A couple of days ago another young man asked what the difference between the Kimber internal extractor and the external as he had heard negative feedback about the external.
The internal extractor on most Kimber models is one single piece of steel secured on the inside of the slide that hooks and extracts brass from the chamber.
The external extractor in Kimbers is a delicate weave of a spring with a plug and an extractor featured on the outside of the slide.
Because it is on the outside of the slide and held in place only by spring tension a good amount of dirt and grime can build up under the extractor and push it out to the point that it no longer hooks the brass in the chamber and fails to extract it, leading into some pretty serious jams. Also, springs can wear and weaken faster than a single steel rod can.
Many manufacturers have external extractors on their firearms and they work fabulously and flawlessly. Kimber did not do the greatest job in designing their external extractors and they have had problems. They realized their error and switched back to internal extractors and that seemed to cure the extraction problems they were experiencing.
Below are some pictures to help illustrate the difference.
The firearm on the top left of this picture is a Kimber PRO CDP II with an internal extractor. The firearm on the lower right is a Kimber TLE II with an external extractor. You can see the difference by looking near the ejection port. You can not see any evidence of an extractor on the CDP as it is internal. Near the ejection port on the TLE you can see what looks like a cut out. That is the top of the external extractor.
The real difference is seen once you actually remove the extractors from the firearms.
The top extractor is the external extractor. The lower one is the the internal.
The life-span and operation of the internal extractor has proved to be far superior than the external.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
