Opinion Requested of Malfunctioning Safety on CE Grade

[PhillyFoxB]

I'm in the process of acquiring a 20 gauge CE Grade with 28 inch barrels, straight hand stock and splinter foreend. It handles great and would make a great upland bird gun. The only problem is the forward trigger can be pulled to fire the gun when the safety is in the on position. The rear trigger is very close to being able to fire. The safety engages very positively when moved fore and aft as on my other Foxes. Given my intended purpose for the gun, it would need to be repaired. Before I seek repares, I was wondering if anyone knows what the problem is and how complicated a fix this would be? Thanks.

[Researcher]

Does pulling the trigger move the safety slide foreward? If that is the case, the likely cause is that over the years the sears took a bit of a set upwards, and the triggers could no longer be pulled far enough to fire the gun. Some unknowing gun mechanic then ground some material off the front of the trigger blade so the triggers could move farther and fire the gun. That reduced the bearing area on top of the blade that engages the block sticking down from the safety slide. The blade can now slip up behind that block and move the safety slide foreward when the trigger is pulled. The correct fix would have been to heat up and bend the tails of the sears down a bit and then reharden the sears.

[PhillyFoxB]

That is exactly what happens. When pulling the trigger, the safety moves slightly forward and then the hammer drops. Thanks for the detailed explanation.