JusTom said:
I spoke with a longtime employee about the problem and I was told that there was a problem with a batch of material and that the engineers had thickened the guide hole by .008" and they were using a different type drill to do that step.
Here's a few stat's that he threw out and I was impressed.
Kel Tec manufactures 110,000 guns a year and has had problems with less than 5% of them
Only Ruger and Glock make more guns a year.
http://www.ktog.org/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1196519291/19#19
Based upon serial numbers, we calculated that the affected pistols were from a period when about 30,000 slides were made. I would image they do have some kind of batch identification in place but in a case like this, that wouldn't matter. I don't think they could very well recall 30,000 pistols and throw away the slides because 1500 (5%) might peen
if they are shot enough and a handful might actually fail (boing). Outside of ktog, I bet the average P3AT owner does not shoot the gun much. Most, I bet,
may get a box of ammo run through them before they hit the sock drawer. The price attracts a lot of folks who just want to keep a gun around the house. Peening was/is a big deal at ktog, and looking at it through the eyes of someone with a bad slide, it seems like an atrocity. But out of those 30,000 slides, I bet they have only had to replace a couple hundred or so (SWAG). In the big picture, it only makes sense to replace a few slides as they trickle in rather than dumping 30,000 slides in the gulf, 28,500 of which are perfectly fine.
torrent said:
All they would have had to do was fire 500 rounds through a few test pistols and the peening problem would have become apparent.
I know they test fire a few rounds through each gun before shipping it. I don't know if they still "torture test" pistols that have been in production for 5 years; probably they do to some degree. However, at this low failure rate, they would have to shoot hundreds of rounds through 25-30 pistols from that period to find
one that was going to peen. Peening to failure (spring pops out) was probably some
very small fraction of a percent. You can't torture test a large enough percentage of production to quickly find an issue that may only surface after several hundred rounds in such a small percentage of the guns. No doubt the service department tipped off the engineers about this issue long before QC would have found it.
I'm very glad they allowed you to purchase a new HC slide and return yours for a refund. I know folks who were refused when they asked for that deal. That CS employee's job was to tell you to "send it in". Once everyone reads this, I'm sure she'll be sorry. Starting tomorrow, anyone that needs any new part will want to buy one and return theirs later for a refund. When told that is not company policy, they'll say, "But I heard on ktog..." KT CS probably hates us on certain Monday mornings. :-/
30,000 slides go through before someone acknowledges there is a recurring problem? I'm a huge fan and love my p11 but I hate that keltec was unable to catch this problem before now. 
