Extended magazine reliability - Collective experience

[ScotP7]

Any sense of whether the 8 round magazines for K9's are as reliable as the 7 rounders?
Thanks,
Scott

[Alfonse]

I have not had an issue with them in either K9. One fairly new and one 12 years or so old. Of course, any extended mag seems to work for me in my pm9s, mk9, k9s, etc. I just do not have issues with them so far.

[roadrunner840]

I'm beginning to think the mags are the weak link for the Kahrs. All of my K9 mags have been failing whereas my MK9s haven't had a problem. The polymer followers on both of my K9 extended mags broke during just their second use after purchase. Then I had two regular K9 mags fail. I was EDC with my K9 for 2 weeks. When I decided to cycle out the ammo, both the mag in the weapon and the spare mag had the follower jam about 4 rounds deep. So if I had used my K9 for defensive purposes, I would have probably cycled 3 rounds before it failed. Any thoughts on this or similar experience? The gun by the way has been 100% reliable.

[CPTKILLER]

My MK9 has worked fine.

[kenemoore]

The extended 9mm mags for my PM9 and K9 both function without fail. The extended mags for my PM45 are junk, do not feed reliably, do not hold open on last round, have three of them and same crap from all three.

[RolandD]

That's about where my brand, new, seven round mag jammed up. The follower was catching on the mag release slot. Sanding the follower, right there, took care of it.

[wyntrout]

I've had no problems with any of my extended mags. I use them at the range and for carry spares.

The .45 mags I have had numerous problems with. I had three instances of the mags failing at the top rear of the tubes... cracks that developed until the mags would not function... insert properly and feed correctly. In all cases Kahr replaced my mags. When it happened to the first replacements as well, they wanted the gun to check it out. They found it did the same in testing and eventually only replacing the frame stopped that. I had a third instanace and they replaced the mags again and said they would pay to send the pistol back again for testing, but I declined.

Then there was the catastrophic spring failures that lead to checking the springs in all 9 of my .45 mags. I found that the 7-rounders all had the same springs installed in them as did the 5 and 6-round mags... totally inadequate. I'll post the link on that, Ken, that could be your problem. I bought mags from Ivanhoe Warehouse and also got the replacement mags from Kahr... all the 7-rounders had the 14-coil springs instead of the correct 18-coil ones. I quickly figured that out because I had bought spare follower/spring kits for all of my Kahr mags while they were on sale.

Kahr wanted me to send them all of my .45 mags and leave me with none. I told them the only problem was the springs, so they sent my the proper springs for all 9 mags.

With Kahr mags, I found it beneficial to take the mags apart and push dry paper towels through the tubes until the gunk/grease or whatever passed for 'lubricant" was gone. Then I put a little oil on my fingers and very lightly lube the outside of the springs before re-assembling the mags and making sure that a loose or free end of the spring was correctly oriented to the front of the follower for maximum lift. We've seen new mags that had that wrong.

Here's the post on my .45 springs with a few pictures. The LONG spring is the correct size for the 7-rounders and the hardest new spring to install that I've ever seen!

This started with the 6-round mag:

http://www.kahrtalk.com/showthread.php?25299-PM45-6-round-magazine-spring-catatrosphic-failure!&highlight=PM45+spring+failure

Post #19 on that thread details where I encountered the other spring problems.
http://www.kahrtalk.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=11848&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1414853310

The 5 and 6-round mags use the same springs, but the 7-rounders use springs with 4 more coils and are STIFF. That's my spare extending down to the pistol... big difference. All 7-round mags should be checked for the correct spring as the 14-coil shorted one will take a set and be inadequate for reliable operation!

http://www.kahrtalk.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=11892&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1415769820 in this picture, the four new springs are to the right. The six on the left were the factory-installed incorrect ones.

Wynn :)

[kenemoore]

Thanks Wyn, I'll have to check the springs, if I can find the mags, threw them in a parts bin somewhere.