Lowjiber
New member
My range buddy is an avid shooter and a big Kimber fan. He recently purchased a new Kimber Solo 9mm to replace his current CC piece.
He performed a general cleaning before taking it to the range. On the very first round downrange, the pistol ejected the cartridge and the slide locked back as though the magazine was empty. Releasing the slide allowed the next round to chamber, but it continued to malfunction with each round fired. We examined the magazine (it only comes with one) and could see no defects.
He called Kimber and they suspected that he had not installed the tear-down pin under the small spring as noted in the owner manual. He was sure he had followed the manual during the initial cleaning, but reinstalled the pin and we went back to the range...same problem.
(I'll add that the pistol is designed to operate with 124 grain (minimum) cartridges, and he was firing 147 grain ammo.)
He sent the gun back to Kimber. When it returned two weeks later with a nice letter saying that the gun was just "tight", we went back to the range. This time, he didn't disassemble the gun beforehand. Same problem. The pistol is effectively a single-shot weapon.
He's sending it back again today.:fie:
We all know Kimber makes fine guns that are machined to close tolerances, but this one seems unreasonable.
Has anyone had similar issues with the Solo?
He performed a general cleaning before taking it to the range. On the very first round downrange, the pistol ejected the cartridge and the slide locked back as though the magazine was empty. Releasing the slide allowed the next round to chamber, but it continued to malfunction with each round fired. We examined the magazine (it only comes with one) and could see no defects.
He called Kimber and they suspected that he had not installed the tear-down pin under the small spring as noted in the owner manual. He was sure he had followed the manual during the initial cleaning, but reinstalled the pin and we went back to the range...same problem.
(I'll add that the pistol is designed to operate with 124 grain (minimum) cartridges, and he was firing 147 grain ammo.)
He sent the gun back to Kimber. When it returned two weeks later with a nice letter saying that the gun was just "tight", we went back to the range. This time, he didn't disassemble the gun beforehand. Same problem. The pistol is effectively a single-shot weapon.
He's sending it back again today.:fie:
We all know Kimber makes fine guns that are machined to close tolerances, but this one seems unreasonable.
Has anyone had similar issues with the Solo?