What is your experience with the P3AT?

Has your P3AT been reliable?

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I voted "great after fluff n' buff" but I have to put in the disclaimer that I bought mine used from a guy who complained endlessly that it was a jam-o-matic.

First he was firing wolf (which this gun still won't extract reliably) and secondly it was just a really rough example of this gun with lots of plastic flash, a really rough feed ramp, and a couple of burrs that all combined together to make a sucky gun.

Fluff n' buff and now it runs like clockwork (except with Wolf ammo).
 
A fabulous little pistol...what else can you carry with your Tux or go to church with? I certainly would not let your wife have one...they are pure torture to shoot! I mean, they are perfect for concealment and last resort, down and dirty, cannot run away, it's me or him weapon. The P3AT makes my 642 seem like a downright pleasure to shoot! I'm not sure how effective two magazines worth of .380 DPX Corbon would be...but I know it will provide enough noise and confusion that I can run back to where I keep my real weapons...or pull the knife and keys for the fight of my life.
 
I sold my P-3AT and went back to the tried and trusted P32.

Even after trips back to the factory, at some $30 bucks a time Fedex, the little piece of doodoo still couldn't manage an entire magazine without choking on something.

It was GREAT to carry, but wouldn't shoot, strangely I found this to be a problem.
 
Something I have not yet seen here is how the lady herself feels about this. My wife has handled my P3AT enough to know that she doesn't like the slide. She is by no means a weak and frail lady, but she feels the slide on my KT (and on most of my autoloaders) is too stiff for her to manipulate easily and quickly. That may change over time and with some practice. Other than that, she would not be adverse to carrying a P3AT at some point. I am still getting her into the frame of mind that she needs to carry, given the area in which she works.
 
My wife loves her P3AT, and shoots it very well, so generalities about women not liking them are bogus. We both have Gen1 guns, Mine needing a return trip (worked, but not right), and hers was perfect out of the box.
 
Forgive the thread drift

but
A fabulous little pistol...what else can you carry with your Tux or go to church with? I certainly would not let your wife have one...they are pure torture to shoot!
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Why bring gender into it? We have several shooters on this forum who regularly shoot hotter stuff than I do. Several also shoot with great fequency, and in higher volume than most on THR. Many are women. Pax for example is professional shooting instructor. Without a doubt you run a high round count when it's your job to shoot. I'm sure she'll be glad to show you just how well a wife can handle any handgun whenever you want to make a trip to Seattle.
 
not let your wife have one
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Gee, my wife would laugh at anyone that told her they weren't going to let her have anything because she was a woman. :rolleyes:

Considering she took my P3AT and doesn't have any problem shooting it I'd say an individual's selection of a handgun is a personal decision that the individual makes for themselves instead of a decision someone makes for them. Advise, sure. Permit? Nope.

BTW, I went out and promptly got another for myself and it's behaved well also.
 
The thing with Kel-Tec is you have to understand: making a pistol this tiny, there have to be some compromises. Also, you're not buying a finished pistol. You're buying a "98%" finished pistol. For that price, you've got to expect to put in a few minutes going over the new gun with some very fine grit sandpaper, taking off some rough spots.

That said, my P3AT was 100% out of the box (edited to add, I did not do fluff'n'buff - but would not have complained if I needed to). However, after a few hundred rounds, the trigger pin started backing out, and the trigger wouldn't drop the hammer. I did a quick internet search, and found that I should loc-tite the trigger pin. Which I did.

Honestly, I think you should go to the www.ktog.org forums and browse for common problems, and cut them off at the pass. If you loctite the trigger pin first, etc. then you shouldn't have any problems. I don't see how this is any different than buying a $1000 1911 and having to replace half a dozen parts and send it to the gunsmith before it works right. Except that you're only paying $240 for the Kel-Tec and instead of adding aftermarket parts, you might have to loctite a pin or get a free part from the factory.

And yes, this $240 featherweight .380 is in direct competition with the $1000 all steel 9mm Rohrbaugh. Just understand that you're paying one quarter the cost, the gun isn't going to be 100% the same gun.
 
I bought mine used from someone who used it to defend themselves with it from a street crime, and now wanted something larger in caliber.

The two things that i think affect the performance of the gun the most are 1) The gun is not a range gun, and can start to FTE after 25-50 rounds (depending upon how dirty your ammo is); and 2) The gun will malfunction if you limp wrist it (which is easy with a gun that weighs so little).
 
And yes, this $240 featherweight .380 is in direct competition with the $1000 all steel 9mm Rohrbaugh. Just understand that you're paying one quarter the cost, the gun isn't going to be 100% the same gun.
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Not even close to being in direct competition with the Rohrbaugh. Fit, finish, caliber. KT slightly smaller and lighter, that's where the comparison ends. Both are niche players at extreme ends of the spectrum. Caliber aside.
 
I wish I had known your site and this poll before I bought this piece of junk P3AT. Their other firearms might be great, but this is a waste of money and dangerous. A jam-o-matic right out of the box. Send it to the factory and they tell you 6-8 weeks. So you give them your money, their toy gun doesn't work, you send it to them and they tell you to get in line in the service department. Must be backed up with repairs. How great to actually need it and have the first three rounds jam ON EVERY magazine. Even after the famous KTOG Fluff and Buff, which you shouldn't have to do to get the thing to fire. They blame it on your "limp-wrist", your ammo--anything but themselves.

If I read your poll right, thats over 46% unreliable out of the box! If you buy this gun, you have about a 50% chance of survival if you actually need to use it. You might be better off with a knife or a rock.

I have decided to sue them in Palm Beach County if anyone wants to join me. I'm an attorney so it won't cost me anything. E-Mail me if you want to participate in some way.
 
Sue them? For what? Cause you got a lemon and had to send it back for repair?

In that case, I need to sue Glock, Sig, Walther and Springfield.

Give them a chance to fix it.
 
I have decided to sue them in Palm Beach County if anyone wants to join me. I'm an attorney so it won't cost me anything.
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I wish I had known your site and this poll before I bought this piece of junk P3AT.
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So you're an attorney and in your first sentence in this thread you openly admit that you failed to exercise due diligence by not researching the firearm in question prior purchasing it?
If you buy this gun, you have about a 50% chance of survival if you actually need to use it.
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It is each gun owner's individual responsibility to test his or her weapon for reliability prior to carrying it for self defense.
They blame it on your "limp-wrist", your ammo--anything but themselves.
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Those are the realities of small guns which squeeze the envelope of caliber for size. L.W. Seecamp originally recommended using only Winchester Silvertip in his .32 ACP Seecamp pistols. He now says no manufacturer is consistent enough for him to recommend a specific brand for reliability. His current recommendation is firing one magazine worth of every box of defensive ammo you buy as assurance that the rest of the box will be reliable. Like it or not there are trade-offs in owning tiny for caliber guns. They're ammo sensitive, and they're very sensitive to limp wristing. Even industry giant Ruger is learning the hard way that mouse guns aren't easy to make: their LCP is under recall for its third engineering update - less than a year into production.

Last, I don't see what you're suing over, unless Kel-Tec is refusing to repair or replace your gun.
 
mine worked great for the first few hundred rounds. but the firing pin mark in the primer always looked funny. then, it started jamming, and misfireing. i took it apart, and did the firing pin hole "fix" that was on the ktog web site. but it didnt help. sent it back to the factory, they replaced the whole top slide assembly, and it has been fine every since. still, i wish the thing would chuck the empty cases in some kind of pattern. my shells are spit out i every direction for at least 20 feet. i have even had some come down and land on the top of my shooting glasses. and one went down the front of my wifes shirt, and you know where that ended up! it was kind of funny watching her, but i wouldnt have wanted to be her!
 
I had two early first gen. P-32s. Lots of problems and trips back to KT. Finally got them both working.

Bought an early P-3AT and again had problems. Bought a second one so I'd have one to carry while the other visited KT. Trouble was they both visited KT, multiple times. KT bought one of them back and I sold the other to someone who didn't mind a "project gun". Went to S&W 642s and 442s - the perfect small carry guns for me.

In the last couple of years, I've had several KTs that worked when I got them - a used P-40, a PLR-16 and a PF-9. I also bought a Ruger LCP, which works great, except for the recall. (It's shooting fine, I'm just waiting for them to take it back for the recall fix.)
 
If I read your poll right, thats over 46% unreliable out of the box! If you buy this gun, you have about a 50% chance of survival if you actually need to use it.
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You realize it is not a scientific poll right?

Further anyone that is thinking about using a weapon for defensive purposes should be firing it enough to know whether it is reliable or not.

Your point is well taken that one should not pull one of these things out of the box and stake their life on it. I wouldn't do that with my glock, 1911, or even my AK.

I don't own a P3TA. I have a pocket pistol that is much better and more expensive and I am very happy with it. That said even if this were a scientific poll whose results we could take to mean something I would say you are taking away the wrong lesson. The results would indicate that more than 80% of them are able to run fine in the end. Only a very slim percentage report not being able to make them reliable.

As to ammo and limp wristing, pocket pistol are often finicky. Did you try using other ammo? What brands. Did you have someone experienced with small autos shoot it as well? What did you do to determine that ammo and/or limp wristing were not the case of the failures?
 
"The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers". [quote from Shakespeare]
 
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