Need info on Kahr Arms.

[WRGADog]

Kahr makes a fine weapon

I own a PM9 and a P380. One of the two is my constant companion. Be sure you fire the 200 rounds before carrying. You may experience some FTF and FTE, but all of that goes away after the break in period. I have put ~1200 rounds through the PM 9 and ~800 through the P380 and both guns perform flawlessly post break in.

 

[Sixgun101]

My experience with the Kahrs is limited to the K40.
It was at the time the most money I'd ever spent on a pistol. I took it to the range the first time and was horrified by it's lack of accuracy. It also failed to go into battery several times during that first session.

At home during the cleaning, another shock. I had assumed that there was excess oil or grease in the barrel at first inspection (in the store), and when I ran a patch down it prior to the range trip, indeed it came out greasy, so off I went. Cleaning it, I thought the barrel was leaded, even though I fired nothing but FMJs. After further inspection, it turns out that the barrel was heavily pitted! I had trouble believing it at first.

Needless to say, back it goes to the shop, and of course the owner did not believe me, even upon his inspection. Finally he agrees and it goes back to Kahr.

Many weeks later, I get a call that it has returned. The pistol sported a new barrel and a new recoil spring. After an exhaustive inspection, I went back to the range. The second trip revealed that the pistol was a completely different animal. Accurate and flawless, and with a better trigger pull than before the send-back.

Patience paid off for me, and I have been carrying it for a few years now.

A couple of observations:

1. Yes the magazine capacity was a disappointment at first, as well as being a bear to load. I took one apart and was amazed to find a mag spring as long and with as many coils as you would find in a full size 1911! I cut about 4 or 5 coils off the spring and re-crimped the cut end. The mag now held seven rounds and had plenty of authority. I loaded it fully and left it in a drawer for 3 months, then took it to the range still loaded, and it fired out fine. Subsequently I have so modded all four of my mags with nary a problem. YMMV.

2. I routinely do two things to keep my K40 healthy... I "drop" the striker when I am not carrying it, because as a range-master I have seen a few other striker fired pistols develop light strike syndrome, particularly duty carry weapons that stay at "half cock" for long periods. I also take out the recoil spring every few weeks and give it a little "stretch", although after I found out about the gorilla mag springs, I think that was more the issue with failing to go completely into battery. Again, YMMV!

All in all, the pistol has been a joy to shoot, and I can stand toe to toe with most any full size auto in the accuracy department.

 

[seed]

You never want to stretch a spring to try to regain power. This will wear it out faster than anything. You should just replace it when it is time...or before it is time.

As for my experience with Kahr arms. I have written about it a few times and so I hesitate to repeat myself. Basically I have a used MK40 elite 98 which gave me fits in the beginning. It dropped mags, failed to go fully into battery and had other problems I forget. Well, I dropped in a newer style mag catch which has a ridge and that solved the mag-drop problem. Unfortunately mags rattle around now due to the extra room created by this design modification. It doesn't cause function problems, but it does make it a bit noisier than I'd like when I carry. The battery problem was solved with further break in and Wolff rods and springs.

My PM9 was on the spring and and barrel recall list. I sent them both to Kahr, got a new recoil assembly and springs and they smoothed the ridge and polished the ramp of the barrel. Rounds do nose-dive in the mags but it does not cause problems when firing or releasing the slide...it only is a problem if I slow load the first round. This just means that I can't reuse chambered rounds due to possible setback...I can avoid setback with other guns by slowly chambering the first round. This allows me to remove an unshot round and reuse it when I have not shot my gun in a while and need to clean it and or relube it.

My Kahrs are good to go. I would recommend not using the extended mags on the metal framed models as there have been some recent reports of frames developing cracks near the well. I strongly suspect this has to do with the extended mags crashing hard against the posterior portion of the frame during firing as the muzzle flip is countered by the pinky finger which would ordinarily not be holding on to anything when using the shorter flush mags.