Taurus TCP

[Asmodeus6]

It was my day off, and she's been looking for something carryable for her. Hell, anything enjoyable to shoot for her either. So I suggested going to take a poke around the gun store for the hell of it.

Up until this point she was looking at Kahrs. And while we were both not so giddy about forking out $750 on a pistol, I offered to ease some of the financial pain for it should she decide that was the gun for her. (PM9) We also looked at the PF9, but she didn't like the grip, or the trigger, and honestly I wasn't a huge fan either.

She also didn't love the P3AT trigger. But, after some explaining why it was the way it was. She kept drifting back to the Kahr. Which has a fantastic trigger. Even though it would still be rough for her to carry. (she is small)

Soooo... we went a lookin' just for fun. And of course... tried some... other things... I tried really, really hard to get her to buy the LCP or P3AT instead. Offered to throw money, fuck, even basically buy it and ammo for her if she didn't buy the Taurus. I had 3 or 4 guys in the store helping me try to talk her out of buying a Taurus. Which, didn't work...

Why? Well it fit her hand better, and the slide locked back.

The ringer? It was pink...

Fuck my life.



SO, we get it home, break it down and get it cleaned up and lightly lubed. She fools with it a bit, and I come around to the pink gun a bit. Seems pretty cool. I finally give in after fooling with it, if it works, and fits her better - I'll agree to drop my beef about the fact she bought a pink gun. The girl has AK's, is all about evil black guns, and gives me shit about anything I like that isn't of the same type. And she buys the pink gun...



Yeah well, it doesn't work. And by the end of the shooting session it's 100% paperweight.

Let's start with the minor "quirks".
*** Loaded magazines do not eject from this weapon with the slide open. The slide lock tab digs directly into the side of the bullet nose and when you pull out the mag, you do so against a pointy tab digging into the side of the bullet. Seriously. Who designed this gun and didn't notice parts on the gun interfere with ammunition to the point where magazines do not eject, and must be forcefully pulled from the weapon...

***Breaking the pistol down is more of an act of "angle" than process. If you do not hold the pistol straight up the barrel will "stick" when you release the slide to remove it and it will jam in a half tilted position and require a considerable amount of effort to "un-jam" from this position. It does the same shit when you try to reinstall the slide and install the take down pin. The barrel wants to stick in the rearward position and must be forcefully pulled forward to allow the take down pin to be installed. Silly.

***It jams. Not only does it choke on FMJ simply loading a fresh round for the first time. It does so all the time throughout shooting. Stove pipe, half feed, feed ramp nose grind fail, and everything in between. It also fails to go into battery the whole way I'd say minimum 8 times. We try to put up with it thinking, "it's new, it needs broken in". It's not easy...

***And finally it breaks completely. You pull the trigger it goes "click" / "twang" and nothing happens. I have her eject the round, no strike mark on it. Rinse and repeat 5 more times. We pull it down, nothing looks out of the ordinary... No idea what is going on... I think, ok, maybe the Taurus key safety thing is messed up. So I close the weapon back up. Turn the safety key on, then off. Put a fresh mag in it and I try it this time, click, click, click... BANG! It goes off on the 4th or 5th pull of the trigger. This is probably not very safe at this point. I unload the pistol and check it again. Nothing looks out of the ordinary. I grab the key and turn the safety on. It works. I turn it off. The slide moves, and I can pull the trigger. What the fuck?

I load it again and pull the trigger. Click. click... click... click... click... clikclikclikclikclick -omgwtf-clikclikclik...

Click... Nothing? Click... BANG!

Ok seriously? What in the hell is going on with this piece of shit? So we unload it and dry fire it watching it closely. And I spot the culprit. The hammer is not hitting the firing pin. It is being released and caught again, almost in a "decock" position. (Like some pistols do.) Every so often that doesn't happen and the gun goes off. This is scary, and also bullshit.

I decide enough is enough before it detonates in someone's hand. No shitty gun is worth that.

I take it home clean it, again, nothing I can see out of the ordinary? And it just clicks away when you pull the trigger with the hammer being caught before it can impact the firing pin. I take it down a few more times trying to spot the issue, but there isn't much to see the way the gun is built. Magically one of the times I reassemble it, it ends up allowing the hammer to drop the whole way a few times before it finally sticks again. I think maybe it fell the whole way 10 times before it started "half falling" again. I fooled with the key lock a few more times which has to be the true cause of this stupid fuckery. But could not put any evidence to my suspicions.

Either way, it's broken. It has maybe 30-40 rounds through it. Some of which probably ended up unfired in tall grass. And I have no idea what to do with it.


What is her recourse for this 3 day old paperweight?

I already had the "I told you so" conversation and it wasn't very productive...

[24/7dude]

Should have told her these come in pink too:

http://www.budsgunshop.com/catalog/p...s_id=411539340

[electronics]

Wow, sorry to hear you had so much trouble with the gun. Sounds like it definitely is not sufficient for a self defense gun. If she still wants to keep it, I would send it to Taurus and get them to fix it. Otherwise, try to return it to the shop. They may try to blame you, but it's kind of hard to say a gun is working when it simply won't fire most of the time.

I know at the gun shop I'm in a lot, quite a few women I've talked to seem to be offended by pink guns. I started asking them about it once they got in one of these pink Taurus TCPs. My sister is into guns and absolutely hates pink guns because they are "harder to conceal." Makes sense, if a little bit of black peaks it's hard to notice, whereas pink... especially that awful pink of the Taurus TCP. The one guy likened it to a 50's kitchen--pale pink and silver.

[blackhawk45]

And we have one more reason,not to buy the Brazilian paper weights !

[Neko456]

Taurus seem to have scattered QC some pistols like TCP don't seem to work well. But the 92/96 clones PT99/100, 24/7, 800 series and Millienum series seem to work well in all calibers and sizes. The revolvers seemed to have had a bump up in QC also.

If all else fail stick with a reliable Brand name Pistol like Sg, Beretta, Glock, XD, Kimber, Colt, S&W or Riuger even.

[bellae]

I had failure to feed issues with my TCP. I contacted Taurus, they sent me a return label and fixed it. Since I got it back I have 100 rounds through it without any problems.

[Asmodeus6]

Do I have any recourse to get rid of this weapon? Can I take it back to where I bought it? Are they just going to send it out? It's only been like 4 days and it's a total pile of shit.

We've talked about it more and regardless of what happens we both want it gone. What is the most effective method to make that happen?

[FLICK]

Try to take it back to the shop. Maybe they will excahnge it for another one and you can sell it as unfired or maybe they will go through the hassle of sending it back to Taurus. Maybe they will give you credit for another gun. At least give it a try, the worst they can say is no (then never go back). I wouldn't try to sell it until it is fixed, though.

If they don't wanna do any of that, call Taurus CS and work it out with them. Wait your 6 or 8 weeks and test fire it and sell it. Get her that Kahr and never look back (Or a used kahr- there are 3 in my area). Hell, get a used G26 and have the lower Duracoted any shade of pink she wants.....

[rwb1500]

I'm glad my quest for a pocket gun ended with a S&W 637. I was looking at the TCPs.

That's shitty. Best of luck in your recourse, whatever it may be.

[Asmodeus6]

Ok status update.

Last night I took the thing apart. Well kinda. I knocked the rear take down pin out to search for what may or may not be broken, out of whack, or whatever. This caused a spring and what looks like a very small part of the double action hammer machanism to fall out. (Since they ride on this pin.) I also removed the hammer spring and the spring pin which the spring hangs on in the grip. Since I did not expect small parts to be situated on what appeared to be take down pins. I spent the next hour reinstalling those parts since it was quite difficult to do in such a confined space correctly.


When I got home from work this evening I picked it back up and had another look. Reassembled the slide onto the weapon and dry fired it again. It appeared to strike the firing pin. After some deliberation the decision was made to shoot it again, since it appeared to be working again. (Some how, I have no idea... because I did NOT fully disassemble the weapon, nor did I remove anything but this one small part, pin, and spring.)

It now fires. It does not do so accurately, or with any reliability whatsoever. But it at least bares some resemblance to a functioning weapon. I will remove the paperweight comment and replace with "crappy unreliable piece of junk".

Out of the remaining 100 rounds we had maybe 70? Of which we fired all of them. It did not improve. Not at all. In fact, it may have gotten worse the more she fired it. It likes to not extract rounds now and try to stuff a fresh round into the primer of the non-extracted round. It did this 6 times. The slide does not like to return to battery fully all the time either. It did this 10 times. (And here is the kicker! The gun has that Taurus sharp angle look, and when it is OOB just slightly, the angle of the slide perfectly matches the angle on the frame. This is extremely deceptive as it is only about an 1/8th in. and change. So visually when the gun is NOT right, and is set to blow your hand/face/etc off it "looks" the rightest. Did I mention that it WILL fire in this position? Yep. It definitely will fire slightly OOB. Just enough to pepper you with bits of brass and powder but not kill or maim you. Such a dangerous fine line it tap dances on.

There are also times when it is empty and it does not lock the slide back either. Or simply does not feed a round at all.

The whole time is a mix of scrutiny, flinching, and mild terror. You simply do not know what it will or won't do next.

So I guess it passes Taurus QC with flying colors again.

We brought it back and cleaned it thoroughly and inspected it again for abnormalities but could not find anything out of the ordinary, or glaringly wrong. (Aside from the slide lock, which digs into bullets as mentioned before. But if you look online, they are designed that way, and they all pretty much do it to some degree.)


We are going back to the place where it was purchased tomorrow to see what can be done with it. She does not trust it at all, and I don't either. It was given the benefit of the doubt. Twice. There is now 100 rounds through it, and it has not improved whatsoever. In fact it may have gotten worse aside from that point where it just completely stopped working entirely...

My suggestion was to take ANYTHING they will exchange it for if that is even remotely possible. LCP, Kel Tec, anything but another Taurus. I'd like to thank 24/7 dude for posting the pink LCP. She is going to try to get them to order one of those instead. Yeah it's still pink, but maybe it will actually work. Honestly at this point I don't care what color it is as long as it works. It could be neon green with orange polka dots.

I'll report back with what they say, or she decides to do. Hopefully they are understanding. This is not the first or even second firearm purchased there either. So I would really hope they allow a trade in of some kind without losing our ass. Although everyone she talked to that had similar experiences said that's exactly what is going to happen. (Not with that place just in general.)