CA P380 2nd Range Report - Break-In Completed!

[Ray C]

I’m happy to report the completion of the recommended 200 round break-in period. Using Federal American Eagle FMJ, I fired the final 100 rounds with only one failure to return to battery.


After that, I went to try out the box of Fiocchi again from my first trip, and it simply would not feed. One of my shooting buddies suggested that I load a magazine with two of them at the bottom, then topping off with Federal to make sure it wasn’t the magazine. It fed perfectly until it got to the Fiocchi.


Other ammo I was able to try afterwards was PMC Bronze, and Freedom Munitions RPT. PMC worked as smoothly as the Federal, which is good news because it’s a lot less expensive. With RPT, I had a mixed bag of results (pun intended) with failure to eject and failure to return battery.


For this range trip, I had three additional 6 round magazines that I bought used from eBay, with one converted with MagGuts. They all worked flawlessly, and I liked having the extra round with the MagGuts conversion.


I was able to try out a Ruger LCP there as well. It felt noticeably lighter than the P380, but I was much more comfortable with the grip on the P380 versus the LCP, most likely due to the longer grip.


For the next range trip, I plan to test self defense ammo. Any suggestions from fellow P380 owners?

[berettabone]

You may find that the Fiocchi ammo is a tad longer than your other ammo. May or may not have something to do with it.

[XFlyboy]

Hi Ray,

I also am a relatively new owner of a CA P380. I am also completing the break in phase now and experimenting with both cost effective target ammo and optimal self defense ammo. In case you are aren't aware, a guy named Shootingthebull410 did an awesome expose on 380 ammo for self defense purposes on YouTube. He tested about 40 different offerings and concluded that the Precision One XTP ammo was the top performer using FBI penetration guidelines as a benchmark.

I was just at the range today and tested the Precision One XTP +P. This is an over-pressurized round that according to Kahr the P380 can accept. I was favorably impressed as it cycled well and while I noticed the extra recoil it was not unmanageable. Based on the research done by Shootingthebull, I figure that the 380 +P is close to 90% as effective as a standard 9mm round.

Another popular choice for defensive ammo is Hornady Critical Defense. I fired some of them as well today and they work fine but did not perform as well in ShootingtheBull's survey.

Let me know your thoughts as you continue to experiment with ammo choices for your Kahr P380.

Cheers,
Brian

[Ray C]

Thanks for the write up, Brian! Did you purchase your ammo locally or online?