New 840 owner with a head scratcher!

[Trupat800]

Hello and thank you for being here.
I just purchased a new 840 and have put about 200 rounds through it. Tried American Eagle, Remington and some reloads from a good friend. Now I'm not great but I am a pretty good shot, outside of seven yards I'm not having much luck even using a rest. While the primary use of this firearm is home defence I initally thought little of this however while cleaning and inspecting the barrel I noticed that when I drop a round in the chamber there is a really sloppy fit. I can rock the round back and forth a bit and I have never noticed this much play in a chamber on any firearms barrel before. I grabbed my can of salvaged casings, seperated the 840's from the Glock's and the Beretta's by firing pin pattern and every one of the casings recovered from my new 840 are significantly bulged. The brass looks stressed all the way around. The stress marking starts at the open end running about a half inch toward the primer end where the bulging is at it's greatest and then returns to its original diameter at the groove. I'm worried that this could be a safety issue, I definatley can't use these casings for reloading and this might also be the cause of the accuracy issues I'm having.
I'm hoping some of you knowledgeable folks can help me before I contact Taurus.

[bigdlou]

Do you have any .45 ammo around? Try to insert a .45 round in the chamber while the gun is field stipped. It sounds like your barrel is not for a 840. The bulge from the spent case is due to the slop in the chamber. The brass will expand to the diameter of the chamber. Ask your reloader friend to check the barrel of your gun against a Caliber gauge to make sure. I would stop using the gun first to make sure it is the proper caliber. Running .40 in a .45 barrel can be ver dangerous and it won't be accurate at all.

If you can post pictures of the spent casing and the barrel with a round inside maybe I can help you diagnose the problem better. Lastly check the serial number of the barrel against the frame just incase.

[Trupat800]

I just wanted to follow up by letting readers know that I just got off the phone w/Taurus customer service. Call was answered in about a minute and the representative was professional and courteous. Sight unseen they are sending out a new barrel for my pt840 and only asked that I return the original in the same packaging so they could investigate the issue. With customer service like that they just made a life long customer.
Also thanks for the reply bigdlou, the #'s all match and I do need to accquire a set of firearm specific measuring tools. It's more like the tool wandered a bit when boring the chamber. In the pic. I laid the barrel on its side so that the round would sit against the side and accentuate the gap. The casing next to the rule pics are rotated 180deg. from one pic to the next to display that they even expand crooked. The solo casing pic hopefully will show the expansion markings that grabbed my attention in the first place, I had acctualy never seen a spent casing like this before and wont be reloading these in the future. Thanks again, take care and oh yeh nice Colt collection!

[kubelkampf]

Definitely a very loose chamber. Not large enough to be a 45 ACP (by mistake), either. No, you nailed it.....this is a case of the boring tool wandering a bit (or, more likely, the barrel blank wandering in the fixture) while the chamber was being drilled. Amazing that it wasn't caught during the rifling process.....or during finish reaming.

[coyotemoon]

I thought Taurus fired 2 full mags in every pistol before shipping???

[Trupat800]

Thanks for the reply kubelkampf, I am looking forward to receiving my new barrel so i can see and experience the difference. Maybe Taurus will improve their quality control someday but it appears that their customer service dept. will do what is needed to make things right, thats good enough for me. Usually when you find what appears to be a great deal these days there is no or at best horrible customer service.

[Lommerse33]

Trupat, I've got an 809 and I'm happy with it except for being struck in the forehead by spent casings. Have you experienced anything like that? I sure hope not but I wanted to ask... My 809 is on it's second trip to have this problem looked at. As for they're test firing procedures, if they fire two mags, I'm guessing it's done pretty quickly and casually, probably only checking for clean firing and extraction.

[dbkfrog]

Trupat, I've got an 809 and I'm happy with it except for being struck in the forehead by spent casings. Have you experienced anything like that? I sure hope not but I wanted to ask... My 809 is on it's second trip to have this problem looked at. As for they're test firing procedures, if they fire two mags, I'm guessing it's done pretty quickly and casually, probably only checking for clean firing and extraction.

I get hit on the forehead, on the bill of my cap, shoulder, etc. I figured this was fairly normal. It's not?

[Lommerse33]

I'm hijacking at this point so just check out my thread on my 809 ejection issues... But I don't believe spent casings should cause injury or be a distraction to the shooter.

Factors affecting extracted brass flight path?

http://www.taurusarmed.net/forums/taurus-complaints/68582-finally-my-809-taking-its-talents-south-beach.html

TruPat: Enjoy your 840!

[Trupat800]

Lommerse33, thanks for the reply. I've read alot about ejection issues on these, I' ve had a couple hit my hat but the strange thing is I have a harder time finding the spent casings from this firearm than anything else I've fired. I should have someone watch casings fly instead of the target one of these days, it's like they just dissapear sometimes which is better than getting hit in the face but I'd like to reload if I could find them. Other than that and this barrel issue (soon to be resolved I hope) I Love this thing so far. I'll keep posting as I get more rounds put through this thing.