Light strike theory: opinions?

[Tzadik]

I have a S&W PPK/s in .380 I bought this past November.

I immediately had problems with light primer hits and failures to chamber.
Since then it's been back to Houlton twice and although the failures
to chamber have seemed to work themsleves out, I still have problems with the occasional light hit.

The last time it went to Houlton they replaced the slide. It hasn't seemed to help.

I just took it completely down and noticed that there is incedible slop in the hammer block internal safety. Is this suposed to have a lot of slop, and could this be twisting enough to interfere with the hammer in it's normal function causing the light strikes?

[Dhk]

I used to have a lot of problems with failure to fire on my S&W PPK 32.cal. I was ready to sell the gun, but I decided to give it one last chance, and change the firing pin to see if it had any effect.

This did the trick for me. The gun has performed with no FTF after I changed the firing pin. One thing though: My new firing pin was from a german PPK not at S&W produced PPK.

There are som minor differences between the firing pins from these two manufacturers. The S&W made pin is narrower at the front than the german made (S&W pin tapers at the front, while the german is more rounded at the front). The german firing pin is also just a tad shorter than the S&W firing pin (at the end that sticks out and is struck by the hammer).

I am no engineer but my theory is that the hammer hit the longer S&W firing pin earlier because it was portruding farther out at the back, and the hammer might not have worked out enough velocity at this point to strike the pin hard enough. Also the german pin makes a considerably larger impact mark on the shell casings than the S&W pin, due to it's larger front.