Disassembly and Reassembly Of the Kahr P-Series Pistols

Kahr Arms has been turning out precision-made, compact double-action-only (DAO) pistols in 9mm, .40 S&W, or .45 ACP for years. Civilians who’ve purchased them for personal defense appreciate their durability, simplicity, and ease of use. And with the factors of reliability and flawless performance, the appreciation is shared by numerous lawenforcement agencies. The latest addition from Kahr Arms is the palm-sized P380.

Don’t jump to the conclusion that the P380 is the weak sister in the Kahr family because of its caliber. While the bullet is lighter and the case is smaller than the 9mm, the bullet diameter is the same and some of the test results I’ve seen show that .380 hollowpoints outperformed 9mm FMJs for accuracy. What Kahr has come up with here is a "short nine" that weighs a touch over half a pound, is less than 5 inches long, just 4 inches tall, and only 3/4 inch wide. It carries six rounds, and comes with two magazines.

When it becomes available, the P380 will be able to accommodate the .380+P round. And why not? All other Kahr pistols can accept +P rounds. I’m betting that when the +P gets tagged onto commercial .380 ammo, gun writers will stop referring to the P380 as the "Mini-Kahr" and start calling it "the mouse that roars." (Note to self: When .380+P ammo gets into circulation, buy a few recoil springs for the P380 to keep in inventory.

The hotter loads are sure to wear down the OEM spring faster than ordinary .380s.) Like the other pistols in the Kahr P-Series, the P380 is a locked-breech design, which may help explain its minimal felt recoil in a handgun this light. The P380 has no conventional external safety, so it can’t be sold in certain states requiring external safeties, despite its being DAO, strikerfired, and fitted with an integral striker block.

The striker block works like this: A spring-loaded block projects into a recess in the striker to keep it from moving forward until the trigger has been pulled fully to the rear. 45 ACP (shown here), a .40 S&W, and 9mm versions’plus anew .380 that’s less than 5 inches long, 4 inches tall, and weighs just 10 ounces empty. The only downside to the system is the seldom-if-ever-encountered dud cartridge. How seldom encountered?

I can’t recall the last time I heard nothing but the dull click of a firing pin on the primer of good quality centerfire ammo. Should a dud round ever get into the P380s chamber, however, the shooter must rack the slide to expel the offender, chamber a good replacement, and re-cock the action’ an exercise the recoil spring of this pistol makes none too easy. The instructions and schematic

drawing included here apply to all Pand TP-Series Kahr Arms pistols, regardless of caliber. (I used the P45 in preparing this article, but it’s identical to the P380 except in size and proportions.) For the most part, you can use these same instructions when working with the Kahr CWand PM- Series pistols; they’re almost identical to the Pand PM-Series pistols’ with a few exceptions that are clearly spelled out in the owner’s manuals that come with the pistols.

Of course, the owner of the pistol didn’t bring you the manual, did he? You can send him home to get it (if he hasn’t thrown it away), or own by calling Kahr or by visiting the com www. kahr.com). Field Stripping With the left side of the frame facing you, the magazine out, and the chamber clear, insert your thumb between the front of the trigger and the triggerguard. Draw the slide to the rear so the relief mark on it aligns with its twin on the frame.

When they’re lined up, the slide stop and its frame cutout must be likewise. If they’re not, you can’t proceed with the disassembly, since you can’t remove the slide stop. Now wrap your fingers (of the hand with its thumb through the guard) over the slide to keep the stop and cutout in line. This gets pretty tough. That recoil spring is going to test your determination, because you now have to bend your wrist so you can get at the right side of the frame.

The stud end of the slide stop is located under the ejection port and above the trigger. The plastic handle of a small screwdriver will be helpful in getting the stop moving to the left. When removed completely, it’s withdrawn from the left side of the frame. Control any movement of the slide forward under tension from the recoil spring. This next step is important: Pull the trigger to release the striker and let the trigger return before pushing the slide off the frame. Now invert the slide.

Compress the recoil spring (#5) toward the muzzle slightly by pressing the back end of the guide (#6) until it clears the barrel lug. Grasp the lug, nudge it forward, and then lift to remove the barrel to the rear. I always mention a serious concern to keep in mind when cleaning firearms with major components made of polymer. After they’ve been field stripped, never use a harsh aerosol such as carburetor cleaner to clean a frame, trigger group, or slide unless you’ve checked with the gun’s manufacturer first.

Some plastics are immune to these products and others aren’t. In some cases, what’s just dandy for cleaning automobile carburetors and brake drums can actually melt a frame, a slide, or a firing mechanism. Fortunately, there are effective products available that eliminate this possibility. I reported on one of Removing the plate-retaining pin (arrow) requires a special homemade tool described in the text.

them, Poly Dunk, a few years ago. It’s available in a bucket large enough to allow the total immersion of a pistol frame and it does a terrific job. Poly- Dunk is the brain at Cylinder & Slide I believe Brownell Detailed Disassembly of the Slide Invert the slide and insert a small tool between the backplate (#4) and the rear of the striker-spring guide (#23). The back end of the guide seats in a recess in the plate.

Push the guide far enough forward to clear it from the recess and leave the tool in place to hold the guide forward. The rear extractor pin (#27) is located in a hole about a third of the way up the right rear of the slide. Insert a jeweler’s screwdriver in the opening and depress the pin. Don’t expect any significant movement as a result and don’t try for any. It doesn’t take much before you can start moving the backplate upward enough to capture the pin along with the recoil-spring guide.

Place your thumb over the back plate. Keep it there while removing the small tool and pushing the plate upward. There’s another job for the thumb to do: It has to cover the rear extractorpin hole when the hole gets uncovered in the plate removal. This avoids the loss of the extractor pin, its spring (#26), the striker-spring guide, its spring (#22), and eliminates having any of them hit you in the kisser.

The striker block (#7) is located just forward of the back plate slot and releases the striker (#20) when the trigger is fully pulled. For the present purpose, depress the block and remove the striker. When you sharply tilt the rear of the slide and tap it on your bench, the front extractor pin (#25), extractor spring, and rear extractor pin should fall out. If, after additional depressing of the block and tapping, there’s no sign of them, you have a really dirty pistol on your hands. Press on regardless.

Using caution, detach the extractor (#24) from the front extractor pin and push the stuck-in parts to the rear with a dental pick or some other skinny implement until you can pull them from the slide Kahr P-Series Double-Action-Only Pistol (Specifications subject to change without notice) 1 Polymer Frame 2 Barrel 3 Slide 4 Backplate 5 Recoil Spring 6 Recoil Spring Guide 7 Striker Block 8 Striker Block Spring 9 Trigger 10 Trigger Spring 11 Trigger Spacer 12 Trigger Pivot Pin 13 Trigger Bar 14 Trigger Bar Spring 15 Cocking Cam 16 Cocking Cam Spring 17 Magazine Catch Body 18 Magazine Catch Spring 20 Striker 21 Striker Spacer 22 Striker Spring 23 Striker Spring Guide 24 Extractor 25 Extractor Pin (front) 26 Extractor Spring 27 Extractor Pin (rear) 28 Slide Stop 29 Slide Stop Spring 30 Slide Stop Spring Screw/Washer 31 Ejector 32 Cocking Cam Pivot Pin 33 Rear Sight 34 Front Sight 35 Magazine Body 36 Magazine Spring 37 Magazine Base Lock 38 Magazine Base 39 Magazine Follower 40 Sideplate 41 Sideplate Pin

The screw requires a #6 Torx wrench to remove and reinstall. with your fingertips. Turn the slide right-side up and tap it on a padded surface to dislodge the striker block. Detailed Disassembly Of the Frame Have the following tools standing by: a 1/16-inch cup-pin punch, a jeweler’s screwdriver, a dental pick (or something like it), smooth-jaw longnose pliers, a tongue depressor, and a couple of baby screwdrivers. I’ll tell you how to modify each as well as when and how they’re used. But wait.

Some Kahrs have polymer frames and some are made of steel. All steelframe Kahr pistols have grips. If you remove the grips, you can get at the internal parts. Not so with the polymer-frame models. They have a sideplate (#40) and a sideplate pin (#41). Before you go after the sideplate pin the wrong way and damage the frame, modify one of those baby screwdrivers. Start with one with a small, thin blade.

File or grind a square notch 1/16-inch wide by 1/8-inch deep in the middle of the blade, and then bend it slightly to resemble a tack puller. On its right end, the sideplate pin has ahead. Its left end doesn’t protrude very much from the right side. It looks more like a dimple. Center the cup-pin punch over the dimple and tap it gently to the right until the headed end of the pin has been raised out of contact with the frame enough to slip your freshly made "tack puller" between them.

The shaft of the pin will fit in the notch you made in the blade. Be gentle now. Pry up the pin until you can pull it all the way out with your fingers. This should result in a gap between the sideplate and the frame. You may have to sand down a tongue depressor to do this, but it has to slide between the plate and the frame until it’s about halfway across the plate width. The plate, you see, is held to the frame by a couple of polymer tabs.

Rocking the tongue depressor carefully with a twisting motion will encourage the tabs to let go and the plate can be lifted free. This will give you a clear picture of the undisturbed Kahr innards. Make drawings, take pictures, or do whatever is necessary to help you remember what you see. This is the way things have to look after reassembly. The trigger-bar spring (#14) can be released from the frame by reaching under the spring with the dental pick.

As for the trigger (#9), its spring (#10), and its spacer (#11), they’re all held together by the trigger-pivot pin (#12). On steel-frame pistols, this pin fits very tightly and will never shoot loose, but the pin has had a tendency to loosen in polymer-frame models. To eliminate the problem, a very tiny pin has been added to fit in an equally tiny groove next to the trigger and is not shown on the schematic.

But the addition of this pin requires that the trigger-pivot pin be driven straight out from left to right and straight in from right to left. As soon as you drift out the trigger pin, the trigger spring and spacer will probably fall from the frame. To reinstall them, you have to modify another screwdriver. Its blade should be wide enough to span the entire spacer. File or grind an arc in the blade that just fits over the raised collar of the spacer, and then set your new assembly tool aside until later.

At the moment, I’m assuming that

the trigger and its associated parts are on your bench and in a parts tray with other, previously removed components. Now take out the trigger bar to the rear from the right-hand side of the frame. Next come the cocking cam (#15), its spring (#16), the ejector (#31), and the cocking-cam pivot (#32). This pivot seats in a blind hole. Fortunately, you can get a jeweler’s screwdriver under the pivot’s head and pry it upward cautiously.

It’s only a slip fit. (Thank you, Kahr engineers, for not giving usa press fit or other permanent means of securing this pin to the frame.) With the pivot removed, the cam, the spring, and the ejector will drop free. With a steel-frame Kahr pistol, the magazine catch is disassembled and reassembled like a Model 1911. On polymer-frame pistols, it’s treated like a Glock. Reach up inside the magazine well with a dental pick and disconnect the magazine-catch spring (#18) from the catch (#17).

Afterward, you can push out the catch, but leave the spring attached to the frame. Reassembly Tips The beveled end of the front extractor pin must face away (outward) from the slide. The striker block is rein- Fabricating the special tool required (from a small screwdriver) is described in the text. Figure 1. stalled before and retained by the extractor assembly and striker. Study Figure 1 as a reference.

In addition to the driver with the radius, you’ll want a slave pin slightly smaller in diameter than the trigger pivot. Insert the trigger up through the guard and start the slave in from the left to maintain the trigger’s frame relationship. Capture the spacer on the slave. There’s a flat on the spacer. It seats on the bottom of the trigger. Connect the front of the trigger bar to the trigger. Capture the trigger spring on the slave. The straight leg of the spring should point upward.

Using the driver with the radius-cut blade, lightly press down on the spring and spacer to align them with the triggerpin hole. Push the slave through until it’s flush with the right side of the frame, and stick a small piece of tape on both right and left ends of the slave to keep it in place temporarily. Pinch the trigger bar between the fingers of one hand. Your free fingers can be used to install the one leg of the triggerbar spring under the end of the bar. The other end fits into its frame slot.

Though I’ve neglected to mention it until now, an alligator clip comes in handy for holding the bar in place while you go about rebuilding the cocking cam/ spring/ejector assembly. There’s a small hole in one side of the cocking cam. The end of the cam spring lives in that hole. House it anywhere else and you can’t get the pistol back together without causing damage to the spring. Once the spring is properly in place, line it and the cam up with the ejector.

Push the pivot pin through them to reinstall the complete assembly in the frame. Now remove the tape, the alligator clip, drift out the slave pin with the trigger pivot, and snap on the sideplate and reinsert its pin. All the interior work is easier with a steel-frame Kahr. These you can secure in a vise with protected jaws, leaving both hands available. A polymer frame doesn’t get along as well with a vise’ padded jaws or no padded jaws.

Nevertheless, I found this polymer-frame pistol would accept a gentle squeeze applied to the sides of the recoil spring tunnel just forward of the trigger guard. How much squeeze? Just enough to keep the frame steady and both my hands free. Another thing comes to mind: When you finally reassemble the pistol, its slide might come to a sudden stop in the process of reunion with the frame. Why? The nose of the ejector has gotten in the way. Press down on the ejector and the problem will disappear.

Check out the function of the pistol and, if a range is close by, test fire it. If a range is nowhere nearby, you could buy a commercial bullet trap or (continued on page 20)

you could simply get a 55-gallon drum and fill it to the brim with water. The water-filled drum will be all right for handguns’as long as you fire straight down into the liquid. In previous articles on Kahr pistols, I’ve talked about the necessity for a 200-round break-in period. That’s a minimum of 200 rounds, regardless of caliber. As for which particular brand of ammo to use, Kahr doesn’t endorse one and neither do I. Take several brands to a range and see which one the pistol likes best.

Accuracy and reliability will tell the shooter which brand the pistol prefers. How about reloads? Like almost all gun makers, Kahr says don’t use them. But they’re 100-percent dead set against the use of lead bullets. When lead enters the equation, reloads or otherwise, it demands extra attention to cleaning and the bore should be attended to immediately after firing any non-jacketed slugs. I’ll end this paragraph by referring back to the minimum 200-round break-in.

I have yet to come upon a Kahr of any caliber with a feeding problem that has been put through this break-in" unless the problem has been caused by the dreaded "limp wrist. Frequently Asked Questions Here are the answers to some questions you might be asked: Q: "What if I still have feeding problems after the break-in period?" A: The break-in requires a minimum of 200 rounds. Do some more brand testing to be certain you’ve at least reached the minimum.

If a problem still persis s Customer Service Q: "My pistol fails to chamber the first round when I rack and release the slide. What’s wrong?" A: The shooter is either not pulling the slide all the way back or he’s riding it forward. Tell him to try locking back the slide, inserting the magazine, and releasing the slide via the slide stop. This will mean carrying a gun with its chamber loaded, but the passive safety system on a Kahr prevents discharge unless the trigger is pulled’even when the pistol is dropped.

Q: "My slide locks back after every round. What’s wrong?" A: Either the slide-stop spring is damaged or the magazine follower is broken. They’ll have to be replaced. Q: "I’ve read that the slide-stop spring on Kahr polymer-frame pistols is easily bent. How do I protect it?" A: Insert the slide-stop pin at the 4 o’clock position and slowly rotate it to the 3 o’clock position before pushing it through the frame.

Q: "Why is it so hard to release the slide on an empty magazine?" A: The slide release has been designed to warn the user when the magazine is empty by holding the slide open. Under this condition, the release is very hard to depress. Remove the empty magazine, replace it with a loaded one, and depressing the release will be much easier. Q: "How about custom-carry modifications for my pistol?" A: Kahr do ut Cylinder & Slide does. None of their cust s the warranty.

For example, one package includes a recrowned barrel for better accuracy, a throated and polished feedramp, a radiused and tensioned extractor, plus a smoother, lighter trigger pull. Additional packages can be added including tritium night sights, beveled edges and corners, even a high polishing of the slide. I’m told that Cylinder & Slide is up to their ears in custom work. So advise your customer there’s no sense in shipping a pistol until after he talks to someone at Cylinder & Slide.

A rep will go over the packages and prices, give the gun owner an idea of when they’ll be able to schedule the work. In the meantime, the gun owner will have ample time to get that minimum of 200 rounds out of the barrel of his new Kahr. I