Monday, August 10, 2009

The Kimber Chronicles: Volume 1

For once, my own lousy shooting is not dragging my score down at the Friday Night Pistol League.

My bulleye pistol, -- a Kimber rimfire -- has decided that extracting spent shells from the chamber is no longer on the list of things it likes to do. Its an interesting malfunction as these go, given that this .22 like most others is a blowback design.

Spent shells remain completely in the chamber, or only partly extracted. The slide returns all the way back and strips a new round off the magazine and attempts to go into battery, but of course the new round gets hung up on the old casing that is still in the chamber.


And on the timed and rapid fire stages of the National Match Course, there aren't a lot of spare seconds to clear jams and barrel obstructions.

I called Kimber to discuss the problem with them, and they suggested that I send the pistol in so they could take a look at it.

The gentleman on the phone tells me that the Kimber warranty officially only covers the original purchaser for one year, but that if there's a manufacturing defect, they will fix it free of charge, which is a little confusing. I guess they get to decide what constitutes a manufacturing defect...

I will pay to send the pistol in, and it looks like they'll charge me for any repairs that are not related to manufacturing defects, but I think they'll pay to send it back.

On the off chance that one of my 2 readers owns a Kimber or is thinking of buying one, I'm going to document the process and let you know how it goes.

3 comments:

doubletrouble said...

If it does it all the time, it's a broken extractor; if intermittent, it's probably weak, dinged, or sprung.
It's a cheap fix- they should do it for free if the gun is relatively new.
Good luck!

Tam said...

Type III malfunction. Common to Ceine... er, "Kimber" rimfire 1911 top ends.

Piss-weak extractor + Dirt under extractor + Dirty or lead-fouled chamber (or any roughness in the chamber) = Lazy extraction.

MeatAxe said...

Hi Tam

You know, I'd buy the dirt argument, if I didn't scrub the hell out of the thing in precisely those areas before I shoot it. Im seeing jams after 10 rounds on a very clean gun.

My regimen includes such diverse elements as: I use gunscrubber, plus hoppes, plus I get under the extractor with a toothbrush, plus I clean the barrel and chamber with wipe out and a boresnake.

I did spend a while looking into the barrel with a bore light the other day, and there may be some roughness there... difficult for me to say for sure...

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