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Old November 13, 2012, 02:08 PM   #13
Sevens
Senior Member
 
Join Date: July 28, 2007
Location: Ohio
Posts: 11,755
NOTE: it is NOT my intention to sour anyone's love for their pistol. Truly. I simply want to share my experience purely with the idea that knowledge is power and it might be helpful to anyone who reads it.

I was loaned a pre-polymer Taurus PT-22 with the pretty rosewood grips that wouldn't run properly to try and investigate. Gun was sold new in November, '06. Had about 1,000 rounds through it.

I found that while the pistol was designed to have two of those little "fingers" contacting the underside of the slide to impart recoil spring power, one was NOT there. In carefully removing the grip panels, I found the one on the left side had broken off and the top 20% was missing. As a result, the slide was returning to battery with only 50% of it's designed spring power and the pistol was lucky to make two consecutive shots without failing.

I called Taurus and asked for them to please send me the part as I wasn't interested in sending them the pistol. She agreed if I gave her the serial number of the gun, which I did. Then-- I asked her very nicely if she could simply send me two of them, since it was such a small, basic part -- it would have to have been low in cost. And she did, they arrived in plain envelope in the mail VERY quickly. I was happy with Taurus' service in this instance. (the only time I've used Taurus' service)

Install was very easy. Took the pistol out on the next range day. It ate 75 rounds and though it failed to fire a couple, it lit them on second strike. Otherwise, it ran fine. Took out again on the next range trip and fed it nearly 200 rounds -- and though the trigger really wore me down, I was more than impressed with the accuracy I could wring out from this tiny little barrel.

With only a few rounds left, it snapped the brand new recoil lever that I had just installed from Taurus. It did not snap the other original one -- it snapped the brand new one.

Went home, installed the OTHER new part that Taurus sent me, gave it back to the owner and told him everything I knew and he then took it to the local big gun store and traded it toward another gun.

Bottom line: please remove your grip panels, carefully, and get a look at the design of these recoil spring levers. Get to know what they look like when they are working and keep in mind that unless Taurus has altered or "evolved" the design, this seems to be an inherently weak point.

I've only had experience with the one single pistol, maybe this is NOT a problem across the board. With mine, maybe the spring was out of spec and that helped it to munch the two levers. While I am not an engineer nor gun designer, I take one look at design of these levers and it just seems like it's asking a very small part to take an extreme amount of stress. I don't think it's a strong design.

I hope all your pistols keep running!
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