New CW380 w/Night Sights - Problems

[CT_Hunter]

I just discovered this forum and excited to read many of the great posts.
Unfortunately though I am quite frustrated with my new purchase of a CW380 w/ factory night sights. I had to order this from my local shop and was quite excited to finally get it to the range today to break in.

Upon attempting to loading it via the slide release I found the firing pin sticks out (first picture) thus prohibiting the round to properly slide up and against the slide and into the chamber. After about 20 attempts and jamming I am worried the firing pin is weakened from the shear forces. I never did get it to load at all.

After giving up on loading it via the magazine/slide release I decided to hand load a round in the chamber, close the slide, then insert a loaded magazine. I fired the first round then it jammed again. (see second picture) It appears the ejector is also have issues not holding onto the spent casing. I did this about 8 times never once getting a round to eject. In order to remove the spent casing from the chamber I had to use a pencil in the muzzle to back out the spent casing.

As if this first outing with my new CW380 wasn't disappointing/frustrating enough once I got home and wrote a very descriptive email with pictures to Kahr's service@kahr.com email I was responded with a Mailer Daemon - Failure Notice. It appears Kahrs email provided on their website is useless. Does anyone have any helpful advice or contact information?

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[dustnchips]

There are stickies that go through suggested prep for a Kahr. Do them and it will probably help a lot. The firing pin/striker problem is probably due to debries from manufacturing in the striker channel. Dissassemble the slide (there is probably a stickie on that too) and clean out the channel. Go back to the range then and try again. Others will no doubt give more suggestions so keep checking back. I have a CW380 and took it to the range without doing the prep and had over a dozen problems during the first 100 rounds. I did the prep in the stickies and went back to the range. No more failures of any kind and I now have 700 trouble free rounds through it. Good luck,

[dustnchips]

The stickies are in the new member area. The three you need to do are Detail strip the slide, Prep of a new Kahr, and Lube for a Kahr. The titles I gave you are not exact, but you will recognize them.

[dustnchips]

I tried the slide strip link and got a run around so I found this one for you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi3VFRll2L4

[topgun1953]

If you dry fire Kahr's, the firing pin may or may not be protruding from the breech. It retracts when the slide comes forward. With the 380's, there is not enough space to allow the pin to retract if it is protruding and as you found, the casing gets hung up on it. What to do. Before inserting the magazine: Either turn the gun over and simply pull back on the 'foot' of the striker (it is not under tension) OR rack the slide 1/4 inch or so to reset the striker before locking the slide back to feed the first round. Kahr has cautioned me in the past about damaging strikers by not being careful so your's may break. I'm pretty good now....even with lakeline's 'stiker for life' solid steel version. Your first round should feed easily....what ammo were you using?

Welcome to the forum from NC!

[CT_Hunter]

Thanks for the information regarding the striker reset procedure. I now believe this was a user operational error that I hadn't experienced with me other Kahrs.
As for the slide I did break-down the entire slide and gave it a thorough cleaning. Boy was it dirty with metallic shavings. I also decided to polish portions of the extractor plungers and extractor. There was some bad serrations beginning to show from attempting to rack a round into the chamber unsuccessfully. I believe the real fix is the extractor didn't provide enough clearance for a round to actually fit and hold in the slide, so I used 600 grit sand paper to remove approx .005" from the inside of the peg on extractor to allow for more clearance. I saw on another post this was very successful for many others. I racked 4 full mags with 4 different brands of ammo, all loaded and ejected perfect. I hope this was the fix. I just need to get to the range now to hopefully start shooting it. I really love the CW380 but I'm not sure this should be expected for a brand new firearm. I was planning on sending it back to Kahr but they have yet to get back to me and in that time I am learning to fix it myself.

[CT_Hunter]

Update - I got out to the range today and successfully fired 50 Perfecta and 50 Winchester with 0 failures. I contribute this success from the procedure of removing .005" off the extractor which allowed rounds to cycle and extract much easier.
Unfortunately my reloads didn't want to cycle in the CW380. I will need to shorten the OAL just a tad to get them a little hotter.

[Bills1873]

Great CT! Good to hear you fixed it.

[RolandD]

Update - I got out to the range today and successfully fired 50 Perfecta and 50 Winchester with 0 failures. I contribute this success from the procedure of removing .005" off the extractor which allowed rounds to cycle and extract much easier.
Unfortunately my reloads didn't want to cycle in the CW380. I will need to shorten the OAL just a tad to get them a little hotter.

Perfecta is known to cause issues in the CW380 without modification.

[nmkahrshooter]

Welcome to the world of Kahr. They want you to finish up what they didn't do at the factory.