I have an opportunity to pick up a Kimber Pro-Carry with an External extractor.  The current owner says it hasn't given him any problems in 400 or so rounds he's put through it.  If it  IS in fact operating properly now, will it stay that way, or could the extractor develop problems as more rounds go through the gun?  Thanks!

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I've got 2k rounds thru my TLE with the external extractor, only cleaned it once and it runs great, with no problems whatsoever since I bought it. I think the problems you read on here are magnified because everyone that has had a problem posts it every time they can on every site. Just my .02

Mine works.

I have heard that the 5" guns with the EE do not seem to have the problems that the 4 inch and smaller have. I bought an Eclipse Pro II with the EE, it was not reliable in the least. A call to Kimber  had the newest stly EE to me quickly. This helped alot, but it still was not completely reliable, as after firing little more than 100 rounds would start to leave casings in the chamber. Thinking that the extracter spring may lack enough tension to pull casings from a dirty chamber, and failing to find a heavier spring, in the finest tradition of the W.C.S.O.G., I cut the tip from a small phillups head screw driver to make a spacer to put extra pressure on the spring. First attempt was too long and would not allow the case head to slide under the extracter. Took a little off the spacer and tried again. Yup, that worked, never had another failure to extract no matter how much I fired in a session. Ejection on the other hand was very eratic. Some cases went left, some right, some straight up and some straight back over my head. Found an Eclipse Pro II with an internal extracter at the local gun show in October. Made a trade, paid some boot and have had not a single problem since. Before October, a friend of mine was very taken by the looks of my pistol and bought one for himself, Eclipse Pro II with external extracter. He had the same problems I had with mine and sent it back to Kimber. It came back this week with a new slide with an internal extracter and he is very happy. Please don't take this as a slam on Kimber. I love my Eclipse now, it is my daily carry piece. I also recently bought a Warrior and am very impressed with it. I also plan on buying a Pro Raptor, when I find one with an internal extracter.

Edited for terrible spelling, 'prolly nees 'mo.

Quoted: I have an opportunity to pick up a Kimber Pro-Carry with an External extractor.  The current owner says it hasn't given him any problems in 400 or so rounds he's put through it.  If it  IS in fact operating properly now, will it stay that way, or could the extractor develop problems as more rounds go through the gun?  Thanks!

I've got a TLEII (external extractor) and haven't had any problems.  When I had the gun re-finished in NP3 I also replaced all of the springs with Wolff.  While I did not have any problems, I felt due to the gun being a little tight due to the new finish and it had already gone through the "Break-in" period this would be a good thing.  It was the gun seems to function better.  

I would get the gun, but since it is used I would replace the springs with Wolff ones.  

It seems like most of the external "TACTICAL" extractor issues are in 4" and shorter guns.

I have always felt it was at least partly due to the more violent and quicker/shorter recoil affect.
THAT and I see more people limpwristing because of this perceived increase in recoil.

I will qualify and exclude myself from that limpwristing thing because I had been shooting Officers models for years before trading my last one for this Kimber.  

When I ordered my 4" compact I had to wait a couple of weeks for it to come in.
Supposedly due to retooling for the external.  That is what I was told.......

I figured what the hell...There are plenty of good guns out there that use an external extractor.

1200 rounds later I was still pissed because it wasn't working out.  Then finally after installing the third redesigned kimber part it srted looking up, but not completely. I was still getting an ocassional FTE.

That is when I first heard about Wolff 4" Kimber RC springs and Xtra power extractor spring

I ordered 1000 rounds of Fed American Eagle, an two each of the new Wolff springs.

I shot up~ 200 rounds left over rounds from my last order. Doing this I experimented by first installing the RC spring. It definitely helped the pistol cycle better but I still got a few ocassional FTE's in the first 100 shots.  So I installed the new extractor spring along with the RC spring.  The next 100 rounds functioned flawlessly.  I packed up and drove home shaking my head all the way.

To this date I have gone though more than 1500 rounds without a single FTF or FTE failure.

I did replace the factory slidestop due to Premature slide lock, with a Wilson Bullet Proof.               That was my diagnosis and seems to have been in the ball park, 500+rounds and no early slide lock.

Any way I always felt like the Kimber factory issue springs were the main issue with my particular gun.

The stupid part of the whole Kimber saga is they evidently blew it on the springs and figured they could save money by redoing the extractor and pissing off good customers.

The reason I say that is I recently installed the original factory issued extractor. While it is not as heavy built as the newest one it functioned flawlessly in 150 rounds with the wolff springs backing it up.   Initially I couldn't get through 50-75 rounds before The FTE's started.

Right now It would take a hell of a deal for me to trade this 4" kimber off.
It is my very favorite carry gun.

I've had my TLE with EE going on two & a half years.  1000's of rounds thru it and no extractor problems as yet.

Quoted: I have an opportunity to pick up a Kimber Pro-Carry with an External extractor.  The current owner says it hasn't given him any problems in 400 or so rounds he's put through it.  If it  IS in fact operating properly now, will it stay that way, or could the extractor develop problems as more rounds go through the gun?  Thanks!

You and 99% of their other customers.

As others here have said, many people have obviously purchased Kimbers with external extractors and had problems with them.  No one spending $1,000+/- for a pistol is going to be happy with extraction problems.  But Kimber sells something like 50,000 weapons a year, so you should keep this in perspective.

I have a Pro Raptor II I bought this past August.  During the break-in period, I had a couple of FTEs, which is normal.  But once I got past 600 rounds, it operated fine, with one exception.  The extracted brass was hitting me in the face (i.e., "clocking") about 30% of the time.  I called the Kimber Custom Shop, spoke with Dennis and told him what was happening.  He told me to send them the pistol, which I did on December 17th.  On January 6th, they called me to tell me they had fixed my Raptor, test fired it, and were sending it back.  Preety damn good response time, since two holidays and Kimber's year-end inventory were during that time.  I put 6 magazines through the Raptor yesterday, and it works fine.  It's the 4" PRO version.  

As more veteran members of the forums often say, "YMMV".  (Your mileage may vary.)  For me, I'm very happy with my 4" Kimber and with Kimber's support.  Good luck.

I just finished reading another thread where someone stated that they do not like the external extractor. Please bear in mind here that the statement was made by someone who doesn't own one. I think a lot of the hype we hear is generated by people who read about failures on Internet forums and this information gets passed down. It sometimes seems to reach almost hysterical proportions... sorry, just an observation.  

Another thing that I believe might happen is folks who have purchased, say, a TLE who had been reading the articles about the USMC and their preference for a standard extractor suddenly felt REAL BAD when Kimber came out with the Warrior. I see a trend here, similar to when everyone and his cousin had to have an M4gery... when the Warrior came out it seemed like everyone had to have one of those.

It certainly is NOT the case that external extractors are bad, and standard extractors are good. No design is perfect, and the standard extractors have been known to fail! Kimber came up with the Tactical Extractor in an attempt to improve the design, motivated by existing issues with the standard type. Para also came up with their own 'solution', the Power Extractor. It could be, though, that these were solutions for problems that didn't exist, or at the very least, weren't serious enough issues for the redesign of a component that has served the military well for over two world wars.

That being said, I own a TLE/RL II with the external extractor, and I have never had a problem with it. Maybe I was just lucky enough to get a good one, I don't know. I like it. I'll bet that we never hear anyone admit it when they ultimately DO experience an extractor failure with one of these highly-regarded Warriors.

My 2¢

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Thanks for all the feedback guys.  I went ahead with the trade and the gun should be here this week, so I can get it to the range this weekend.  I'll let you know how my first 100 rounds through it goes.

I had a Pro TLE/RL with an external, no malfunctions.

My Tactical Pro has failures to eject on a regular basis. One trip to the factory and I am still having the same problem. Don't  have this problem on my Stainless II w/5" with internal extractor, two other lawmen with TLE's have had similar problems. Hope the factory will fix it this on the next trip back.  

My friend's dad got a Stainless Custom II with external extractor a while back and it jams once everyother mags. I'm not sure if it is because of improper maintenance or something wrong with the parts. Maybe replacing the extractor will do the trick.

I have the Pro TLE RL II, 4 inch, and the Ultra CDP II, 3.5 inch, no problems with either one

I have the Pro TLE/RL 4" and I had FTE problems about once every other round.  It would typically FTE on 3-4 rounds per 7 round magazine.  I finally had to send it back to Kimber.  They replaced the extracter and the spring and the gun has been running fine since.  I just qualified on the gun as a back-up weapon two days ago and it shot perfect for the entire qualification (so did I- I didn't drop a single point qualifying on three guns )

I used three different mags during the qual and we had to shoot one handed with the strong and weak hand.  It handled everything without a problem.  Hopefully they have it fixed now.  I am still pissed that they did not reimburse me for the shipping costs.  They told me to overnight the gun to them via UPS which cost me $64 then they didn't refund my shipping.  I have a hard time paying $900 for a gun then an additional $64 just to get it to work properly.  

well theres a guy on my board having alot of kimber problems. i wasnt aware kimber only offers a one year warranty....

My one external Kimber has been 100% .

I've really come to believe that some people just
have problems with every weapon they own .

I have a .40 cal Sig 226 that I bought off a guy dirt cheap
because he swore it was a POS .  That was 3 years and
6-7 thousand trouble free rounds ago for me