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I joined the P380 broken striker club
I went to the range. I’m trying to be better about that. Aimed RA4xxx down range. Pulled trigger. Click - no bang. What? It never failed with good ammo before. Tap - rack...click. Tap - rack...click. RATS!
Pulled the other P380 out of the case. Bang..bang.....bang..bang....bang..bang....bang, all day long. (Or for 100 rounds, whichever came first.)
I ordered TWO strikers from Kahr, and two striker springs (and a guide, just in case). I did this even before I stripped the slide. Regular shipping was a couple of days.
Consistent with other reports, I did get some light strikes some time ago, but then the pistol worked fine. But after some thought, and stripping the slide - I have, perhaps a theory...or maybe an hypothesis.
When I stripped the slide, sure ‘nuff the striker was broken. I’m not set up for pics, but there are other pics on the forum. Same-same so it seems. However, I could not fit the two pieces back together. I would have to pry the main body of the striker open to get the business end to fit together. What I think may have happened in this circumstance is that stress fractures occurred in the weak(est) portion of the striker. The fractures may have gone all the way through and produced a two piece striker - and the thing may have still functioned! If the pieces were held together in the confines of the striker channel this (now group of parts) may have functioned for a while. The striker spacer (#21 on the Kahr diagram) merely pushes on the broken piece and the primer is usually struck hard enough. But sometimes, the forces on the system pushes the (now detached by fracture) ‘ears’ a bit outwards, dissipating some energy, and resulting in a light strike.
Eventually, the dynamic forces either abrade the fractured joint, or work the now detached ears enough, or just by random chance, the business end of the striker gets knocked completely out of position. Now we know we have a broken striker.
If this hypothesis is correct, even disassembly may not reveal the problem. Fractures in metal can be really tiny (microscopic). The thing that makes me think this might be the case (at least some of the time) is my experience of a previous episode of light strikes, and, other reports of episodic light strikes. The system seems too simple to have occasional light strikes unless something is really not right (like the added variable of a detached striker point).
On disassembly I noted two other anomalies.
The striker spring was a little ‘wigglely’. It was not like this at the previous slide disassembly. Also, the original spring had the same number of coils as a new replacement from Kahr, but measures 5/16" shorter.
Careful inspection of the striker spacer revealed a tiny burr on the outside radius near the trailing edge. This was corrected and the part was recycled (‘cause I didn’t have another one and wanted to take the gun to the range with the new striker and spring). I don’t remember this being there on any previous disassembly, but I wasn’t looking as closely as I am now.
The striker in the Kahr 380 is, for at least a small sample, problematic. My RA4xxx was not purchased new. Perhaps the PO had a problem. Perhaps the PO dry fired it too much. Perhaps I did.
At the range:
RA4xxx, with a new striker and striker spring worked flawlessly (for 100+ rounds). I have new recoil springs on order. No dry firing in the future for this P380.
The future:
I ordered a spare striker. At the moment I consider strikers a ‘wear-out’ part. At the moment, I think would be good to replace a striker at the first sign of an otherwise inexplicable light strike.
There may be something fundamentally ‘unscalable’ in the Kahr design. There may be some unaccounted for dynamic forces in the very compact spaces of the 380. There may be nothing wrong at all, except some tolerances may be all go the wrong direction at the same time. There may be a single cause for the seemingly higher than expected striker failures in Kahr 380. But there may not be a single cause. Eventually someone will figure it out.
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