Alpha Foxtrot Romulus - FREE 2.5 lb trigger job!
Welcome back to Jim's Armory. This time Jim has the Romulus from Alpha Foxtrot, made right in Duluth, Georgia, on the bench after putting a few hundred rounds through it at the range. His goal for this video: see if he can lighten up the factory trigger pull without spending a dime on parts. What follows is a real-time look at how far a simple spring adjustment can take a budget 2011 - and where its limits are.
Safety First and Baseline Numbers Jim starts by showing the gun clear and confirming it's safe to work on. Before touching anything internally, he pulls the trigger five times with a trigger pull gauge to get a baseline: readings hover a little over three pounds each time, averaging just a tad over three pounds. His target for the session is to get that closer to two and a half pounds.
Getting Into the Sear Spring Jim removes the mainspring housing and catches the sear spring as it comes free, noting that it's typical for these to want to fly out.
Pro-Tip: Put a small kink or bend in the sear spring so it doesn't come flying out every time you disassemble the gun.
With the hammer strut flipped out of the way, Jim points out the disconnector and how it interacts with the trigger bow - pushed up, it engages the sear; pushed down, it doesn't. He walks through how the three-legged sear spring works: one leg rides on the grip safety and isn't very critical, the middle leg operates the disconnector and accounts for the first part of trigger travel, and the outside leg presses only on the right side of the sear, combining with the middle leg for the rest of the pull.
Comparing Springs and Bending for Weight For reference, Jim pulls a standard Colt low-power sear spring (originally from Wilson Combat) out of his parts bin. It looks similar in shape to the Romulus spring but with a different curvature. He tries relieving the factory spring's legs slightly, positioning his finger at small cuts in the spring and bending it back a bit, aiming for roughly the same gap he typically likes to see between the legs.
After a partial reassembly just to test function, the gauge reads about 2 lb 9 oz - a big drop from the original three-plus pounds, but Jim notes it might be a touch too light, and the reset feels very soft when he racks the slide, which concerns him.
Chasing a Better Reset Curious whether the Colt spring would give a firmer reset, Jim drops it in unadjusted. The trigger pull comes out gritty and heavier at 3.3 pounds, and the reset still isn't great, so he goes back to the factory spring rather than keep the Colt part in.
Back on the original spring, Jim bends the middle leg a bit more to firm things up. That adjustment lands him around 2.6 to 2.8 pounds across several pulls, averaging about 2 lb 7 oz - close to the 2.5-pound target he set out to hit. A function check confirms a solid reset this time.
Reassembly and Function Checks Putting the gun back together, Jim voices his frustration with what he calls a difficult guide rod design, along with some fiddly moments getting the grip safety and thumb safety seated - he notes he has to make sure the hammer is down when reinstalling the safety, a mistake he says he makes "every time."
Once reassembled, Jim runs through his standard function checks: confirming the first safety detent works, verifying the hammer and trigger engage properly when cocked, and testing that both the thumb safety and grip safety are functional. He specifically checks for weak sear engagement with the hammer, since insufficient spring tension there can lead to a gun firing unintentionally - and confirms this one feels solid with no issues.
Final Numbers With everything back together, Jim runs the trigger pull gauge one more time for a final average: readings come in at 2 lb 5.5 oz, 2 lb 4.9 oz, 2 lb 5.2 oz, and 2 lb 5.5 oz, landing at roughly 2 lb 5 oz overall - just under his 2.5-pound goal.
He does note the reset still has a bit of grit to it, which he attributes to parts needing polishing or honing, or potentially just needing a thousand rounds or so to wear in naturally.
Final Thoughts Jim considers the session a success: he took the Romulus from just over three pounds down to about 2 lb 5 oz using nothing but a bend in the factory sear spring - no parts purchased, no honing, no custom fitting. In his view, that speaks well of the gun's factory trigger to begin with, even with some minor grit left in the reset that he may address later by looking at the trigger shoe fit or other mating surfaces. Thanks for watching - subscribe and stay tuned, since Jim's always got another gun on the bench.
