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Quality of P99c

1821 Views 12 Replies 6 Participants Last post by  stevehf48
Hi group! My first post here. I'm a long time Walther P99 owner along with many other quality handguns. I recently aquired a P99C AS 9mm. While 9mm is not my favorite caliber, I've found it to a great and fun round to shoot in my full size P99. I bought the P99c after handling it at a gun shw and quickly recognized that it has the same great ergonomics of it's big brother. What I didn't expect was the increase in felt recoil in 9mm. As I said, I'm not a big 9mm shooter, deferring instead to .40, .45 and some 357SIG, but I've come to appreciate the round a bit more lately. My P99 full size is a snappy 9, but the comact really feels jumpy, particularly with some 124gr +p's, but even with range fodder. The other thing is that while the gun is very handsome, I've found a few things that don't come with the full sized pistol:

-much looser slide to frame fit. It locks nice with a full mag and one in the pipe, but still isn't as lock tight as the P99

-the trigger pin made an attempt to push itself out after about 300 rounds the other day. I pushed it back in with a punch and it does seem to have stayed put after at least 500 more rounds.

-the magazine base plate on the finger extension isn't a real solid fit, contributing to the pistol being jumpy in my hand when firing.

None of these issues are severe, just some general observations. I find my P99 full size to be such a perfect 9mm that I wanted the compact to be the same. My reference point for the compact was my Glock 26. In all reality, and I didn't think this would be the case, the Glock feels better made, recoils quite a bit less, and has greater capacity with the +2 magazines. It also is a smoother pistol for concealed carry with less rough edges.

I like the compact. It's a good little gun, it just doesn't grab me like I was hoping it would. I'm still gonna get a .40
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Interesting about that pin that starts to slide out. I noticed that happen once on my full size P99; I pushed it back in and it has not done it again since, but was concerned enough to call Walther America about it. They advised to call if did it again and they would see if they could come up with some type of fix such as an oversized pin.
I have been wondering about those gunscrubber products I have been using and so asked them about that, if they thought it was a possibility that could be responsible for loosening it up. Stated they did not know, but indicated that if some stuff pooled up by the pin and was not flushed away that softening up of the polymer was a possibility.
My own guess is that the pin is just not a tight enough interference fit in the frame, either due to design error, too wide a machining tolerance or perhaps pin not built/frame not drilled to specs.
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If they come up with an easy/quick solution soon like replacement pin, I may take a ride over to them, I am only about a two hour drive to Springfield, MA and have been looking for an excuse to se the new S&W museum and checkout their retail store again.
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