Ye Olde Glock Refresh Project
After a decade rocking a bone stock third generation Glock 19– finger grooves and all– I thought it was time to give the gun a little upgrade.
As covered in previous articles the Gen 3 G19 is probably one of the most popular compact(ish) 9mm pistols ever made and I’ve been carrying the same one off and on since at least 2012.
Sure, sure, the pistol had been released as far back as 1998 and I was late to the party, but I still got in the door during the model’s heyday. Although surpassed generationally by the Gen4 and Gen5 variants, the Gen3 remains in production likely due to a combination of the fact that it is still on California’s roster and folks just dig it. After all, it is “old reliable” in the 9 milly game– akin to a Toyota Tundra– with about the worst thing people can say about the Glock compact it is that it is boring or that it carries a lackluster trigger and sights.
About that.
I recently decided the time was right to refresh my old Gen3 G19 as it had passed its (still very young) 15K mark. This meant a teardown and swap out of all the small springs (firing pin spring, extractor depressor spring, mag catch spring, trigger spring, slide lock spring, and slide stop lever spring) just to be sure it would keep going bang for at least another 15K. This was the next level up from my normal post-range cleaning and swapping out a new recoil spring every 3K rounds or so. For the record, I always just went with the same old OEM Glock parts.
Then I thought to myself, how about some new sights, and maybe a barrel, and maybe a trigger…
The differences are subtle to the overall aesthetics, but ring true when you start her up
More in my column at Guns.com.
