Charter Arms Pit Bull 9mm

[HiCap1]

Over the years I've owned several Charters. In the 60's a brace of snubbies. In the early 2000's a Bulldog. Not impressive at all. Today I shot my new Pit Bull. The trigger needs a lot of break in, but other than that a real surprise. Well fitted and finished, and the 9mm cases ejected flawlessly. Easy to load and after I got used to the trigger, I was doing OK at 25'. Cheers to Charter. And for the doubters, I'm not a shill; I am a skeptical lawyer.

HiCap1

 

[tommy.duncan]

My wife just bought the "lady chic" and really enjoys shooting it. This was her first experience with a wheel gun. Once I find her a good holster it will become her carry piece. It was a sweet surprise for her.

 

[wally]

And for the doubters, I'm not a shill;

Neither am I, but only time will tell about my 9mm Pit Bull. Obviously I got one that shouldn't have been allowed out the door -- it locked up after 7 shots, the first six seemed OK, but ejection was difficult, loaded it again and after one more shot couldn't pull the trigger or open the cylinder

Managed to get it open and unloaded when I got home and there is obviously something very wrong as the ejector rod does not move freely.

Contacted Charter Arms by Email and they sent me a prepaid UPS return label. This is the first half of good customer support, the second half -- actually fixing the gun -- only time will tell.

 

[Henryfan1]

Nice, I am looking at getting one of those myself.

 

[frankiestoys]

I recently went through this again ,and looked closely at the "second shelf" revolvers including Charter,Taurus,Rossi and even another EAA (owned one a few years ago) but ended up with a Smith 442 for a great price .IMO both Charter and Taurus came in close they definitely represent a good value and with a 9mm on the table that moves them to a broader group of snub nose fans . I carry a 9mm often and adding a new Charter in 9mm can work as a back up gun while keeping my ammo stash a little simpler ...let us know how she shoots

 

[HiCap1]

She shoots better and better as the trigger smooths out. Very little recoil. I would not want to stand in front of me at 25'. I shoot a Colt DS II better, and my 442 and LCR, but another 100 rounds and the Charter will be right in the middle of the pack. Incidently, I had a Taurus 9mm that went to the factory three times and then was junked by Taurus.

HiCap

 

[smalls]

I really hope they get their act together on the pitbull. I really want one.

 

[wally]

Follow-up. My defective 9mm Pitbull was dropped off at UPS using the Charter supplied prepaid return label on Oct 8th. It was returned to me Monday Oct 21. Pretty good turn-around in terms of business days with the Columbus Day Holiday in there.

Good news is they appear to have fixed it, replaced/repaired the ejection rod and replaced the latch spring & plunger that went bye-bye when I was trying to get the jammed cylinder open to unload it before shipping it back (take home lesson, don't try this at the range, but I'd have preferred to not be bringing home broken but loaded gun).

Ran some 115gr (Monarch brass) and 147gr (Federal American Eagle) loads through it. Only issue is it seems to shoot about 5" low with either load at 10 yards.

Ejection was fine once I got the hang of how smartly you need to stroke the ejection rod, if you go too slow a case will hang not quite out of the cylinder, but off the star. Single action trigger is very good, double action is a tad heavy, but smoother than most of my Taurus revolvers were out of the box. Either the trigger smoothed out a bit with some shooting or I was getting used to it as seems better now than when I first opened the returned box.

Kudos to Charter for fixing a pistol (that probably should have not been shipped) in a timely manner, paying shipping both ways, without hassle.

Didn't seem to like my reloads using Tula primers, strikes appeared adequate and all but one went on a second or third hit. I'd shot 400 of these through my M&P 9 and RIA 9mm 1911 without issue last time out, so I'm not totally sure what is going on here. Going back to rest of the Monarch and Federal had no more failures to fire.

I also have the Taurus 9mm and I find its "moon clips" very sensitive to ammo brands with a high failure to fire rate with some brands presumably because of slop in the extraction groove, perhaps something similar is going on here, my reloads are "random" brass (not sorted by headstamp).

Next time out I'll bring both the Pitbull and Taurus for a side-by-side, but I'm not a high volume revolver shooter so don't expect any in depth comparisons or insightful observations.

Edit: One more annoyance, the Pitbull still has the "hitch" in the trigger that my old .357 Bulldog and my Wife's old Undercover did. When shooting double action as you release the trigger there is a tactile "click" that as primarily an auto shooter I interpret as the trigger being reset and ready for the next pull, but its not. If you try to pull it doesn't move, the trigger has to move forward a bit past this point. I was able to find similar on my S&W 13 when I first got the .357 Bulldog, but there was never any tactile indication to mislead into thinking you were ready for the next pull.

 

[HiCap1]

I sent my Pitbull back for adjustment on October 16th and got it back October 21st. Now, THAT'S service!

HiCap1

 

[wally]

I sent my Pitbull back for adjustment

What was "adjusted"?

 

[HiCap1]

Wally, Charter said that the crane was adjusted. The symptom was that the cylinder release latch would stick sometimes and not return to battery. The issue was resolved and the Pitbull has worked flawlessly for a hundred rounds since.


HiCap1

 

[wally]

I got out at lunch today and shot the Pitbull side-by side with the Taurus 905.

First thing I noticed is the Taurus trigger takes more force to get started and seems to get lighter just before the break, where the Pitbull starts lighter and seems to get heaviest just before the break. My well worn S&W Model 15-3 is pretty much constant force the entire pull and lighter that either. The trigger comparison is not totally fair as the Taurus is well broken in, the Pitbull has only just now made it to 200 rounds when I finished today.

Bottom line I was hitting steel plates shooting DA better with the Pitbull than the 905 despite the sights being so far off (~5" low on the Pitbull, the 905 requires a "bullseye" hold at the bottom of the plate as it hits a bit high). I suspect this is because I could make a final aiming adjustment just before the break as the force maxed out with the Pitbull. A more accomplished revolver shooter may hate this and prefer the Taurus. The SA triggers were great on both -- if I really needed to hit I'd shoot SA

I started with a couple of my reloads 147gr hard cast lead and 130 gr FMJ, both subsonic. I knew the 905 didn't like my reloads, but I loaded up a moon clip of each to verify with the current batch I was using in the Pitbull. I verified about 1 in 6 failure to fire in the Pitbull (running 24 rounds of each) pretty much same as yesterday, and 1 in 5 for the 905 (5 rounds of each, as I already knew it didn't like them). Most of the brass was WW and the all the failure to fire rounds all had much smaller primer indentations than the fired empties. All fired on a second or third try. I shoot literally 1000s of these a month in a large variety of auto loaders without issues, so I'm not going to be mucking with my reloading to try and fix 905 or Pitbull ignition issues. I shoot revolvers infrequently so using factory ammo only is not a terrible burden, besides I'll never loose any of the brass

Next I switched to factory ammo 115gr WW USA "White Box" FMJ and Federal 147 gr Hydrashok JHP. The Pitbull had no issues with 30 rounds of FMJ and 12 rounds of JHP. Both seemed to need the same hold over to hit the plates. The 905 had one failure to fire in twenty rounds of the FMJ and was perfect in 10 rounds of JHP. The FMJ hit with the same hold as the reloads, the JHP was very different and I didn't figure it out in 10 rounds -- I was kind of in shock and disbelief and didn't try adjusting the hold until I was almost out of ammo. I'd forgotten what a PITA it was to unload the "moon clips" of the 905.

The Taurus 905 also has the "hitch" in the trigger, you can hear it in a quiet room, but can't really feel it. The S&W 15 does too but its hard to find since there is practically nothing to hear or feel. I didn't have any trouble with the Pitbull "hitch" when shooting.

 

[Jim NE]

Hope everyone's problems get worked out. I owned a couple of Charters back in the '80's. They really had their good points, but there were also a couple of recurring problems. Please keep the thread updated with any issues or good performance. I've heard good things about more recent Charters, and would like to patronize a company that makes affordable good quality guns in America.

 

[wally]

Got a chance to run a few more brands of ammo through the Pitbull and the Taurus 905.

First up was some 115gr FMJ CCI Blazer Brass. The 905 really didn't like this -- had 6 failures to fire in 15 rounds. Shot the remainder up in the Pitbull without issue.

Next was a partial box of Remington 147gr JSP. This let me figure out the POA/POI shift I had with the Federal 147gr yesterday in the 905 -- it was shooting 3-4" higher than the 115gr ammo, no issues in 15 rounds. Fired 24 rounds of it through the Pitbull with no issues and the POA/POI was close enough to the 115gr ammo the same hold over seemed to work (remember out of the box its shooting ~5" below a "combat" hold).

Finally ran a box of 115gr FMJ PMC and a box of 115gr FMJ Sellier & Belliot. 20 rounds through the Taurus, 30 rounds through the Pitbull for each ammo with no issues for either pistol, although towards the end each was having a very uneven trigger pulls until I wiped off the front of the cylinder and rear of the barrel with my T-shirt. Clearly revolvers can't go near as many rounds without any cleaning as most autoloaders do.

Finally since both pistols would need a good cleaning I tried some Wolf 115gr FMJ both guns shot them fine, but both had difficult extraction, so I then called it a day.

At this point Charter's repair seems to have been good, and I'm a satisfied customer now.

I think most folks would prefer the trigger on the Taurus, but the ammo sensitivity really prevents me from recommending it. To attempt to see if it was perhaps "bad moon clips" for all the 905 shooting I used only the three clips I'd initially loaded with CCI Blazer and had no further failures with four other brands of ammo (counting 5 shots of Wolf). Kind of a major negative to have ignition problems with two of the most inexpensive and widely available brass cased practice ammo brands.

Here is hoping the Pitbull trigger continues to improve with some more shooting. Time to file the front sight to bring the POA/POI to something more useful. I was able to use the serrations on the Pitbull front sight as an index for how much I had to lower the front sight so I have a good starting point to file off the top three serrations.

 

[wally]

Now that I've adjusted the front sight and put a couple hundred more rounds through my repaired 9mm Pitbull I thought I'd report back that I'm basically completely satisfied.

Only real negative is that ignition is unreliable with my reloads, since I shoot literally thousands of these a month through various autoloaders I'm not going to be messing with things to accommodate the Pitbull as I'm just not that much of a revolver shooter. Also extraction is very difficult with steel cased ammo, but other than that its been 100% with all the factory ammo brands I've had available.

Takes a bit of practice to get how smartly one has to push the ejection rod to prevent the empty nearest the grip from hanging only partway ejected.

The trigger has smoothed out nicely with a little use. Its now close to constant force all the way through the stroke, but still a bit heavier than my Taurus 905 (which is unfortunately quite particular about brands of factory ammo).

I prefer to not mess with loading and unloading moon clips. I'd shoot the Pitbull a whole lot more if it was reliable with my reloads.

My wife dragged me into a "beauty" supply store and I made her get me a bottle of neon green "Finger Paints" nail polish -- worked great to make the front sight way more visible!

The tactile "click" at the "hitch point" I mentioned earlier is much less noticeable now than it was initially and has not cause problems in DA shooting. I've been able to find this hitch point on all my DA revolvers although most give no tactile feel or audible click to tell you where it is.

 

[astra600]

A friend of mine found his fathers Charter Arms .38 Sp after his dad passed away. It was in excellent condition, carried as back-up by his dad in the Utah Highway Patrol. The trigger was better than my Colt Cobra, everything tight. We went through about 100 OLD wadcutter reloads he found with the gun. It looked better than the picture of one in a gun mag test. I would not hesitate to buy a used one if it was in the same condition as his ( and wanted another snubby)

 

[C0untZer0]

The FTFs in the 905 is the first I've heard of someone having a problem with the gun.

Besides the "stellar" clips - which are less than stellar, most people report their Taurus 905 works.

I think if I had FTFs with Blazzer Brass that revolver would be going back to the factory.

I really do want the 9mm Charter PITBULL, but I decided to give the Alfa Proj 9231 a try. I'll be buying one from Czechpoint USA when they come back in stock.

 

[wally]

The FTFs in the 905 is the first I've heard of someone having a problem with the gun.

Besides the "stellar" clips - which are less than stellar, most people report their Taurus 905 works.

My experience is the 905 is it works fine depending on which ammo you use. Unless I can get Taurus to pay the shipping back to them its not worth the ~$60 it'd cost me to send it back, as others here have reported Taurus failed to fix their ignition reliability issues. Search for "Taurus 905" on this forum.

Edit: quickly found one for you , post #3:
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=732221&highlight=Taurus+905

I suspect there are other reports. Mine doesn't seem as bad as his, but it doesn't like 115gr CCI Blazer Brass or 115gr CCI Blazer Aluminum

 

[C0untZer0]

Whenever I get enamored of a Taurus product it seems that I just have to wait a little before I read a disastrous review of it from someone.