Thanks for purchasing our 10/22 Trigger, or Trigger Kit! We are working an a video to walk through the installation process, but until that time, this is the best we've got. If you just bought the trigger, this page is all you need. If you bought our entire trigger kit, you'll want to read through this page, then read through the Trigger Kit Install page. At that point you'll have a good idea where you're going, and you can come back to this page and fit the trigger.
-Step 1, Fit the Trigger
Standard width triggers
The upper portion of the trigger 99% of the time, is too wide to fit in the trigger housing smoothly. That's good, that means you can fit every trigger to your trigger housing, getting the best possible fit without any shims or other gimmicks. Basically the upper portion of the trigger (not the trigger blade) will need to be narrowed up until it drops into the trigger housing, and can be rotated through it's entire range of motion without even the SLIGHTEST resistance. Trust me, it's better that the trigger is too loose in the housing rather than too tight.
There are a couple of ways that you can fit the trigger, but the picture below shows how we would recommend doing it. You put a piece of sandpaper (220 grit is perfect) on something flat and hold the side of the trigger against it, pressing down fairly hard to ensure that it sits flat against the sandpaper. Work it back and forth with the trigger blade hanging off the sandpaper, so that if something slips you won't cut into the coating on the trigger blade, which would obviously be visible when assembled.
You can also carefully cut away material with a file if you want, but we actually use a belt sander set vertically. You can look straight down the sanding belt and watch the gap between the trigger blade and the sanding belt to ensure that you don't cut into the trigger blade. You want to remove all of the coating, as in the picture below, as a first step. Once you've removed all the coating on both sides, check the fit and continue if needed. Again, you should be able to drop in the trigger and hear it 'clink' when it hits the bottom without any resistance. You can then put in the trigger pin and let it rotate through it's range of motion, without sticking at all.
Full Width Trigger Fitting
The full width trigger is certainly more time consuming to install, although it's also not difficult. The full width trigger doesn't have an upper and blade portion, the entire trigger is the same width as the standard width upper portion. This means that rather than narrowing the trigger (which would be visible once installed), we need to open up the trigger housing.
The 10/22 trigger housing as 'lips' at the opening into the trigger guard area. These lips will need to be removed. One lip is just visible lit up down at the bottom of the trigger housing in the picture below.
We use a cheap mill-bastard file to remove these lips. Whatever the standard Nicholson file that you can find at your local hardware store will work great, but you're looking for a file about an inch wide. We snap off the non-serrated tip of the file, then grind off all the edges and corners so that it won't mar the inside of the trigger guard.
File down the lips until they are flush with the inside of the trigger housing, then check the fit of the trigger. Again, it should drop all the way in until the trigger blade hits the trigger guard without resistance. You may very well have to remove some of the inside of the trigger housing as well, since it appears that most trigger housings taper a little internally. When finished, the trigger should drop in freely, move freely through it's range of motion, and look something like this.
It's hard to tell in this picture, but there is a bur left on the inside of the trigger guard. This will pretty much only be on the polymer trigger housings; the metal ones will be harder to file, but there is no bur. We usually cut off that bur with a sharp box cutter, or a de-buring tool if you have one.
And that's it! Assuming the trigger moves freely when dropped in, it will also move freely when fully assembled. You can polish the plunger if you like, although that doesn't seem to make a huge difference. What does help is putting a relatively large amount of grease in the plunger hole when reassembling.
-Step 2, Finished!
If you just bought the trigger, you're all done! Put the rest of the gun together and go shooting! If you bought the whole trigger kit, you'll need to move on to the trigger kit installation page, which you can find here.