Ejection Issues with New Walther PPK .32
There's an issue, no matter what Ft. Smith says...
I bought the Walther PPK in .32 a few months back (initial review here). I love my Ft. Smith .380 PPK and have only had one weird issue with one type of ammo — Sellier & Bellot has a recoil impulse that’s so sharp, it will occasionally try to set my safety. (I’ve also seen this with some Desert Eagles.) SO, I was pretty excited to have a copy of the PPK in the original chambering.
After 250 rounds of testing, it was obvious there was an issue with ejection. The cartirdges feed and extract just fine, but I was having boat-loads of ejection issues, mostly with MagTech and PMC ammunition. After trying to shine me on for a few days, I got Walther to take it on a warranty claim. It was returned quickly with “no issues found.” I’m calling bullshit on this one, since I’m not the only one having this issue. For more, see the Walther Forums.
Once I got it back, I had swapped to different ammo, looking for hotter stuff. Underwood and Lehigh had zero issues to function, +P and normal pressures. Prvi Partizan and Norma Range & Training ammunition did cut the ejection issue down dramatically, but I do get a regular (about half the magazines fired) ejection failure…but only on the third round ejecting/fourth round loading. It does it with both supplied magazines.
I took the mags apart and the spring is long on the .32 mags; much more so than the .380. So it was time to experiment and research. Here’s the things discovered both by a reader of the old Black Campbell blog, as well as myself. This is confirmed on the Walther Forums, as well.
The slide and extractor are the same from .32 to .380. The Fort Smith ones I can confirm are interchangeable and cycle, feed, and extract (in the right caliber for the barrel), just fine. The extractor between the two calibers was initially different in earlier iterations. Walther is doing economy of scale, using the same extractor for both pistols. Financially smart; functionally…not so much. The extractor on the lower right is the .32.
The magazines are interchangeable. .32 and .380 rounds will swap back and forth between the two. The only thing I’ve found different; the .380 mags will not lock open on the last round. The inverse was not true (for me, at least) — the .32 mags locked the .380 open on empty. the springs are different, with the .32 being longer.
As the .32 was seeing consistent fails at the fourth round, I swapped springs from the .380 to the .32, and also just used a .380 mag today for testing. Both ran fine, though the .380 stock mag had the same malfunction at the fourth round. The .32 with the .380 spring did not fail the three times it was used. Both .32 mags with the stock spring saw a 50% chance of failure to extract as the fourth round was going in.
I suspicion is the ejector, if properly beveled, would sort the issue, but some on the Walther Forums were still having issues. My hunch is a Mec-Gar .32 mag or a spring swap, plus an ejector swap, sorts this for 90-95% of the failures. (I picked up a Mec-Gar magazine for the PPK .32, and the issue persisted. It’s the extractor.)
This really should be a warranty issue for Fort Smith, but lately, it seems every manufacturer in every industry is cutting corners.