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CZ 75 weak link?

5K views 20 replies 18 participants last post by  Henny  
#1 ·
I also love CZs.. especially the ergonomics of the CZ 75 pistol.

And CZ pistol (all steel version) is built like a tank. Indestructible!

But..all the pins and springs.. from what I hear on the net...those things seem fragile.

Since a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link... It makes me wonder if I should be carrying a Glock instead.


What are your thoughts?
 
#4 ·
Generally the 75B pistol, especially the more recently produced ones, will be fine for plenty of shooting. There are known parts breakages, or weak links, but you'd have to shoot a lot to see it.
The consensus is the slide stop and trigger return spring and firing pin spring are the most likely to break over time.
 
#8 ·
I'm not sure if it was Cajun or CZCustom but a few years ago when I was considering a high-end zooted out CZ from one of these two, I seem to recall it having had all the rollpins replaced with fitted solid pins.
 
#6 ·
I also love CZs.. especially the ergonomics of the CZ 75 pistol.

And CZ pistol (all steel version) is built like a tank. Indestructible!

But..all the pins and springs.. from what I hear on the net...those things seem fragile.

Since a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link... It makes me wonder if I should be carrying a Glock instead.

What are your thoughts?
All guns have spring breakages and small parts breakages. We certainly do tend to hear about it with the CZ 75 a lot more than other guns, though. I'm not a gun design expert, but thinking through it logically, one reason for that might be the popularity of this gun for competitive shooting, which tends to put a lot of rounds (and a lot of dry-fired hammer drops) on a firearm in a short period of time. I don't personally look at CZ 75's as particularly fragile handguns.

The only problem I ever had with a CZ 75 was an older, surplus pistol that I'd bought off Gunbroker. It was the last surplus gun I ever bought and I swore off police surplus after this incident, but I'll explain. Usually, when I buy police surplus handguns, I replace every spring in the gun as soon as I get it. I have experienced jams in the past, with worn-out CZs and other brands, due to worn-out springs. Replacing the recoil spring is not always enough. Sometimes you literally have to replace every last spring on the gun because it's just that worn out. I take it as a matter of course that police surplus will come with worn-out springs.

Anyway, with this particular CZ 75, I took it apart without issue, but when I went to put it back together, I sheared the head off a critical screw inside the frame. It's a vertically-oriented screw that retains the trigger bar lifter spring as well as the mag release. I honestly don't think I overtorqued it, either. I think it must have been damaged from when it was worked on before. Anyway, I enlisted a gunsmith's help but neither of us could get the stem out of the frame. The frame was completely ruined and useless. I ended up selling the slide and barrel on ebay as a "parts kit."

Over the years, I have sold a number of guns and bought others. I no longer own any CZ's. A part of me is leery about buying another CZ 75 because while the failure was clearly a result of damage, I think it could have been designed a little better. Why have a screw right there? I believe that the new "Omega" models have a different design for that part, so I would be inclined to try another CZ only if it was the Omega model.
 
#12 ·
Friend broke the lug on bottom of the barrel few years ago at a match in LA. he thought he has FTE and tried to rack the slide. Nothing happened so he tried it again before he figured out something broke. He cut a coupe pretty good grooves in his hand from the sight.
 
#13 ·
My last three new Glocks had to have new RSA before they would function reliably. A Glock I had owned less than one year required a new RSA. Each gun failed to completely return to battery.

My only CZ is a 75B that I converted to a 22 Kadet and left it that way. Can't have too many full size 22 pistols.
 
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#15 ·
In my experience the recoil springs wear out faster than others. But, they're cheap.

Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk
 
#16 ·
The recognized weak link is the slide stop. Competitors keep an extra one in their range bag just in case. The recoil spring and magazine springs in my CZ 85 are worn out but I've had it for 14 years and have put around 12,000 rounds through it. The factory slide stop on mine still works.
 
#18 ·
Henny...

How often do you change the firing pin retaining pins (how many rounds fired)?
I'm referring to the replacement pins you suggested.

I'm not mechanical....how did you figured out that these will work? We're the specs given by CZ? ( I'm glad you did. But I would like to know...for my own learning.)

Anyone else here use pins like the ones mentioned above?
 
#21 ·
I don’t remember how many rounds I fired before I changed it. I discovered it was getting chewed up when I did a detail cleaning after a rainy, muddy class.

it’s just a steel roll pin. I measured it with my calipers using millimeters, looked in McMaster Carr and ordered some. Perfect fit! The pin is holding up fine.

Admittedly, I don’t shoot my CZ as much anymore. I got older, and all of a sudden the front and rear sight became one.

Now I daily carry my G19.5 MOS w/ RMR. RMRs are a Godsend.
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#19 ·
from what I hear on the net...those things seem fragile.
There's your problem. I used to read every gun magazine and book I could get my hands on, took gunsmithing courses, etc. This was before the internet, when a person giving advice about guns had to at least have the qualifications to get somebody to publish his opinion. After about 7-8 years of that, I came to the conclusion that those guys didn't really know crap and they were just recycling the same BS over and over to make a buck, so I boxed up every gun magazine and everything that wasn't a technical gunsmithing book and dropped it off at my police department for everybody else to read.

Gun magazines were BS. The internet is BS x 1,000.