Need help kahr p9

[wp50]

I took a kahr p9 out today for the first time. Bought it used with about 200 rounds thru it. Put about 30 rounds of Winchester white box thru it no problem. On the first magazine with Remington it failed to fire. Cleared the weapon and everything seemed good. Put magazine back on and fired a couple more then happen again. It appeared as the slide was not returning all the way forward. Tried to field strip it and the slide would not come off. Put if away and when I got home it came apart and it looked like the spring had kinda popped loose. Put it back and rack the slide a bunch and it seemed fine. Is this something that happens with kahr's a lot?

[Decado]

Never happened to any of the many Kahr's I have owned, pretty strange!

[jocko]

what spring??

[wp50]

Kinda new to firearms. The spring that goes around the metal rod in the slide

[Decado]

The recoil spring then

[chrish]

If you have the recoil spring in backwards, it can cause problems going into battery...which is what you are describing. Make sure the closed end of the spring is to the back of the guide rod and the open end is forward. That should take care of it.

[wyntrout]

Also make sure that the rod goes through the hole before the spring can get caught in the the hole.

The closed end is to the rear to grip the rod and not work over that flange. The free or open end should be forward and not protrude from the hole in the lower front of the frame.

Wynn:)

[wp50]

The recoil spring was on backwards. Thanks guys

[jocko]

these kahr guys here know their sh!t. Just sayin..

[chrish]

Glad that was all it was. I for the life of me will never understand why a Kahr recoil spring is different on each end. All my other semi-autos have both ends closed and can be installed either way. Dunno if there is a reason for it or not.


Go shoot the crap out of it now!!!

[jocko]

U HAVE A POINT, BUt again it is not rocket science to get it on right the first time. I would kthink it could be a cost factor, as the open end kahr springs are just clipped off as they come out of the coil/bending machine, where as the closed coil ends require additional steps..
I am not familiar with all the utter semi's out there either, so I don't know if any utters have it like kahr or not...

[wp50]

It's feels a lot stiffer now !!

[jocko]

u mean the gun? or what??

does it last more than 4 hours???. Have u tried had racking it???? Just trying to read between the lines here.

[wp50]

Funny guy?? Racking the gun seems a lot stiffer.

[chrish]

jocko, yea, not complaining, just have always thought it odd. you r probably right about the manuf process and cutting it off. didn't think about that.


wp50, yea...its gonna be stiff (no pun intended here) for awhile until you break it in. even then, a Kahr will be a more stout racking process. heavy recoil spring due to the light weight (of the slide) involved, needs that extra inertia to operate. once it DOES start getting a ton easier, probably time to consider replacing the recoil spring before you start having feeding/ejection issues. Jocko'd be the one to tell you when that's gonna happen...with 32000 rounds down range. I've yet to replace one on either of my Kahrs with 2k-3k rounds thru them collectively.