These Walther P99 compacts in AS flavor are rather rare birds in my neck of the woods so when I found one brand new a few months back I snagged it quick. I'm having a strange problem with it however. Every few rounds of live fire and cycling the slide does not return to full battery or full forward lock up during cycling. The round chambers and the slide appears to have fully locked up with the chamber but is retracted rearward of the frame about a 1/4 inch. I have done some internet searches and read various theories but have found nothing conclusive about this. I have owned a lot of fire arms and never seen this before.

I have inspected the internals carefully and while far from a gunsmith evrything appears normal. DEspite my problem these are amazinglywell built machines. Inside the frame is remarkably flawless. No burrs, broken parts, the recoil spring seems strong as it should be being new minus the 100 rounds I fed it. During handcycling nothing seems to be rubbing or catching. I tried both UMC and a few common and hotter hollow points and got the same results with both magazines. I'd say 3 to 4 failures to return to full lock up per 10-round magazine. Push of the thumb on the rear of slide pushes it all the way home without much resistance. Only blemish I did find was that on the recoil spring assembly the muzzle end tab/disk is partially cracked or peeling. My "guess" is that because the disk is plastic it was getting battered against the end of the recoil spring. I have never had that issue with plastic guide rods before either but it is easily resolved (I ordered a steel replacement). I have a new assembly on its way and will give it a go at the range but I don't think the issues are related unless I just have a recoil spring gone horribly wrong fresh from the factory.

During my research on the matter I found that others have had this issue with P99's and even the newer PPQ's but with much less frequency and the issue by and large cleared up with use. Mine seems to be a more severe. Perhaps my P99c would fix itself too with 400+ more rounds down range but being a reliabilityaholic and fearing this could also be a tad dangerous I'm in search of a solution. Before I go through the Customer Service gauntlet and the obligitaory send it back rigamaroll with Walther USA or S&W I thought I'd check hear and see if anyone has any ideas or suggestions as to what might be happening? I've seen a lot of feeding, cycling, ejecting, etc. issues but this is a new one for me. Oh and build date was June of 2012. Thanks in advance for any input.

T