P380 still not 100%

[HadEmAll]

Well, went to the range this morning with my P380, PM40, and Browning HP .40.

The P380 went through the first magazine of Speer 90 grain Gold Dots JHPs fine.

The next magazine was 5 Federal 90 HydraShok JHPs. Fired the 1st round, and had a stovepipe, with the case caught in the ejection port. I cleared it, and went through the rest of the magazine okay.

Went through the 3rd magazine of Fed 90 grain JHPs fine. While shooting this magazine, I watched the ejected cases and saw they were only being ejected 1 1/2 to 2 feet.

These were rounds 230 through 246.

I'm not worried too much about the P380 yet. I still anticipate a long, happy relationship with it. It has not had a problem feeding anything, and has had perfect ignition. Just doesn't eject the cases as robustly as it should.

It is the only Kahr out of a K40, CW40, and PM40 that has not run perfectly out of the box. I did introduce a problem in the K40 once when I put the recoil spring in backwards, and it worked its way out the front of the slide. Never did that again.

As I said in my range report on this P380, the Ruger LCP I had was tossing these same cases 20 feet to start, and at least 10 feet after I changed to a Wolff xtra power spring. And I did never have a failure of any type in the LCP.

My non-expert opinion is that the recoil spring in my P380 is just too stout.

I thought about trying it without the inner spring, and then without the outer spring just to see what happened, but stifled that.

I cleaned the pistol, and put it away with the slide locked back. I'm not going to touch it until Monday morning, when I go to the range with my brother. I'm hoping to see at least some difference in the ejection distance Monday.

The PM40 is still perfect. It went through 3 magazines of Winchester Ranger 155 grain JHPs just fine. I'm past 400 rounds now in the PM40.

And the Hi Power .40 went through 28 Remington 155 grain JHPs just fine as usual. That has been one reliable pistol for many years.

[jocko]

IMO your P380 is doing fine, that stove pipe could have also been just maybe a change of grip. I would think they should throw brass alittle further than a couple of feet but certainly not 10+ FEET.

I do know that kahr has changed the inner recoil spring,now I don't know one way or the other what that change was, but why not just order a complete new set of springs and retest again. Kahr is squeezing alot of stuff in that little gun frame and everything must be right for total reliabity, INCLUDING the shooter himself. It doesn't take much for ones grip to change ever so slightly and maybe an issue coming from that. If the gun had a parts issue, it would reproduce the stove pipe thing time and time again.

I can tell you when I bought my P380 I could not hand rack that slide with any reliability. I complained to other owners about it and felt also the recoil spring was indeed very stout for such a small frame. Using the slide lock lever as the manual stated,NEVER produced a failure to load, hand racking was trial and error. But after about a 1000+ rounds the gun and definitely I to mated up with each other and I can hand rack it with ease. that little gun is more finiky to ones shooting style than the bigger framed guns.What one can get away with on the big frames is not true on these small framed guns, not just kahr either. My lcp tosses them out of sight but it has a factory spring of 9# which is to lite IMO. I put in the 13# spring and it reduced the distance to half but still 8 to 10 feet, which is OK as far as I am concerned. My 3 Kel tecs threw the out of sight. being I didnt reload, I could have cared less.

From what I read from ur thread, I see no issues with your P380 and not knowing your round count either, it will get better with more rounds downrange..

[HadEmAll]

I had ordered a recoil spring set and xtra P380 magazine before I even owned the pistol, so tonight I did sit down and compare the springs in the pistol and the ones I received from Kahr. The inner spring in the pistol has one additional coil over the new unused one. The outer springs have the same number of coils. I think I will call Kahr tomorrow and just see what they have to say about this.

I don't feel the P380 slide is hard to rack. It's actally easier than racking the LCP slide, but there you were also working against the hammer each time.

Anyway, as you say, I know I'll get past this. If Kahr has anything interesting to say, I'll be sure to post it.

Monday, I'll be comparing the original springs versus the new ones. Trial by fire, so to speak.

[jocko]

one coil more or less IMO wold make zero difference, but if you talk to them they might tellyou why they did what and why...