[thesurety]

I bought a brand new kel-tech p3at and i was suspicious of it after reading ALL the posts about it. So I took it to a gun smith and had an super sonic or ultra sonic cleaning or whatever and had the burrs removed and I had the feed ramp polished. I took it to the range and put 80 rounds down the tube and then when i pulled the trigger the hammer failed to drop. And at that time my heart sank. I was so happy with the accuracy of this gun (for some reason i shot amazingly well with it) and the reliability until that damn thing broke. I sent it back to kel-tech and im extremely curious to see what they do and what they send back. I wrote them a letter saying what was wrong with it and i asked them if i could get my money back instead of them fixing it because upon further consideration I'd rather get something like a ruger lcr or a walther ppk

 

[JFB]

did the trigger just go back and forth with little resistance or
did the trigger lock up and could not be pulled back to rotate the hammer back.
did you try pulling the trigger after chambering another round

 

[PshootR]

Ruger LCR or LCP?
Isn't the LCR their polymer frame revolver?
The LCP is almost an exact copy of the P-3AT BTW.
PPKs are big, heavy and expensive compared to the P3-AT.

 

[Picatinny_Pete]

... I was so happy with the accuracy of this gun (for some reason i shot amazingly well with it) and the reliability until that damn thing broke. I sent it back to kel-tech and im extremely curious to see what they do and what they send back. I wrote them a letter saying what was wrong with it and i asked them if i could get my money back instead of them fixing it because upon further consideration I'd rather get something like a ruger lcr or a walther ppk

Hi,

I hope things go well for you with you P3AT.  I would read the following links though if you think an LCR is top notch quality though:

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2010/05/24/ruger-lcr-kaboom/

http://forums.officer.com/forums/sh...oblems&s=a2636a42532bf65f87cab7d78fcadc52

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0h3tz4pAF0[/ame]

Many pistols and revolvers have their flaws, and things do break, as the above links for the LCR show.  I  think your P3AT will come back fine from the factory especially since it functioned fine for the first 80 rounds.

Best Wishes:  

 

[thesurety]

To address the 1st guys question when i pulled the trigger all the way back it was very easy to pull it all the way but the hammer still wouldnt drop. To address the lcr issue, that guy with the flame cutting issue had a bad gun off a defective line, but me personally, i would get the lcr 357 mag because the parts that aren't polymer are stainless steel.

I am very intersted to see what keltec sends me back, im just so pissed because i was on cloud 9 because i was so stoked that i had one that worked but it just had to break [email protected] kel-tec, "I love you, you're awful".

 

[JFB]

To address the 1st guys question when i pulled the trigger all the way back it was very easy to pull it all the way but the hammer still wouldnt drop. ...

that might have been a build up in the trigger bar cam slot in the slide either crud or impact distortion from the trigger bar cam. I have experanced both build up from spent carbon and a slight ding from the cam that were corrected by cleaning and scraping

or the hammer needed to be reset by racking the slide, especially if you have the original design hammer block and you short stroke the trigger

or the trigger axis pin backed out, (the ultra sonic cleaning could have desolved the securing compound) did you look at the back of the trigger to see if that pin had backed out a little bit?

 

[oldgranpa]

I have to agree with JFB. I wouldn't give any handgun an "ultrasonic" cleaning job. In reality this is a very severe cleaning treatment for the close tolerance parts in a handgun. Think you'll find that's what messed it up. Critical parts are now dry-as-a-bone and will not work smoothly.
og

 

[TxCajun]

or the trigger axis pin backed out, (the ultra sonic cleaning could have desolved the securing compound)  did you look at the back of the trigger to see if that pin had backed out a little bit?

That's what it maybe sounds like. Since the OP sent it back I'll just post this for future reference.

http://www.1bad69.com/keltec/triggerpin.htm

 

[JFB]

..I wouldn't give any handgun an "ultrasonic" cleaning job. In reality this is a very severe cleaning treatment for the close tolerance parts in a handgun. Think you'll find that's what messed it up. Critical parts are now dry-as-a-bone and will not work smoothly.
og

while a little more precission than a gun, I abused and used a brown&sharp caliper that I carried in coverall pocket for 20 years. It occasional got dunked in a varsoil bath, but I tried an ultrasonic once and that was its death

 

[thesurety]

or the trigger axis pin backed out, (the ultra sonic cleaning could have desolved the securing compound) did you look at the back of the trigger to see if that pin had backed out a little bit?

No i didn't , I'm not mechanically inclined, the only thing i did was sent it back to kel-tec, i dont think im going to shave my bush untill the gun returns, but i guess i shouldn't have gotten an ultrasonic cleaning

 

[TxCajun]

but i guess i shouldn't have gotten an ultrasonic cleaning

I thought that was for jewelry. :-/

 

[Jimbo_47]

That old saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!".... Comes to mind when I read this!

Not saying you were wrong for doing that, and I almost got caught up in the same thing just before I bought mine, thinking I needed to do all the "fluff and buff" before hand to avoid the problems I had read about.

After I had purchased the gun I inspected it and decided that I wouldn't do anything other than work the slide by hand a couple hundred times, and then field strip it, and clean all the factory lube and replace with my own, and while I had it down I polished the feed ramp just a little, and put it back together and went to the range.

Granted I've only fired 50 rounds and had no problems and have cleaned it and if I can fire another 50 without issues I'll call it good.

If you think about it there aren't that many people that have had issues and the one's they have can a lot of times be traced to operator error.

Just my observations and 2 cnts. worth!