Guide in Slide Spring Fabrication

you may need to contact taurus. have your model and serial number ready. they call it a captive recoil spring assembly. they could probably look it up and get you an exact measurment on it. i was trying to replace mine but ran into the same problem. the only way ive ever seen them off is if the assembly is broke. you can order a extra spring from taurus so there must be a way to be able to disassemble it.

http://bedair.org/P226/Guiderod22.html this is a link that zemus posted earlier. may be easier to order a premade one rather than making one yourself. the guy who owns this site has an email address so he may be able to answer anymore questions for you...

Today while cleaning my GAT (LOL)... I was checking out the rod. I decided to try to twist one end. well nothing really happened until i tried to reassemble the gun. Then I noticed that I couldnt get the slide back to the slide catch! I was paranoid! So i took it apart again, and twisted the rod back the other way, put it back and all was fine. I guess somehow I locked up the rod??