Kahr Quality Control

[RedRyder]

I'm new to this forum and to my P9 (which has been flawless) and I'm fascinated at the posts on new weapons coming out of Kahr with problems requiring work or sending back to factory. It sounds like they have GREAT customer service but I would think better QC up front would not only cost them less money but would keep customers and dealers happier in the long run. Both of the LGS here in my town have nothing good to say about Kahrs and only order them on customer demand.

I purchased a used P9 that was virtually new and I wondered if previous owner had a problem with it but fortunately I have never had a FTF or FTE. I absolutely love the size and feel and it has already become my CCW for everyday use.

Can't help but believe Kahr's sales would increase with better dealer support and initial customer satisfaction. Just my opinion but I've been wrong more than once .

[Deano]

I agree. I would own a P380 already for front pocket carry as backup were it not for all the problems they have had. I may get one, but first I'll make sure it's a very late SN model. Working out my problems with the CM9 7 round mags cost me about 4 boxes of ammo. Not cheap. That said, now that it's working great, I can't think of another 9mm I'd rather have for CC.

[Markis82]

I'm new to this forum and to my P9 (which has been flawless) and I'm fascinated at the posts on new weapons coming out of Kahr with problems requiring work or sending back to factory. It sounds like they have GREAT customer service but I would think better QC up front would not only cost them less money but would keep customers and dealers happier in the long run. Both of the LGS here in my town have nothing good to say about Kahrs and only order them on customer demand.

I purchased a used P9 that was virtually new and I wondered if previous owner had a problem with it but fortunately I have never had a FTF or FTE. I absolutely love the size and feel and it has already become my CCW for everyday use.

Can't help but believe Kahr's sales would increase with better dealer support and initial customer satisfaction. Just my opinion but I've been wrong more than once .

You are just experiencing "forum envy." LOL No... With forums like this you see and hear about the problems. However, you do not see and hear about all the non-problems. If you look at all the guns sold and compair that to the amount of problems you'd see the % of problems to be very low.

[lowroad]

think of the tens of thousands of them out there (maybe probably hundreds of thousands), and what, maybe a couple dozen problems reported on here? I know it sucks if you're one of the couple dozen, been there before, but the numbers are damned good.

[Longitude Zero]

In the early 90's I bought a Sig. It fired 50 rounds before it sheared a frame rail. It can happen to any manufacturer at any time.

[Tilos]

The way I see it:
Any new Kahr owners that have NO PROBLEMS, never search for a website to find out about what's wrong or whine about their problems.

ALL the whiners end up here and very few of the happy campers.
YMMV

[flashman]

I wonder if Kahr made the P380 an all steel pistol. Probably add around 4 or 5 more ounces to the gun. It might also fix a lot of problems with it too. My wife and I have P380's with 250 rounds each in the guns. So far so good. We will see.


Joe Flashman

[CJB]

Some thoughts from someone who's been there done that (sort of) in manufacturing.

No matter how well something is designed, if you're mass producing it, then you're gonna have a headache, especially... oh boy... ESPECIALLY if you farm stuff out, or vendor stuff in.

Total speculation on my part, but lets take Kahr. They know their design is good. So how are things impacted to the negative? They may have one single cut on the slide, which is "off", but happens to perhaps 500 slides before they realize, as its not effecting their off the line testing, but they get complaints from end users, and track down the problem. Say... tooling wore out faster, or fixturing was mis-adjusted... or they changed a set up and the CNC programming didn't quite make the grade. All sorts of things can happen. Now they have a lot of guns - many of which went out the door... with potential problems. Is it danerous? Engineering gets with legal... they conclude no, so no recall is issued. Instead, problems will be taken care of "as they happen". Thats with one little cut being off... say.... the bevel at the bottom of the breech face, for instance.

Now take farmed out metal work, farmed out polymer, and farmed out magazines. Now you have a real potential can of worms. You have mechanical, physical tolerances, AND you have material properties, AND you have final finish (ie, heat treatment) all to contend with. You find that your polymer was changed slightly. The molding vendor was assured by their plastics vendor that there is no difference (right....). Or maybe they weren't informed of any materials change at all. All of a sudden we got mushy frames on P380's (SPECULATION!!!). Maybe your heat treat vendor got your extractors too brittle. Maybe your steel supplier got a bad run of whatever grade the slide is made from....it all is an endless chain of recurrent sets of little issues that keeps the production manager VERY busy.

So what happens? Tiny problem... but its compounded by the vast numbers of items produced. You got a bad (whatever) x 500 or 1000 or 2500 units. You dont recall, as there is no danger, but you gotta deal with all the issues.

And thats where the forum comes into play. Lots to learn...

[Cokeman]

The way I see it:
Any new Kahr owners that have NO PROBLEMS, never search for a website to find out about what's wrong or whine about their problems.

ALL the whiners end up here and very few of the happy campers.
YMMV

Have you noticed that people on other forums that have Kahrs love them? Very few complaints. You really only hear the problems here for the reasons noted above.

[deadhead1971]

My 2009 PM9 runs great. It has NOT been flawless but I have not had a jam in over 500-800 rds. I can't remember. Got about 3,400 rds through it

[johnh]

I really think the members above are right, forums tend to magnify problem cases because customers without issues are not as inclined to go online looking for help. They may post about accessories, customizing, etc., but are not as motivated as someone trying to resolve an issue.

[hardluk1]

I don't think there is anymore problems with Kahr than other major labels. New products from many tend to have some growing pains in todays market as production has kinda maxed for most. I do also feel that to many people new or fairly new to firearms buy them and have a minor issue and then fall apart over it on these forums . Lots of great info here too for many to help if common sence can just get thru. That can also happen to some seasoned shooters new to small handguns. It seems that most of the problems real or not tend to end up on these forums and the whinning begains instead of contacting the company and trying to work thru it. Limp wristing for some ,lack of cleaning and basic maintaning and understanding for others. Then the small percentage of guns that have real problems.

I never thought much about owning a Kahr till a very seasoned shooter had a "problem" cw9 for sale cheap. I read up on it here cleaned it well and lubed and shoot the next 600 rounds with not a single issue or cleaning. Turn around and also bought cm9, Both great pistols. About 2000 rounds fired between them now and still 100%.

The one thing that hurts any firearm company is that small percentage of buyers that gets all pissed over a small issue and trades it off on something else. Leaveing what could be a pistol that may have a simple problem that could have been fixed is now in a shop for someone else to buy . In my 43 years of owning firearms I have never had a real problem with a firearm.

[jocko]

I think CJB explainedit in engineering terms and HARDLUK1 EXPLAINED IT IN FORUM TERMS. uR GONNA see the bitchs here first. The nature of the beast.Some might indeed be legitimate to and that is where "warranty and good service comeinto play. I do think kahrs has excellent service, no doubt some don't. I hate it when people tend to judge kahrs based on the teethng issues of the P380, which we know they indeed had, but as time goes on we are seeing far more positive reports of new owners than we did 3 months back. Vendor related product issues are not solved over night. My son is an engineer with Cummins and part of his job is quality control and they do alot of warranty work to, and changes to a product just takes time and new testing befrore anything is allowed to progress forward.

I know from talking to some friends inside kahr to that some return issues are found to be no issue, TRY TELLING THAT TO THE OWNER.Kahrs are small ass guns, they require alittle more propper handling that some of the bigger guns, Some owners adjust well to them, some never do and usually it is the later that posts on every gun forum the negatives. Again the nature of the beast. We kahr owners seem to know when a newbie comes on here with a issue/complaint if it is valid or not, but again sometimes we (myself)_ included dont' cut this new person enough slack and tend to come down alittle hard and then things go down hill real fast.

I just fired my K9 today 200 rounds 50 with some TUL AMMO and I had 2 rounds that juy st would not go bang PERIOD. I pitched them in the woods, the rest were ok,although I did have a couple that did not go bang the first time but did so after that. I then fired 150 wwb with zero issues. The TUL ammo is steel cased and for the price I am cool with those few bad rounds, but I would not recommend it from my experience.It is what it is,so I accept that. I have never had an issue with American brand ammo of any brand, WWB is my preference due to availibiliyt and price. It is not a dirty round IMO either..

My two TUL rounds were indeed good primer strikes to, actualy looked the same as the ones that went bang the first ti8me. I just attribute this to poor quality control in the primer dept. U normally get what u pay for.

[O'Dell]

I have had seven Kahrs in the last five years, and none have had to go back because they all worked fine, even during break in. Of course, like all my guns, they had a proper prep before I shot them.

[QuercusMax]

The way I see it:
Any new Kahr owners that have NO PROBLEMS, never search for a website to find out about what's wrong or whine about their problems.

ALL the whiners end up here and very few of the happy campers.
YMMV

Well darn it then, I want to register a formal complaint about how my MK9 has not had ANY problems since I got it! I feel cheated!

But seriously, one can very easily get a distorted view of things because usually only the bad things are reported (like watching the news on TV), although I would also note that there are a lot of people who DO write in to say "I just got my new XXXX and put 50 rounds through it with no FTE's, etc" as though that is remarkable.