New Taurus 990, but problem (I think)

Just got my first new gun for the year 2010, a Taurus 990 4-inch stainless, 24 hours ago, from PSS. $379 + tax. Haven't fired it yet, but I think I noticed a problem. It works fine (dry fire test using empty cases) in SA, the cylinder locks up whenever the hammer is cocked. But when I pull the trigger very v-e-r-y slowly in DA, like from start pulling the trigger to hammer drop taking 5 to 10 seconds, for some chambers, the cylinder latch does not lock into the designated cylinder notch (hope I got these terms right)...

When I pull the trigger in DA, the latch goes down, the pawl comes up engages the ratchet, the cylinder starts turning, then the latch comes up, rubbing the cylinder as it turns. For some chambers, the cylinder will stop turning when the latch locks into the notch with an audible click, then hammer will drop. Perfect. For a few other chambers, the cylinder stops turning, but there is no click. After the hammer dropped, I kept the trigger depressed, I found that the cylinder was locked up by the latch when I tried to turn it by hand. So apparently the hammer impact rocked the cylinder and caused the latch to fall into the notch. But for yet some other chambers, the cylinder would stop turning, no click from the latch, hammer would drop, with trigger still all the way back, I could manually turn the cylinder some more, and hear the latch click into the notch...

I believe this means the chamber didn't line up with the bore. If I'd fire a live round with those chambers in DA, the bullet wouldn't be able to enter the barrel, and I'd have KB in my hand. I've only got two revolvers so far, both Rugers (SP101 and Redhawk). Both would lock up before the hammer drop in DA. The Redhawk is more pronounced, the latch will click in long before the hammer drop. I'd like to confirm with someone who's more knowledgeable with revolvers, that this is a serious problem, before I start calling Taurus on Monday...

Thanks!


the gun


the pawl


the cylinder ratchet

Perhaps the magnification has something to do with it,

Click to expand...

I used the Macro mode of my camera, tried to get all the details. I know Taurus is not the highly rated for workmanship/attention to detail/precision fine art beauty stuff. But so is Ruger, and some might that for Glock and others. I'd love to have a Smith 617 or 63, but for the $300 difference in price, if the Taurus can shoot just as well, I can live with the "birth marks" and pocket that chunk of saving Function is mandatory, style is optional. Too bad, this Taurus ain't like the Tracker 45ACP 4" that I had before, trouble free from the start...

Their customer service is pretty good, but for some reason, they don't tell you the goodies in the user manual. Like the 1-800 number (the manual gives a regular phone number), and the fact that they'd pay for shipping it back to them (the manual says you must prepay to ship the gun back). I learned all these on the Taurus forum. The rep I talked to was polite, authorized a FedEx pickup today for me right away, and told me the turnaround would be about 4 weeks. I'll post the result when I get it back...

Ok, here is the update. I got the gun back last Thursday, 25th. Taurus never updated the repair status on their web site. Even right now, I enter the serial number and my zip code, the repair status will still say "Firearm arrived, waiting for repair". When Fedex called me on Wednesday and asked for someone to be at home to sign for the package, it took me a few seconds to realize it was my gun...

The gun came out of the box covered and dripping will oil (a sign they did work on it). The ratchet still has lots of tool mark, as you can see in the picture. But that's not important. The important thing is if they fixed the timing problem. Well, yes and no. They fixed 8 of 9 chambers. For the eight chambers, I tried DA, pulling the trigger really slowly; and SA, cocking the hammer slowly. The cylinder stop would engage every time before the hammer dropped, or before the hammer was fully cocked. For the one chamber, it wouldn't lock up even in SA, as seen in the video...



[flash=200,200]http://www.youtube.com/v/TqLVQ6Yld-Q&hl=en_US&fs=1&[/flash]

(In case the video doesn't work, here's the Youtube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqLVQ6Yld-Q)

Well, look like I'll have to call Taurus again on Monday...

Received the gun back from Taurus 4/12/2010 around 9am. The extractor star looks much cleaner with fewer tool marks now. Alas, it took me all about ten minutes to find out that, the gun has exactly the same problem as before. One chamber out of all 9 holes, when cocked slowly in single action, the cylinder latch will not engage the notch. With hammer fully cocked, I can still spin the cylinder back to the previous notch, or forward just a bit to make the latch click in. Almost four months now since I purchased it, and after going back to the factory twice, it'd still need to make one more trip...

Yeah, I know. If they offer me a replacement I sure will accept that. But since Taurus is my only option to get it fixed, for free, as long as they are still trying to make it right, I'll just have to wait then...

The final chapter, the conclusion of my Taurus repair experience. I received my Tracker 990 yesterday (5/26) morning by Fedex from Taurus, after I sent it back in the third time in middle of April. This time, they've fixed it right. Right after I got it, I inserted 9 empty cases, and tested it over and over. Singe action, double action... no matter how slow I pulled the trigger or cocked the hammer, the cylinder locked up good...

The gun was cover in oil again (of course). The repair slip said that they'd fixed the "forend cap". I searched everywhere but can't find the term. Also, they apparently test fired this gun. The gun looked clean enough but there were some residue in each chamber. When loading the empties, I found that the chambers were really tight. All the empty casings required some effort to push them in. Tried some live ammo and they slipped in alright. The DA trigger was very heavy. So heavy that after the testing, my trigger finger was sore...

Hi, here's an update of the gun from its first range trip to Wilbur Wright yesterday. I shot about 600 rounds (one 500rd box of Winchester XpertHV, and two boxes of new Federal $1.50 per 50rd from Walmart. Unlike the 550rd Federal bulk pack, this is not copper coated) among the three rimfires that I got: 10/22, Buckmark Camper, and the Taurus. I shot more ammo with the Taurus, about 300 to 400 rounds on it. It was fun to shoot, even though I couldn't hit much of anything at that distance (25yd?), and the heavy DA trigger wasn't that noticeable when I'm pulling the trigger as fast as I could (after do a couple times in DA, it did make my finger tired)...

One little annoying thing I noticed (besides the bad sun burn I got from the coverless range at Wilbur), was that when firing, the revolver emitted something in the air, some small particles within the cloud of smoke. With the help of a little breeze, it flew back in my face and burned me. It was like the powder was still burning while it was flying back at me, though I never saw any red hot burning particles. I nver had this happened to me with semiautos...

The bigger problem I noticed, was after I cleaned it (took me forever cleaning this. It looked like the patches would never come out clean), I noticed some metal shavings on the towel (not sure at which point of the cleaning process they came out), and worse, it had flame cutting! (yeah, I looked up on the net and learned this term). I learned that flame cutting happened on those S&W Scandium revolvers, that Smith had to put in a small steel piece above the gap between the cylinder and forcing cone, but those guns are 357mag. This is a 22! See pics...

I don't think the weak little 22 ammo should be causing this kind of damage to the frame, unless the frame is made of pot metal "stainless steel". Not sure if I should call Taurus again...

I'm not sure if they were lead (seemed to be pretty soft when I picked them up). I used cotton patches and nylon brush to clean the area around the forcing cone, didn't try anything metal as I didn't want scratch anything. Maybe I should try to scrape them with something more rigid and see if there really is a cut, or just some lead deposit... Thanks!

Are those metal slivers lead? It looks like lead is being deposited on the exterior of the forcing cone.

I mention this because I have a Taurus Model 94 (9 shot .22LR) in FL, for repair, that would spit lead out the left side of the cylinder gap and it would accumulate on the left side of the forcing cone. The chambers were not lining up properly with the barrel.

I too felt powder fragments on the left side of my face when I fired. When I got back from the range, I used a pin to pick the lead slivers off the frame.

Click to expand...