I'm not shooting high velocity hot self defense loads in my pistols. If you shoot a lot of hot rounds then the springs may weaken a little sooner than if you were shooting light loads. I don't know.
It would probably be hard to notice a difference in spring life. But your hand might notice a difference.
What wears the spring is how close to it's design limit (called its elastic limit) the spring gets as the slide compresses the spring with each round fired. Its the same with magazine springs.
The difference? The recoil spring cycles fully with each round, while the magazine cycles fully only when the magazine is fully loaded; each shot fired takes a bit of the load off the spring. If you only filled the mags with 5 rounds or 10 rounds rather than 15, 17, or more rounds, you might never have to replace a magazine spring.
It's that deep compression over time that wears out recoil and magazine springs. Leave the slide locked open for a long period, and it's like shooting a lot of rounds.
Ditto leaving a magazine loaded. Cycle the mag a lot of times, and it'll get weaker, too, but the cause is the same -- the number of times and/or the length of time the spring is held near its designed function limit can degrade the spring material. Fully loaded, a magazine spring is working.
Some magazine designs don't compress the mag springs completely, so they tend to have a longer life. But most high-cap mags tend to compress the springs more completely than standard capacity mags.
- That's why Wolff Springs recommends downloading a high-capacity mag by a round or so if you're loading mags for long-term storage.
Not fully loading a high-cap mag for range use will also lengthen magazine spring life -- because it won't be pushing the spring to near it's design limit when you load fewer rounds.
With recoil springs you don't have that option.
Note: over the years I shot a lot of IDPA, using the standard 75B 10-round magazines. Never had to replace the springs in any of those magazines. When shooting elsewhere, I'd use 15 or 16 round mags, and a few of them needed replacement. The 15 or 16 round mags were cycled less often than a 10 round magazine for the same number of rounds fired. The difference? They, at least back then, all used the same spring -- and the spring in the 10 round magazine was never compressed as deeply and that same spring in a 15 or 16 round magazine. At 15-16 rounds, that spring was probably getting pretty close to its elastic limit.
Hotter rounds might eventually have an effect on the frame, but the spring won't really know the difference. (I doubt that the frame will know the difference either, as CZ frames are pretty robust.
Most recoil springs will cycle fully/deeply as long as the gun continues to fire as it should. If the spring is too strong for the round being fired, it might not allow the slide to go back far enough to pick up the next round; if it's too weak it may not retain enough energy to return the slide and lock the breech.
Had my p-09 original spring to about ~8-9k and LOTS and LOTS of dry practice.
Dry-firing need not cause much wear on a recoil spring if you move the slide
just enough to reset the striker -- maybe an 1/2" or so. Spring life isn't much affected when the spring doesn't cycle fully or when, cycled fully, it doesn't get near to it's design limit.
