Reworking the Beretta U22 Neos Trigger

In the March 2004 issue, Technical Editor Chick Blood described the Beretta U22 Neos as a "space he ro’s ray gun." Being from a different generation, I don’t know much about Chick’s radio-show heroes of the past like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon; I fall into the Star Wars and Alien era of the big screen where colorful lasers drop storm troopers with one shot or blow nasty space monsters to chunky, acidic bits. Nevertheless, when I got a firsthand look at a Neos, I could appreciate Chick’s description.

It all started with a distant signal from a star system far, far away, on a planet fraught with terror and lawlessness…. All right, all right. So the signal was a phone call and it came from the next town here in the moderately quiet Midwest. The caller was a local gunshop I do work for. The shop owner said he had a customer with a Beretta Neos who wanted to know if I could do something to alleviate the gritty, lengthy, and heavy pull, and get it down to a smooth 3-1/2 pounds or so.

I’m sure he mentioned that it was a "Neos," but that didn’t jog my brain; all I heard was "Beretta" and figured it was a basic semi-auto. I told him I would take a look at it and do what I could.

Of course, when I picked up the gun and opened the box, my first thought was: "What the heck is this thing?" Inspection and Dissection Naturally, the first thing I do when receiving a gun for trigger work is to try it out and see if it’s as bad as the owner describes it. (To improve a trigger, you need to have a clear idea of what you’re starting with.) Having made sure that the gun was unloaded, I tried a few dry fires. The owner was not exaggerating; this trigger had a truly awful feel.

It creeped a country mile, was exceedingly rough feeling, and felt downright heavy. I put some weights on it and it broke in the 6-pound range. I started by scanning my back issues of American Gunsmith to find Chick’s takedown instructions. Following all the standard precautions and instructions, I removed the barrel, slide, firing pin, and the associated springs. I got down to a serious investigation of what makes this thing tick.

It’s really a basic design: Squeeze the trigger and the trigger rotates and pulls the trigger bar; the bar pushes against the sear, which rotates toward the shooter while pushing against the firing pin; the sear eventually drops clear, and the firing pin is sent forward by the firing-pin spring to strike the chambered round. Simple enough, right? It was obvious that the cause of the heavy pull came from the sear pushing against the firing pin and its spring.

I checked the usual sources for a spring kit and came up dry. That’s usually a good place to start for improving performance, but in this case I had no choice but to use what was there. I started out by polishing the firing pin. With a very fine polishing compound, I put a mirror shine on the high flat behind the notch. This was done to eliminate some of the creep and drag as the sear pushes its way past. The notch itself was polished in the same manner.

The next course of action was to get at the sear and its related parts. That’s easy, right? Just use the proper bit to remove the screw from the firing-pin guide, and all will be exposed for enhancement. Wrong. The screw wouldn’t budge. (Apparently, I missed the part in Chick’s article

The spring on the right is for a Ruger MK II and was used in place of the factory spring to lighten the trigger pull. The large plunger on the left is the sear plunger, while the one on the right is the safety plunger that slides into the sear plunger. where he said the screw was put in with red Loctite.) Acting on the side of caution, I decided to leave the screw alone rather than risk damaging it or possibly damaging the grip in a vise. At least I could get to the sear.

Using the appropriate punch, I removed the pin that held it in. All sides of the sear that had contact with another part were polished to a high shine. The face and sides around the pinhole were my main points of focus. At this point, I reassembled the gun and tried the trigger. There was a difference but it was along way from 3-1/2 pounds. After some thought, I put a radius on the sear as shown by the arrow in the photo at the top of the page. This helped quite a bit, but the trigger still had some creep.

So… back to the firing pin. I polished the notch some more and changed it a little so it wasn’t as straight but angled back a bit. With this done, I applied Microlon Gun Juice (available from Brownells) to all the contacting parts. This worked to all but eliminate the creep and the roughness, but I could still only get the pull down to about 4-1/2 pounds. I knew it could be better, but without being able to get the guide screw out I could do no more.

I called the gunshop to let them know that the customer had a safe and reliable gun. Flash Forward A couple of weeks after returning the Neos, I walked into the same gunshop and observed two guys looking at and asking questions about some .22s. One mentioned that he had a Beretta Neos. I looked at his work ID and recognized the name. I asked him about his Neos, and what he thought of the trigger. He said he loved the gun and had a gunsmith do some work on the trigger but that it didn’t help much.

The employee behind the counter quickly told him that it was me who had done the work. Darn, game over. We got to talking about the gun and the safety issues. He told me he had instructions from a website on how to do a trigger job on the Neos. He also mentioned that he didn’t like the front sight and wanted to know if something could be done with a fiber-optic sight. We hashed over some sight ideas, and I agreed to look at the gun again and his printout from the website.

All is not good in Cyberland, I thought when the gun was returned to me. I read the website’s instructions and looked at the photos. Yikes! Most of it was basic stuff that I had already performed, but, when it came to the sear spring, things got scary. The website’s instructions called for cutting off a certain amount of coils, replacing the original spring with a Colt Series-80 spring or a spring from a specific brand of disposable lighter. This left me with a cold feeling.

This sounded really dangerous to me, but a guy from the website said he had put thousands of rounds through his Neos with a 1-1/2-pound trigger with no problems. That’s good for him, but not for me. I hadn’t seen a Series-80 spring for awhile, but from the picture it looked like it was only about half the length of the factory Beretta spring. Not gonna do it. Trigger Job Two After disassembling the gun again, I noticed that the slot on the guide screw was messed up.

The owner had tried to remove it since I last saw the gun, butchered up the slot,

and now I couldn’t get a bit to stay in it. I let him know that the only way to remove it was to drill it out. He said to do whatever it takes to get a 3-1/2-pound trigger. (The printout said that the screw was easily replaceable with an M3 6mm.) I put the grip in a vise on the drill press, chucked up a number 1 center drill, and drilled into the middle of the slot till the tip was no longer visible.

I stepped up to a number 2 center drill, and when it was about halfway in, the screw head popped off and the trigger bar flipped the guide up. The only thing remaining was the screw shank in the hole. After some effort, the receiver separated from the grip and, using a pair of locking pliers, I twisted out the remaining part of the screw in the grip. A quick trip to the hardware store produced a 6mm Phillips-head screw of the appropriate length.

With the guide out of the way, I was able to get to the rest of the parts. The first thing to look at was the sear spring. It fits in the safety plunger, which slides into the sear plunger. Both, obviously, are vital to a safe firearm. (I now seriously doubted the safety of guns modified according to the printout from the website.) I went through my stash and came across some Wolff springs for a Ruger MK II. The firing-pin spring fit perfectly in the safety plunger, and was about one coil longer than the Beretta.

I polished the plunger inside and out, along with the guide where the sear is pinned in place and the end of the trigger bar that pushes against the sear. The next step was to reassemble the gun and try it out. I cocked the gun and squeezed the trigger. My efforts had paid off nicely this time. The trigger broke at just under 4 pounds. I disassembled everything again and put several coats of Gun Juice on all the parts that I had just polished and some extra on the others.

When I was satisfied that I had applied enough, everything was oiled and reassembled. I tried the trigger again—3-1/2 pounds—right on the money! I called the owner to tell him he had a 3-1/2-pound trigger and to explain some ideas I had for a fiber-optic front sight. We settled on milling the plastic blade down so it was flush with the barrel rib and then tapping it. He delivered a Hiviz Compsight for shotguns that seemed like it would work well without being too large.

I milled the blade down and drilled and tapped it for the 3-56 screw that came with the sight. This turned out to be a nice addition to the Neos. To Infinity and Beyond Our story ends with a very satisfied customer, with me having gained some knowledge about another type of gun, and with these parting words: The Neos is a unique pistol in more than one way. The lack of a decent trigger pull and front sight most likely have to do with production costs.

With some improvements to both, this intergalactic warrior can provide the satisfaction that will make any space cowboy happy to own one. And incidentally, while I’m thinking about it, there was an article in AG about Microlon Gun Juice in the March 2000 issue that prompted me to try some. Since then, I’ve used it many times on firearms and reloading dies. This dry lubricant works as advertised.

Barrel cleaning is much easier and faster after using Gun Juice, and I’ve had it reduce trigger pulls by 1/4 to 3/4 pound. ■