Honeymoon is over

[Dirty Dave]

Saw photo of pretty "tommy gun" front cover of Jan. issue of Guns & Ammo laying on coffee table on July 1st. Decided "must have". Called Shoot Straight of Tampa. YES! WE HAVE ONE! Deluxe 27 A-1, steel receiver, 50 rnd drum & stick, removable stock....all the good stuff...offered a discounted price! GREAT! Bought her on July 3rd. Just in time for July 4th. YEAH! No problems with stick. FUN! Now we get to Saturday, August 4th (my birthday). Went to range with son in law & grandson who were using my AR & my M1A . Told that I simply MUST try the drum. About 30 rounds later...JAM! Inspection indicates bolt is shoving empty brass that has failed to extract along with extractor that has removed itself from the bolt are all wedged in the breech. Of course the drum won't slide out with all this stuff in the way! Three person job to clear this mess! It gets worse! The empty brass had obviously only gone partially into the chamber before going off. Rear half was bulged & hole blown through primer! Diagnosis by gunsmith @ Shoot Straight: "fired out of battery". Kahr took care of shippiing label. My 27 is by now on a FED-EX truck. Happy birthday to me! Honeymoon is over! Is this just the beginning? Oh... the M1A & AR performed flawlessly. Alas...my 1st post.

[CJB]

We feel your pain!

You did the right thing in contacting the mothership.

I've only played with a few tommys. One was a fa from wwii. They ran well on good ammo. Read that, full metal jacket, full power. they all sucked bad on reloads that we had - cast swc at reduced power.

I think the overall track record is good for the tommys.

Sit back n relax. Wont be too long you'll have it back.

[b4uqzme]

Your analogy is good. It's a marriage. It won't always be pretty but she'll be a great partner in the long run.

[AJBert]

Sorry to hear about the bad luck. I've only put about 500 rounds through mine and don't use the 50 round drum any more. PITA to load and use, plus if the spring isn't wound up all the way you get FTF's. I just stick with the 30 rounder.

[Bawanna]

I haven't shot mine a whole bunch either yet but I've had no issues once I got the stick magazines sorted out.
My drum works perfectly but you have to load it exactly correct or not so good.
I prefer the sticks anyhow.
I doubt the loading in the drum had anything to do with your issue, I've heard of the extractor blowing out, that no doubt started the sequence of bad things happening.

Hopefully Kahr will get you all fixed up and running. It's nice they sent a shipping label, these things weigh as much as a new import car, cost a ton.

[Dirty Dave]

Failed to say earlier that bolt had also picked up a live round (of course it would). Thus there were 3 items (live round, blown casing and extractor) in the way before drum could be removed. Had I been using stick, this snafu may have still happened, however it sure would have been easier to drop the stick. I have come away from this feeling that the drum is great for photo ops only! If I only had a 34 Ford! A lot of trouble for 20 more rounds! Next observation. Leave the bolt open after the last round in the stick. Clean the bore & STORE it OPEN. Then when you use it again, it's ready for the stick & you don't need the assistance of a come-along & a tree to open the beast. Wishing I were looking at IT instead of this receipt from Shoot Straight. They are a class act by the way. Gave me a range pass. Hope to use it some day! By the way, the ammo was 230 gr. FMJ brass case TULA "Brass Max" made in Italy. Won't use again. Left a nasty black residue. DIRTY. I have plenty of Federal, Remington & Winchester "value packs".

[Ghostsoldier]

Sorry to hear of your woes, Dave....but Kahr will fix you up right; my M1A1 has never given me any troubles (I think I may have had one stovepipe in all the years I've owned it).

Get yourself some E-Z Pull springs, and you won't need that come-a-long for the bolt...just your thumb and forefinger.

http://mysite.verizon.net/colt1927/thompson/ez.htm

Rob

[Dirty Dave]

Sure is a tempting thought HOWEVER .....I surely am not a mechanical engineer. My thought/question/concern: If easier to pull springs are in there I have 2 concerns. Upon firing, is the bolt not recoiling to the rear with more force, causing damage down the road? Like shock absorbers bottoming out on a bad road? Secondly, with the stock springs, the bolt is going to return (I would expect) with more force insuring that the next round has been chambered? PS :I keep looking at that photo on the front of Guns & Ammo & reflecting on the most expensive shooter I have ever bought & stewing over this affair. Yeah...I'm impatient. One month of ownership & now it's in the ER. Really troubled by that "firing out of battery" stuff. Googled "fire out of battery" .....not a pretty thing. Glad they have plexiglas between firing positions @ the range. Given the right circumstance someone could have been hit by a piece of brass. People have lawyered up over less. Oh well, I know , hope for the best. The mother ship has my phone # & my email. Sure would be nice to hear something soon!

[Ghostsoldier]

Dave,

I'm not a Thompson engineer, lol, but I think the springs you replace are the recoil springs, per se, but the kit comes with a nylon 'buffer' that absorbs all the shock, and doesn't transmit the force that the stock, steel version does.

I've had mine in ever since I bought the gun, and have never had a problem. In fact, I've heard it argued that the stock, too-stiff Kahr springs are actually the root of problem, and cause more trouble to the receiver, than the lighter ones.

Rob

[Dirty Dave]

THANKS, Rob....guess what I'll do upon when my baby is discharged from the hospital! Before buying the gun, I had a brief conversation with a Khar rep who suggested that I consider the lighter versions with the aluminum receiver. I voiced concern over a wear factor & he said that won't happen because the bolt rides on those guide rods. I guess I wasn't convinced. Now in this forum I see a post on a bolt that won't move one way or the other.....I wonder what the H that is about. Thanks again. Dave

[Ghostsoldier]

It's your call, Dave, but I wouldn't touch the aluminum receiver; I've heard nothing but trouble about those, about everything from the exterior finish, to the poor long-term performance.

I think Kahr tries to push them, because they aren't all that popular.

Rob

[Dirty Dave]

About the G.I. issue mags. I have picked up a few & merely elongated the hole with a rat-tail file to get the right fit. Since then I have read of the removal of a small amount of metal from the top of the latch botton. Would that not cause stock (KHAR mags) to not fit correctly. Does anyone out there know?

[Ghostsoldier]

I've got a tutorial over on http://www.machinegunboards.com/forums/, Dave, with photos of how I did mine.

Rob

[Bawanna]

I tutored under Ghostsoldier for probably much longer than he would have preferred and modified my mag catch as well.
It took me awhile to grasp what I really needed to do but once I got it (I'm a little slow) it wasn't hard to do at all.
Just take your time, put it together way to many times to test and I actually thought I had it but had some mags balk a bit. Went back and did a little more and now they all work fine, lock in solid and don't fall out.

Then you never had to ruin another good GI mag. And that's a good thing.

This is the first time in my life I've ever been on a fence with any of Ghostsoldiers wisdom but I know that Kahr does NOT endorse the EZ Pull spring replacement system. I was told it was actually tested in the plant and it caused all sorts of issues.
Warranty out the window although I don't know how they would know. And I honestly don't fully understand what damage it can do but they said it will.

So while I've been tempted to try it myself I'm holding out on that one for now. It is a beast to pull that bolt back but I can still manage to get r dun.

[Ghostsoldier]

No problem, B-man...it's all good; I spend most of my life at odds with other people's wisdom, so I know where you're shootin' from. :D

Maybe I typed that wrong: I didn't mean to imply that Kahr endorsed the springs...my comment was that they try to push the aluminum receiver model guns as much as they can, because they are poor sellers.

To be honest, I know about 20 or so Tommy owners with the EZ Pulls, and not once has any one of them had an issue with them (even www.tommygunner.com, the premiere Tommy parts store, sells them at a ridiculous 80 bucks a pop :rolleyes: http://www.tommygunner.com/pages/parts/ezpullspringkit/ ).

As a personal opinion (that I cannot prove ;)), I think Kahr's 'factory tests' are bogus, or at least they find the results they want to find in them....I've heard owners tell me the stiffer springs are actually cause for most of the receiver issues people have with these, and that it's no more than a ploy to get folks to have to buy replacement parts, down the road, after your warranty runs out.

That's what I've heard, anyway. :)

Rob

[Bawanna]

The aluminum light weight versions and the EZ Pull deal are two different deals. I agree, I would not go with the light weight version.

As for the EZ Pull I've heard numerous folks say no issues and it works super.
It could well be the plant test were bogus, I got nothing solid to support or deny that theory.

I honestly don't shoot mine enough that I'm concerned that I'm gonna wear it out.

I still in many ways want to try the EZ Pull just to see how it acts.

Maybe someday I'll get around to doing that. It's not irreversible so something to gain and very little to lose I think.

[Ghostsoldier]

That's the way I figured it, too, so I gave them a shot (no pun intended ;))...so far, so good. I kept my old buffer and springs, just to be safe. :)

Rob

[DeaconKC]

Dave, welcome to the place. On the issue of modifying the mag release, a couple of things to consider. How many mags do you already have that are modified? If you only plan on getting one or two more, it is probably not worth the cost in time and money to replace to catch and the magazines. If I were to do it all over again, I would have started out with doing the catch when I only had 2 or 3 mags, but now I have a bunch that are already modified. If you do decide to change the catch, you can always swap with folks here [thanks again Bawanna].

[Ghostsoldier]

I have heard that some guys weld up the catch hole to use in GI catch guns, but that's a lot of concentrated heat on the thin magazine metal. It's easier, if you want to go that route, to mod the catch...and then, you can get lucky and maybe pick up surplus GI mags cheap (I bought 15 of them for 3 bucks a pop at Tapco, one year)...you can also swap mags with FA guys at shooting events, too.

Rob

[Dirty Dave]

And time (warranty period) marches on without me having my Tommy. Learned today that Khar STILL didn't have gun due to some snafu between Shoot Straight Tampa & Fed-Ex. Anyhow it supposedly left Shoot Straight last Thursday (6 days ago). One month of warranty had come & gone when this happened. Wonder what will be left when I get it back. TICK TOCK!

[Dirty Dave]

It seems like I'm seeing a lot of drama about extractors & buying "extras". I have no aversion to buying extras but what if mine comes back "pinned" as I've read of here? This is a lot of $ to just look at! TICK.....TOCK goes my warranty period while Tommy's in Kahr General Hospital.