that, although for some hand sizes, this makes left-hand operation without an ambidextrous safety catch something that has to be specifically drilled. I’ve inadvertently made stiffer ones being lazy about installing pistol grips, and I can understand why a more positive feel might be preferred if you’re running a lot of dry fire stuff - but running drills with ammo on a range makes it hard to remember how important this is as long as the safety is staying securely in place.
It’s certainly possible to either stretch the spring or put a spacer on that spring inside the grip, but as long as the safety keeps itself in the right spot, I wouldn’t worry about i at all.
On one of my DD rifles I had a mushy selector and when I upgraded my grip and my safety selector to a Battle Arms Development ambi selector the mush went away. I also changed out the detent and spring. What I noticed was the OEM DD spring was smaller and not as stiff as the spring BAD sent with their selectors. The “mushy” selector is an easy fix and I too prefer a positive audible click.
I wouldn’t recommend cutting any springs. I have fixed this issue by changing detents. Try a KNS detent. It’s what Battlearms Development uses in their AmbiSafties. If that doesn’t help replace the selector.
+1 on the KNS detents. For $1.50 you can’t go wrong. Just buy a bunch, you’ll use them someday. I’d also install another spring since you’re going to have it apart anyway. I had one rifle with a poorly machined selector. It wasn’t that it was mushy but that it was harder than normal to rotate. BAD CASS took care of that.
I’d also like to add that some grips have safety spring holes that are improperly drilled…
I think variations in the grip spring holes are the cause of most mushy safties. Mine was rather weak to the point I was concerned it could be moved inadvertently. I just cut a new spring from some stock with wire that was a few thousanths thicker and a couple coils longer. Safety now has a positive click to it like it should have. I’m thinking there must be a bit of variations
with the spring holes in the grips.
I think the old style safeties with the small tab had much more positive feels. I have a box of assorted safeties made by Colt, DD, LMT, Stag, RR etc. that I have swapped around and played with and it seems like across the board the older ones have more positive clicks. All of the large tab Colts I have are mushy.
I put a healthy dab of grease either in the detent hole, or the selector channel, depending on whether or not the rifle is assembled when I’m messing with it… it makes the selector feel fantastic.
Yes indeed.
The previous talk about clipping springs (specifically about taking a piece off of an extra spring) was about filling the void with something of similar diameter to decrease the depth of the hole (and increase the tactile click of the selector).
One of my friends used a piece of shot in the bottom of his grip to achieve this.
B.A.D.A.S.S. http://www.battlearmsdevelopment.com/products/safety-selectors
Really excellent.
The snappy positive click that we all enjoy is extraordinarily loud in the quiet hours of the night if you keep your gun in condition 1. It’s almost impossible to switch to fire without making a relatively large amount of noise. (I’ve tried this)
Nice and slow 
It would be interesting to see an update on this after OP troubleshoots.
My money is on overdrilled, out of spec detent recess in the safety itself.
I think it’s less likely to be undersized detent or short spring.
I had not considered out of spec grip until somebody mentioned it- I use standard A2 grips and MIADs only, and I guess those are GTG in that area.