22/45 Fan said:
Probably not. For the same ammunition, too light a spring will beat the gun to death from slide impact. Too heavy a spring will reduce reliability and cause extraction and feed failures. If you want less recoil, use lighter loads and then a lighter spring is useful.
This exactly - for a target pistol it's fine to change to a heavier recoil spring and doing so does tend to reduce the felt recoil some by slowing down the slide timing. However, a target pistol doesn't get you killed if it jams...
Extraction and feeding are both affected by slide timing, and changing the spring changes the timing. The really dangerous part in a defensive weapon is that the gun may still seem to function well when you are calmly slow-firing at the practice range with a good hold, etc. but then malfunction under the rigors of a real defensive situation. At the extremes POI can also be affected by the recoil spring.
For a critical application one has to assume that the gun designer took all of the factors into consideration and chose spring weights appropriately (something that recent experience has me questioning). Still, one should only change something as crucial as the recoil spring on a defensive weapon if one is prepared to test the bejabbers out of the gun under bad conditions...something that many folks don't have the means or opportunity to do.
Of course, recoil springs are easily changed so one could go to a heavier recoil spring for range sessions but install the factory spring for carry...this might be the best solution for many folks. Even if one does this, though, one should shoot their defensive ammo using the stock spring enough to be satisfied that it is working well.
John