I live in Calif. and we have to put in a 10 day jail term on our firearms. I finally got to pick up my CW9 today. I brought it home and dissembled it for cleaning. It looked pretty good at first but on closer examination, it had crud and flashing everywhere!
There was flashing residue in everything and flashing residue hanging off every rail groove and everywhere else. I spent over 3 hours cutting off flashing with a razor and cleaning it alone! There were even tiny pieces of metal in the rails. No wonder people can have some reliability issues with these "economy Kahrs" if they don't clean these things completely.
I scrubbed out the barrel and more crud came out and there was more flashing residue! This thing was a flashing residue garbage pail!
I understand that Kahr makes these pistols "economy" but my gosh, their cuts in the costs of manufacturing of these pistols really are "cuts"!
Tomorrow, I will take apart the magazine to make sure the spring has been properly installed. Another economy cut? Jeez!
I'll take it to the range in the next couple of days and hopefully all my work will result in a reliable pistol. I'll report my findings here. I hope all my work results in a reliable one.
Update 8/15
Well, I took it to the range today and put 2 magazines through it. It looked like all my work paid off as it ran flawless with no malfunctions at all. I loaded up a 3rd magazine and took aim at the target but the front sight was gone! I looked all over for it but to no avail.
I came home and immediately called Kahr and that's when I really got ticked off. A service rep named Ken answered and I explained about all the flashing and crud and he just said that was normal and why Kahr recommends shooting 200 rounds through it to wear all the flashing away. Who the heck wants all kinds of flashing particles floating around in a semi auto handgun?
I then told him about the front sight flying off. He said to give him my address and they would send a new sight that I could solder back on. I told him that was unacceptable as I don't know how to solder and THEY were going to do it. He said send the slide back and they would put a new front sight on. I then said are they going to send me a prepaid return label? He said just wrap it up and send it to them.
After he hung up, I got to thinking, no, this is a brand new gun and again, THEY are going to pay to ship it back! I called back and asked for whomever was in charge but got Ken again and he said he was the only one there. I demanded Kahr pay for the shipping and he finally said they would. He said to send Kahr an e-mail at service@kahr.com and give them my address and they would send out a "one time" prepaid shipping label.
So, as a first time Kahr owner, these are my experiences with Kahr. Not the best for sure and I guess I'm just one of the unlucky ones. I think though Kahr should reevaluate their customer service because any good company would have just said they were sorry for my experience and they would e-mail me a prepaid return shipping label to print out and send the slide in and they would fix me right up.
So, if someone asks me concerning buying a Kahr, have I got a story to tell them.