No Matter How Beautiful She is…

…someone somewhere is tired of her crap.

Now I know why that Kimber Eclipse Pro II was for sale at such a discount below new.

Remember when I wrote:

It’s used, apparently very gently (which I hope does not mean “returned because it doesn’t work”) and in excellent condition.

and continued:

Yes, it’s got the firing pin safety. Yes, it’s got an external extractor. No, John Moses Browning is not spinning in his grave over the sacrilege.

If you listen closely, you may hear a faint whirring sound.

It doesn’t work. Using both commercial Federal hardball and my own handloads, Kimber factory, Chip McCormick, and Wilson Combat magazines, I couldn’t put eight rounds through the pistol without at least two failures to extract. It would pull the case about halfway out of the chamber before the extractor slipped off the rim, and that’s all she wrote.

Today, a Kimber factory representative was at the gun shop where I bought this pistol, so I headed directly from the range to the shop and had him check it out. He stripped, cleaned, and inspected the slide, extractor, and firing pin, and even checked the extractor tension. He advised me to try it again, but if it failed he recommended that I return it to Kimber for correction. I went directly to the closest indoor range.

No improvement.

It doesn’t matter how pretty it is if you can’t rely on it. It’s going back to Kimber just as soon as I can ship it out. NOW I miss my old job. Shipping via FedEx or UPS was simple. Now I have to go to the main UPS office to ship it. What a PITA.