Installed a new recoil spring assembly (ordered from kahr) for my PM9 and noticed 2 things:

- Its now much harder to rack the slide
- I can no longer lock the slide back using the slide lock lever. It seems that the slide won't quite go back far enough to engage it. If i insert an empty mag to hold the lever up and then forcefully slam the slide back until it feels like it "bottoms out" on something, the slide will lock. If I drop the empty mag, I cant slingshot the slide back into battery. There's just no more rearward travel in the slide when its locked back.

If I pop the old spring back in everything operates normally.

Anyone ever heard of this? I haven't shot it with the new spring yet, so hoping it loosens up after a few mags.

Not to be rude, but are you sure you installed it right? Sounds like it is not.. a few extra pounds of recoil spring, correctly installed will not cause what you are describing. Not having the guide rod or spring correct would however.

Sounds like they might have sent you the wrong spring.
Probably for the one the model size up. The spring has too many coils, so when compressed it is too long.
Wouldn't be the first time someone stuck the wrong label on a product.

Thanks for the replies. Here's the old spring on the left and new one on right. The old one is more compressed, as would be expected. But also it looks like the new spring has 1-2 more coils than the old one. Maybe they did send the wrong spring.

Check if your barrel moves freeley

Cut ONE coil of the big spring. If it like the one I bought it is 13 coils vs the 12 on the one that came in the gun. Mine would not lock back with an empty magazine and could not work slide by hand.

Well I cut the recoil spring down to match the number of coils on the old one. Finally got to the range to test it and everything seems fine. Did some reading on KahrTalk forums and this isn't the first time the wrong spring was sent out.

Thanks for the help fellas.

I strongly recommend ordering a new spring.

Clipping coils of recoil springs is NOT recommended, especially on these tiny guns that are already so hard on recoil springs.
You may be running a chance of a cracked or battered slide or frame.

Get a screwdriver and compress the spring 10 times.

Wolff gunsprings next time...

I recently went through this with Kahr.   Had to send my pistol to Kahr.  There are 3 distinct and separate separate generations of recoil spring assemblies for the PM9.  Based upon my serial number my PM9 should use a 3rd generation Spring however it, however it actually uses a second generation recoil spring assy.

You can look up descriptions of the springs in the kahr shop.

my PM9 runs like a top now.