I've had a P220 for over 10 years and put thousands of rounds through it without a single problem. Late last year, I finally find an original NICKEL P220. I knew they were out there but they are pretty hard to find, and I've been looking for a few years.
Anyway, the gun looked practically brand new, but was old enough that the night sites died, so I replaced them. I've probably put a few hundred rounds through it since I bought it, and it functioned like a Sig should, until today.
I should have known something was wrong when I had a failure to feed and jam. I cleared the jam, fired the gun, then it didn't extract the spent casing. By this time I figured something was wrong and resolved to check it out.
Dropped the mag and cleared the gun. Locked the slide back so I could take it apart, but the take down lever was incredibly stiff. I finally got it pointing downward and pulled off the slide with no problem. There doesn't appear to be any problem, except now the take down lever won't budge, and I hesitate to force it.
Soaking it in WD40 didn't do any good. It looks like I'll have to call Sig and send it back to the factory to figure out, who knows what that'll cost me. (The gun was manufactured in 1991 and I bought it used, so I can't imagine it would be under warranty.)
Here are a few items that may or may not be relevant to the situation, in case anyone else has seen this problem before:
1. I was shooting both American Eagle 230gr FMJ and Cor-Bon 165 +P HP loads. I wanted to compare the recoil between the two rounds. I shot one mag of AE, then one of Cor-Bons, then a mag with alternating rounds.
2. I was trying out this new recoil dampening spring thing I found at Numrich
here . I wasn't really looking for that, but I had to buy some grip washers and didn't want to pay $6.95 shipping on a $4 part. It looked interesting so I picked it up.
The slide functions fine but the take down lever just won't move. I just hope Sig can fix it because I know they don't make nickel guns anymore, and I really don't care for the stainless models.
Any ideas?