Glock 19 gen.3 - night sights, 3.5lb connector

**Starfighter** · March 6th, 2014, 11:48 AM

Glock 19 gen.3 - Installed Trijicon night sights and Double Diamond 3.5lb connector

The ten second headlines:
**The Double Diamond 3.5lb connector (Lenny McGill's Glock Store/Amazon) vastly improved the feel. Dropped it in, no polishing. Easy.

**Trijicon triple green tritium sites GL01, Optics Planet. I have issues with the fit and installation for sure. They have not been sighted in yet, but I like the look both in light and dark. I appreciate the white rings for daylight use.

The 3.5lb DD connector is coated with something, an anti-friction agent. So I didn't feel the need to polish anything. Of course I cleaned and oiled everything (sparingly) while I had the gun apart.

My experience with the Trijicons is, the front sight fits very sloppy compared to the stock sight. Crazy amount of wiggle, where the Glock sight has none. Poor tolerances in production, sorry Trijicon. But as soon as I tightened it down (I used a nut driver I got online at Amazon) it holds fast. I also did the drop of Loctite like in the Humans4targets2/TC Armory video.

The rear fit was the opposite - waaay too tight. Anyone else have this problem?

**TIP -when you take your stock site out, use the little groove in the one side and fit a blunt, small flat edge for your punch. I didn't! I used a wooden chopstick, cut down. It worked well enough, but it marred the site a little.

The Trijicon rear went in about 15-20% of the way with hand pressure only. I wiggled it back and forth and up and down. I tried from both directions, just to see if it made a difference. It didn't. Then I put a smidge of Sil-Glyde in there to help. I adjusted the attitude on the way in, correcting for skew by tapping on a different axis, all that. Forget it. I had to bang that thing like a SOB. One thing I can say for Trijicon, the sights are built rugged and tough. I can't believe that H3 vial didn't break, because I was seriously hammering on that thing, using an old pocket knife as a punch. But it sucked. It shouldn't have been that difficult. Of course I had the vise padded with some packing I saved from a furniture box. Once in I had to adjust it back and forth a few times, and that was like pulling teeth as well.

Now this old Beretta pocketknife, gotta be 16 or more years I've had it. The blade has been sharpened so many times, it's fairly toast. But the knife body is made of a tough polymer and it worked well as a punch. I was able to concentrate the force at the base of the sight because of the knife's shape at one end. The TC Armory video specifies don't hit the sight near the top, you can destroy it.

I watched 2 videos on how to detail strip and both were helpful. The TC Armory guy says you don't need a hammer. But on another vid this guy had a whole punch set, a wooden support and everything. Maybe if I was wearing heavy gloves I could have removed the slide stop pin with just the Glock tool and pressure. But that tool handle is painful to press that hard, so I used a light hammer, simultaneously managing the Glock, the punch tool and working the slide stop over a plastic support that allowed room for the pin to pop. Came out after a little bit of trying. Also used a rag between the frame and the plastic to keep it from getting marred.

I think if I find the gun is not well sighted, I might pay my local armorer to sight it in. The rear site is that hard to move.

**625** · March 6th, 2014, 04:36 PM

Yea, that's normal to have a very tight fit for the rear sight. This is a good thing, but it does make the installation and windage adjustment challenging. Of course it varies from one design of rear sight to the next. My one set of XS sights was easy to install, but uses a LARGE set screw to hold it in place. I had to hammer the heck out of the Warren sights to get them centered and they use a tiny set screw. I used a large brass punch, and no I don't care that I left some brass marks on the sights. It's a Glock, not a pristine Colt Python or Registered Magnum. They do make a sight tool for this that makes it much easier to install and adjust many rear sights, but it's around $100 and I'd rather spend that on ammo or something else.

**Starfighter** · March 8th, 2014, 12:01 PM

Thanks for the info, that's helpful. After seeing TC Armory hammer his night sights in place with relative ease in his video, I thought for sure that the experience I had was a freak, atypical nightmare. I guess not.

Note that since posting I ID'd this sidearm as a Gen. 3 and edited to reflect. I found an excellent fame ID picture on handgunforum dot net with all GEN's lying on their sides, slides off, and also a YouTube vid by Iraqi veteran8888 with a very clear explanation of the differences.

**FH07** · March 8th, 2014, 12:50 PM

The rear sights on all three of my glocks were very tight as well. I had to beat the hell out of one of them to get it in place and centered. I used these nylon tipped punches for my glock's sights, so there was minimal marring on them.

http://www.dawsonprecision.com/Produ...B65-1388518125

I picked up a set of small files for the next time around so I can file down the base a very small amount at a time to get them to fit in more smoothly.

**Mity2** · March 8th, 2014, 01:02 PM

As for a front sight, did you use Loctite there?
My front sight on G22(TFO) was lose as well. Until I gave a drop of Loctite.
Its tight as all hell now.

**ray h** · March 8th, 2014, 01:15 PM

Originally Posted by FH07

The rear sights on all three of my glocks were very tight as well. I had to beat the hell out of one of them to get it in place and centered. I used these nylon tipped punches for my glock's sights, so there was minimal marring on them.

http://www.dawsonprecision.com/Produ...B65-1388518125

I picked up a set of small files for the next time around so I can file down the base a very small amount at a time to get them to fit in more smoothly.

I had to file the sight base down on the TruGlo I installed on my G26.
as others have said, my front site moves just a little bit back and forth. I did use locktite but it's not the threads that are moving, the whole thing is moving in the slide hole.

**dkf** · March 8th, 2014, 01:20 PM

Due to variances in slides/sights there is often a small amount of play in the front sight. A drop of blue loctite on the "oval" usually fixes it.

As for the tight rear sight that is also common and you don't want it as tight as they usually come. I always fit my rear sights and stone the dovetail in very small amounts until I get the fit where it should be. I also oil the dovetail to help seating. I use a hard plastic punch I made and hold the slide in a vice and tap it where it needs to go. The rear only moves when I want it too.

I think it was Dawson Precision that has a decent youtube video on sight installation.

**ray h** · March 8th, 2014, 01:24 PM

Originally Posted by dkf

Due to variances in slides/sights there is often a small amount of play in the front sight. A drop of blue loctite on the "oval" usually fixes it.

As for the tight rear sight that is also common and you don't want it as tight as they usually come. I always fit my rear sights and stone the dovetail in very small amounts until I get the fit where it should be. I also oil the dovetail to help seating. I use a hard plastic punch I made and hold the slide in a vice and tap it where it needs to go. The rear only moves when I want it too.

I think it was Dawson Precision that has a decent youtube video on sight installation.

I followed their video to the letter and the installation went very smooth.
I did locktite the front sight, I'm thinking it may just be bending slightly when I move it left or right, it's not enough to effect my shooting or the aim point, at least not at my skill level.

**Starfighter** · March 14th, 2014, 12:34 PM

Thanks people -this is all useful information. I did buy that punch kit, but of course I didn't want to WAIT for it to ship to do the job. I want my hamburger IMMEDIATELY goddamit, I'm American.

So what counts is, I stopped in the range yesterday and tried it out. Could go either way, I figured, but the story is, I lucked out. I started out with 4 small Shoot-N-C circular targets at about 10 ft. Immediately I could see this G19 was shooting straight, as I hit the core bulls easily, missing only one out of the first 4 I shot. (I was also using, for the first time, safety glasses with built in 1.5 magnifiers from Optics Planet. Not bad.) I shot at the circles some more and started to put slugs thru existing holes with only a small perceptible difference.

Once I saw how well the new sights were aligned, I challenged myself a bit more. I carefully removed the outer "frame" sticker from around where the Shoot 'n C circles were. I'm talking about the throwaway part that's left after you use the actual targets. This cutout that frames the circle targets has small, quarter sized holes. I removed it without ripping and pasted it to the cardboard along with the actual targets. At about 10ft I was able to hit inside each of the small 4 holes in each corner with 4 rounds.

After that I went farther out (maybe 25ft) and shot the rest of the box. Accuracy was great. The stars did align (I mean the sights) for me for this project. I just happened to get it right the first time.

As far as that front site is concerned, I did use Loctite, but it's the movement before I even tried to fasten it that I refer to. The stock front site pops in very snug. While the screw holds it secure, the fit doesn't leave room for error when you place it.

The Trijicon fit was so sloppy without the screw that I had to use my own judgment as to which position was "straight". There was significant L/R and fwd/back play. I tried sliding it fwd and back, thinking that one or the other would lock the L/R axis and take the guesswork out. Nah. Between the threadlocker and the set screw of course it's tight now, but I had to eye it up before tightening which in my opinion is BS. Trijicon states proudly on their packaging "each site custom machined for each application" or something to that effect. Ya' think?

The safety glasses with built in magnifiers are pretty good, but the magnifier "windows" are near the bottom of the clear lens, which means I have to raise my head to see the sights clearly. Not immediately comfortable or intuitive, but they're great for doing work like sighting the gun. I needed to see the sights clearly and I can take as long as I want to setup the shot.

Of course the reason I upgraded the sites in the first place is so I can put rounds where I want - fast. By the end of my time at the range I was shooting the way I normally do, which is lay the pistol on its side, pick it up and shoot it as fast as I safely can. And just repeat that drill, remembering to incorporate double taps. (After all this is a nine now, not a .45. The stopping power is radically different, and I DON'T know that from experience.)

I didn't try it left handed yesterday, but I do that too. And when shooting one-handed I always stand sideways. It just seems smarter to also practice being a smaller target.

**625** · March 14th, 2014, 01:14 PM

Good to hear things worked out for you. From my limited experience, it seems if you get the new sight as close to center as you can, visually, you'll be pretty close. The last set of sights I installed were just SLIGHTLY off to the left. Sure enough, it shot slightly off to the left.

I have to make a correction too. My XS sight has two small set screws, not one large one. Completely misremembered that.