Name your biggest POS handguns.

[Sylvilagus Aquaticus]

Not mine, but my brother's- he bought an RG 38; one of those quintessential 'SNS's' of our mythology. He managed to fire 2 full cylinders through it IIRC, but the cylinder was so out of time that it blew the nickel plating off one side and shaved lead off on every shot. I think it's somewhere in the Sabine river in Gregg County now, where he threw it after it bit him that last time.

Regards,
Rabbit.

 

[Alfadog]

Browning Buttmark .22. It spent more time at my gunsmith waiting for parts to come in for warranty repair than it did in my hands. Only one I've been tempted to throw into a lake.

 

[spartacus2002]

Charles Daly commander-size. Recoil spring plug broke in half after 100 rounds, jammed slide and frame together. Barrel bushing looked like it was carved with stone-age tools.

BUT, I sent it back to CD and they refunded my purchase price, so good for them.

 

[macsfriended]

Disappointing Guns

Colt Diamondback .22 Nickel - bought it NIB from my then usual retail dealer (pre internet days.) - Beautiful gun. Oh I wanted to keep it forever. Big time timing problem. Sent it back to Colt - Paid them approx $100 - No improvement at all. - Traded! Colt - BOOOOOOOO!!!! Selling Dealer - BOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Walther TPH Interarms mfg. A safe queen that stopped working double action. Couldn't find anybody willing to work on it. S&W factory took it and some cash and sent me a NIB P-22. Better than nothing, I think - I hope.
S&W - YEAAAAAAAA!!!

Overall, I have had very good experiances with gun purchases. The Colt problem above still irritates the hell out of me.

 

[faustulus]

I had a S&W 4013 TSW that couldn't hit the side of a barn, and a lot of folks tried to prove me wrong. I sold it eventually to some guy who said he could fix it... Absolutly the worst pistol I ever owned.

 

[Grunt]

Well, my first POS was am Iver Johnson TP-22. Typical PPK looking .22 clone. Well, the problem was the frame metal was so thin around the trigger pin that one day loading it, I managed to break the frame. I sent it back and Iver Johnson sent me a new one. Within 500 rounds, that one did the same thing in the same spot!
My next steeming pile of poo was Jennings .22 auto. Yeah, I knew about their reputation before I got it but for $50, I thought I'd try one out for laughs. Worked real good for about 400-500 rounds then it began to malfunction and only got worse as time went on until it found it's way to a dealer for parts.

 

[swingset]

Kimber Eclipse Target II.

POS from the day I got it. Sent to Kimber many times, never really ran good.

Oh, and it was my most expensive handgun. Go figure.

 

[SW9mm]

polymer baby eagle 40 s&w semi compact ....POS jam jam jam. traded for hi power clone and am lovin it.

someone mentioned a bulgarian makarov earlier in the thread. ??????????????? never a problem with mine or anyone else i know that owns one.

 

[Onmilo]

There is no gun made that I cannot make function but having owned a couple of Jennings/Raven products I cannot lament the passing of this manufacturer.

 

[Craig M. Arnold]

Worst Handgun I Ever Owned

I bought a very early model Walther P22 because I thought that it would be a great little plinker. WRONG! I could not get a full magazine through it without a jam, usually several jams. The P22 had every kind of jam I have ever seen, FTF, FTE, etc. I worked with the pistol and magazines, but just could not make it work correctly. I finally sent it back to Smith and Wesson. They sent me a brand new one. The second P22 was almost as bad as the first. I worked on the new pistol and tried everything I could think of to make it reliable. I finally got it to work pretty well, however by this time I had developed a real dislike for the gun and got rid of it. I have had well over three hundred handguns in my life. The P22 was the worst one I ever owned.

 

[Cogar]

Tokarev 9mm. Don't remember the model. It rarely shot a full magazine before it jammed.

 

[klover]

so many bottom feeders!

Never had a POS revolver out of perhaps 50. None of the 20 or so SA's were POS, but many FTF and stove pipes!
I will not HD or CCW with an SA. Gimme a 629 or 19 Smith, and I'll trust it for my life

 

[MR.G]

S&W Sigma .380.

 

[Fiveshooter]

I have had more than one P.O.S. handgun

When I was a kid I got a Clerke .32 revolver that had the frame split after 50 rounds of factory ammo. I have an American Derringer in .45 Auto that has the rifeling only cut into one side of the barrels. It's about as accurate as throwing rocks. Then there was the AMT Automag 4 with the safety that would engage itself during recoil causing the firing pin to be locked forward instead of rearward. I got one hell of a painfull "slamfire" out of that when I let the slide go forward on a round in the chamber. I did not notice that the firing pin was protruding forward about a quarter of an inch out of its hole. Then there are the Wildey .45 Winchester Magnums. I own 2 of them. In all honesty one has remained unfired. The one I did choose to shoot (purchased new)would drop it's magazine on every shot. Comparing it to the unfired gun revealed that the mag release was malformed and did not have enough "bite" on the magazine to hold it in place. A $40 part fixed that but getting this gun to feed with any degree of reliability is very difficult. You have to change the gas setting for each load. I could deal with that but you also had to reajust for each individual shooter To put the frosting on the cake the hammer broke after about 300 rounds. I was assured by the factory that there was no problem with the hammer design on the Wildey but I later read a gunsmithing article about the hammer breakage problems on these guns Then we get to the S&W 500 and I am sure this will make a lot of you Smith lovers bite your lip The first day I got the gun I took it to the range and it would allow the cylinder stop to drop during recoil 2 out of 3 times. This happened with everybody that shot the gun. I took the gun home that evening and replaced the cylinder stop spring with a heavier one. I took the big revolver back to the range the next day and got off 15 rounds without the cylinder backing up. Bad news is it had a broken firing pin. I packed the gun up and sent it to S&W and after a couple weeks they informed me that the gun had to be replaced I never heard of a whole gun needing to be replaced over a broken firing pin They did however send me a brand new gun that still remains unfired to this day. I guess I just lost interest in the big revolver after my initial dissapointment in the gun and the company.
I guess if you buy and shoot enough guns you are bound to get a lemon or two At least I have never had trouble with a Freedom Arms or Ruger revolver

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Pos

by POS, I guess you don't mean Pride Of Spain.

Had a Clerke revolver in .32 S&W that a previous owner had fired
with .32 ACP: the cartridge head was impressed into the alloy recoil
face of the frame as plain as day: .32 ACP in mirror image!

I have had two .380 Grendels. In one, the weld on the side rail
failed, leaving me spare parts for the other. Once the factory was
out-of-business, I traded the good one off. It always shot well
for me, but firing ten rounds was an ordeal: it hurt. I would rather
shoot 50 rounds from my .45 than ten from that Grendel.

I have put a thousand rounds a year through my Mark II Ruger
with great reliability and accuracy for over 16 years now, so the
complaints about Rugers are surprising. My son has a Ruger .22-45
and they have been great guns for us.

I also have a .22 Jennings and a .25 Raven, but I don't wear them out
on a weekly basis. Kept clean and with good ammo, they shoot reliably
and more accurately than throwing rocks.

My son had a Smith&Wesson Sigma (Smegma?) that bounced empties
off his forehead; for some reason, he did not find that charming and sold
it for a Beretta 92 that did not fit his hand, but then found happiness
with a H&K USP .40S&W.

 

[R.H. Lee]

Right now, I have two. A BHP Practical and an S&W 659 (I think it's a 659). I bought to HiPower used, and somebody had screwed with the springs; it FTF with some ammo. I replaced all the springs (except the trigger return spring, which also needs replacing, the trigger has a hitch in its gitalong). It works more or less reliably and is accurate now, but still has high adjustable sights, (the front sight has a gap between it and the frame) which I don't like. Replacing them seems to be a big deal, sending it off to somebody somewhere. Anyway, I'm not happy with it.

And the S&W is clunky with a horrible trigger and also suffers from FTF.

I don't trust either one of them.

 

[GreenFurniture]

The only real "POS" gun I've ever owned was a Gov't model AMT 5" 1911.

Damn thing wouldn't run no matter what I did to it. Now it's living somewhere else and I hope it stays there.

 

[foghornl]

Hmmm

An F.I.E. (Firearms Import Export) .22LR/.22Mag knockoff of the Colt SAA. model was "Buffalo Scout" IIRC. Sent the lead in sort of the same general direction as where you had aimed.

CHEAPY .22LR snubby revolver, DA. Might have been RG/Rohm. Couldn't hit a 9" paper plate at more than 2 yards beyond muzzle contact distance.

Clerke .32. Sent as much lead sideways as downrange (Not my revo, belonged to a shooting buddy)

Not a handgun, but I had a Century CETME. I have not seen any gun with more problems than this one short of Ka-Boom. Failure to feed, fire, extract, eject, return to battery. If you were 20 yards away, you had a better chance of getting hit if I threw the CETME at you, than if I tried to shoot it in your general direction. Spent 17-1/2 of the 18 months I owned it in 3 places..In Transit to Century, in Century Service, in transit from Century. Sold it to a shooting buddy for a parts gun, while taking a $150 soaking. Wasn't ammo specific, either. I think I tried evey brand/style/country of origin ammo readily available.

 

[Sean Smith]

#1 with a bullet (heh, heh ) was a Para P14-45. Never got it to work. Para customer service was a bunch of incompetent liars. I sold it for scrap parts, I couldn't bring myself to pretend it would actually ever work.

#2, Kel-Tec P32. That worked temporarily, so it was better than the Para. But it rolled over and died before I got through the first box of ammo.

Honorable mentions:

AMT Hardballer: stainless steel (said so right on the slide), but would rust if you looked at it funny. It also had almost every bad characteristic a gun can possibly have and still work most of the time.

 

[seed]

Sylvilagus Aquaticus said:

RG 38

Man you are right about that! I had an RG14 for a minute, but gave it to my a*****e brother for free. I still don't think I did him a favor.

 

[dev_null]

1. Erma Excam fake PPK in .22LR.

2. Iver Johnson fake Mustang in .380.

The only two I can say were lousy. All the rest have been great.

 

[cls12vg30]

I haven't had that many guns, I guess the closest thing to a POS would be a Llama Micromax .380.

It's reliable so long as it's clean and it's well put-together, but the metal is a bit soft and it's a bit difficult to shoot accurately, but not impossible.

On the other hand, being a copy of a Govt. .380, it's ergonomically fantastic, practically melts into my hand and feels like a natural extension. It's a newer model (from the new factory so post-2003), and the improved hard chrome finish is actually pretty nice, much better than the older ones I've seen.

The only other gun I have that doesn't rate as "excellent" in my book is my Beretta 21A .25, and that's only because of its caliber. As a firearm it's well-designed, well-made, and accurate for its size.

 

[Krag]

Everything I've ever owned that was made by Colt!

 

[Stasher1]

Kimber Eclipse Target II.

POS from the day I got it. Sent to Kimber many times, never really ran good.

Oh, and it was my most expensive handgun. Go figure.

I can relate. My Kimber Stainless Pro Carry II is the most unreliable POS I've ever owned, even my Sundance .25 was more reliable. I bought it to use as my main CCW piece, but I just can't trust the POS to go bang when I need it to. It's now a safe queen until I can afford to have a good smith to rework it.

 

[lee n. field]

2 POSen I happy to no longer own.

Jennings J-22. bang bang jam bang bang jam bang break. The number of rounds I put through it probably far exceeded it's designed lifetime. Gave it to a buddy for him to tinker with.

FIE Excam .38 deranger (sic). I got it free, found it hidden in a place we moved into. Unsafe to carry with both chambers loaded. The firing pin selector (internal part that flips back and forth, transfering hammer blow force to one firing pin or the other) would chip at the drop of a hat, making actual firing somewhat hit or miss. I finally got the part from Numrich, "fixed" (in the sense that I installed the replacement part. Making it both safe and reliable would have been, IMHO, impossible) it, and traded it and it's Bianchi leather holster for $30 store credit at a gun shop. When it actually did fire, I did not find the recoil at all harsh or unmanageable.