A good while back, I purchased a used Bar-sto conversion barrel for my P99.  I dropped it in and afterwards discovered that the slide moves slightly when the trigger breaks (it's been several months since I did this... I should try this again before writing I suppose).  This does not take place with the factory barrel.  When comparing the .40 and the 357sig barrels, there is a bit of a difference in the dimension in some places in the area around the chamber.  I decided not to shoot with the conversion barrel until I know that it is safe and will not do damage to the handgun. I emailed support at Bar-sto but never received a reply.  Anyway, have any of you tried this conversion in your P99 .40s and, if so, have you experienced this same occurrence?

If you are a member of the Waltherforums.com.....there is at least one guy with a Barsto
that I know of.. his nick is "SNIPER350"
I am not sure if they are .357... but I know he got a .40S&W extended ported barrel for the P99 ... and I know that he did some mods himself due to Barsto not working right on his P99

Hit him up he also has some pics of his P99 with the Barsto and the work he did on them

hi MJW
I talked to Sniper350 last night ... and he said he is on this Forum too with the same nick.... if that makes it any easier for you
good luck

I spoke to Irv Stone III (Bar Sto) and Bill Jarvis (Jarvis, Inc.) during SHOT Show '06.

Both of them told me that they dropped their 357 SIG conversion barrels for the P99 not due to lack of demand (which is what I thought) but because they cause converted P99's to suffer sporadic reliability problems.  Neither could really say why they couldn't get the barrels to work reliably.  They both echoed that barrel is ok for range use, but not self-defense.

I participated in a 'group buy' quite some time ago for Bar-Sto 357SIG barrels.  IIRC, Bar-Sto doesn't advertise their barrels as "drop-in", but rather "semi-fitted".  The Walther 357SIG barrel that I received required me to carefully file a bit of metal off around the barrel hood in order to fit properly.  

Just my own opinion, but I now feel that the Walther P99 is not strong enough to handle a steady diet of full power 357SIG ammo.  I own, shoot and reload for several 357SIG handguns and this is just my subjective impression which is not based upon science.

Y'all, I appreciate the input and advice.  Sometimes I get a bit too much into taking something and trying to  make as much out of it as I can... and sometimes that just won't work.  I have an XD in 357Sig that I have been meaning to purchase a .40 barrel for.. my idea being to have two handguns that could digest the same ammo (these being the 357Sig and .40SW).  But oh well... I might try to do some tweeking on the barrel hood area to prevent the slide movement, but then again, I'm not wanting to beat the 99 to death by making it do things it wasn't designed to do.  Again, many thanks to the comments.

I also bought a Bar-sto barrel for the P-99.........and like was stated above.......my barrel is an extended Ported barrel. So my problems might be different than with a conversion barrel?

I had problems with my barrel from the very beginning........" nose dive Jams"  Also the barrel needed some fitment before it would "drop-in" the slide. No big deal. Some judicious polishing & the barrel finally fit.

But the gun would not stop jamming !  I sent the barrel and Slide off to Bar-sto as they requested for study and repair. They kept the barrel and slide to my gun for 6 LONG weeks...always promising to mail it back the following week. When I finally got the barrel and slide back ........ nothing was done to either....nada !  Of course, the gun still jammed. I was careful to set-up the barrel and slide so I could "know" if someone worked on it.  The barrel was sent dirty...........the slide was sent clean with no brass marks left on the underside of the slide where the bullets in the magazine hits the slide during firing.  When the barrel and slide were returned.....they came back the same way.........dirty barrel but no brass marks on the under-side of the slide -- it was clean. Now, Bar-sto swore to me they fired the gun everyday for weeks. If they did ???  Why would they leave the barrel dirty[ their product ] but clean off the brass marks always left on the slide by the bullets ?? Maybe they cleaned just the slide and left the barrel dirty.......and fired the weapon as they said ....... I'll leave that a mystery.

The barrel had a deep line cut into the front of it.........made from lock-up with the slide. I asked what that was all about. The guy in the shop had no knowledge of the marks on the barrel........so I knew then no one was really working on the problem. He said he would look for the deep cuts on the barrel before sending it back. When the barrel was returned........"some" of the deep line cut was buffed out ,but not all?

Knowing the purchase was a total loss..I decided to adjust the barrel myself. I reformed the feed ramp to match the Walther ramp perfectly. Taking great care NOT to get close to the chamber area, because Walther has a Fully supported chamber. This action greatly reduced the jams ---but not entirely !!!  I have worked for months trying to figure out what is causing these jams without success.
It will jam with FMJ bullets as well as hollow points. I am sure the problem has to do with the "drop down" barrel feature of the walther loading system. Some dimension of the barrel is preventing the barrel from moving into position quickly enough.

So Bar-sto was correct in dropping this line of barrels...........they couldn't figure out the jamming problem..........and to me never really acknowledged there was a problem .....  I wanted to work with them to fix the problem.......they didn't want to even talk about it. My barrel is the most accurate barrel I have used in a semi-auto..........even though it jams........it will out shoot anything else.
Sadly like Mr. Stone has stated...........it is only good for "plinking" and nothing else.

Sorry for the long boring post....but that is most of the story of my Bar-Sto.

JF.

Quoted: Sorry for the long boring post....but that is most of the story of my Bar-Sto. JF.

no no... That was very informative.  I only tried once to get in touch with Bar-Sto, but no luck.  I'm not terribly patient when it comes to such things.  But with what I've run into, and your story... well.. makes me think about looking elsewhere the next time I want to buy a barrel for one of my firearms.  

Quoted: ...I only tried once to get in touch with Bar-Sto, but no luck.  I'm not terribly patient when it comes to such things...

I tried to contact Bar-Sto once, except rather than email, I called them on the phone.  The technician who answered the phone was extremely pleasant and helpful - it just happened to be Irv Stone, III himself.

There are other makers of P99 barrels aside from bar-sto.  Jarvis is probably the company I'd go with for a new barrel.  Partially because they come in black :P

www.jarvis-custom.com/Products/tabid/53/ctl/ProductDetail/productId/21/mid/388/Default.aspx