UPDATE2 - December 18, 2009
- Beretta 3032 Tomcat Cracked Frame
- Beretta
- Beretta Tomcat Cracked Frame Fix For Iphone
- Beretta Tomcat Cracked Frame Fix For Sale
- Beretta Tomcat Problems
If you do have a cracked frame, Call Beretta and insist they send you a shipper - offer to pay for it. It's got to be much less expensive than FedEx. Beretta does not care how much it costs you to send a gun to them. If your gun is less than 1 year old they will probably send you an INOX Tomcat for free. I loved the INOX Tomcat, but read where the frame is the same as the blue version. So I stripped mine and sure enough, the notorious crack right where everyone else said theirs cracked. My dealer just sent it in, but I emailed Beretta to ask how I can be confident in the repair. They told me they are beefing up the slide.
To hell with it!
I have no more time or patience to deal with Beretta's maze of obfuscation, which you run in to whether on the computer or on the phone.
This Tomcat I'm disgusted with will be the last Beretta product I buy. My advice to anyone happening upon these words is to look elsewhere. Beretta has always been a good brand in my eyes, but no more.
UPDATE - December 18, 2009:
I took this little Beretta Tomcat shooting this morning, after having thought the problem of the stuck safety was fixed, but no.
After shooting just 40 rounds, the safety is stuck again. It is possible to free it from the OFF (down) position by the use of a small glasses screwdriver as shown in the last picture below, but I did not disassemble the pistol this time and the safety gets stuck in the OFF (down) position every time.
I will post Beretta's response. [See above. There's nothing to post.]
This little story gets around to the trouble I had with the safety on a Beretta Tomcat 3032 pistol. It started when my son and I purchased one of these little guns for my wife a couple of years ago. It was my fault that we purchased the Beretta over my son's preferred Kel Tek P32. I was swayed by my lack of familiarity with Kel Tek, my favorable impression of Beretta, the tip-up barrel and the heavier frame (which I thought would help with recoil).
I should have listened to my son, who has known far more than me about guns ever since he was ten years old. My bad. Sorry Eddie.
It turned out that the Beretta was not to my wife's liking because it was just too hard for her to operate. Racking the slide, closing the tip-up barrel, operating the safety and even opening the tip-up barrel all required too much force for her to enjoy shooting this little pistol, so my son and I reclaimed it and got something else for my wife.
All in all, the Beretta Tomcat 3032 that we bought has been a disappointment, largely because of the problems I had with the safety mechanism, which seems to reflect a design or materials flaw of some sort.
Shortly after we bought the little pistol for my wife, the safety lever got stuck in the OFF position. Nothing we tried would free the lever, so we took it to a local gun shop where there is a gunsmith we like and trust. The pistol never even reached our gunsmith, though, because the shop wouldn't work on it. I don't recall exactly why not, but the reason had something to do with Beretta policies. We had the gun shop mail the Tomcat to Beretta for warranty repair.
When the Tomcat came back the safety lever worked again, but in very short order the same problem occurred again. Nothing we did would free up the safety, which remained stuck in the OFF position. I cursed Beretta and put the thing away, and only took it shooting once since then.
Last night I came across the pistol as we were getting ready to go shooting today, and I decided to try to deal with the stuck safety one last time.
Here's a picture of the pistol. You can make out the safety lever in the upper right, shown in the OFF positon because the lever was stuck.
The following picture shows the safety lever in more detail, and you can see the red 'safety off' indicator.
Following is an extract from the owner's manual showing three of the four parts involved in the mis-operation of the safety lever.
It's a little hard to visualize how part number 25, the safety lever, relates to the pictures I'm posting of the pistol, but consider that the schematic drawing is rotated 180 degrees about its up/down axis relative to the position of the pistol in the pictures I'm posting. In the schematic, the images are on the far side of the pistol, which would be pointed to the right. The long, downward-pointing shaft on part 25, the safety lever, traverses the frame of the pistol. Spring 27 fits into a small hole in the main body of the safety lever 25, and safety plunger 26 fits into the spring, which pushes the plunger up against a Safety Plunger Contact Pin shown in the picture below.
Sorry, it looks like you might have to click on the pictures to show them in a bigger size in order to be able to read the red text that attempts to explain what is shown.
In the picture above, the safety is OFF (rotated down).
In the picture below, the safety is ON (rotated up). Note in the picture below that the tip of the Safety Plunger (part 26) is visible, whereas it is not seen in the picture above because it is rotated to a position underneath the Safety Plunger Contact Pin. In the picture below, you can see the tip of the Safety Plunger because the safety is in the ON position (rotated up), and the Safety Plunger has rotated to a position above the Safety Plunger Contact Pin.
So, you can see how, when you rotate the safety back and forth between the OFF (down) position and the ON (up) position, the Safety Plunger (part 26) has to slide past the Safety Plunger Contact Pin, in the process compressing the Safety Plunger Spring (part 27), which releases after rotation is complete in order to secure the safety lever in its new position.
Here's another picture that might further clarify things, in which the safety lever has again been placed in the OFF (down) position, and the Safety Plunger is no longer visible, having been rotated back underneath the Safety Plunger Contact Pin:
Beretta 3032 Tomcat Cracked Frame
As I was Googling this problem I came across forum posts in which people said they had lost the Safety Plunger while trying to deal with their pistol's issues, so I was aware the thing might take off. I was very careful about that when I removed the grip to try to get at whatever ailed the safety. Sure enough, the damned Safety Plunger came out anyway, but at least it landed right on the table where I could see it.
Fortunately, now that I think I know what the problem is, it should not be necessary to disassemble the thing to this extent to get the safety lever to work if it is stuck.
If the safety lever is stuck in the OFF position, it should be possible to free it by pushing on it with a small instrument of some sort as illustrated in the picture below.
You can't see the tip of the Safety Plunger when the safety is OFF (lever down), but by carefully feeling around for the Safety Plunger as shown above, applying a little pressure to push down the Saftey Plunger, and simultaneously applying reasonable upward force on the safety lever, you should be able to free the safety lever.
I think what's happened is that either the Safety Plunger tip, or the Safety Plunger Contact Pin, or both, are insufficiently polished and/or insufficiently hardened, and until they are polished enough by repeated rotation of the safety lever there is too much friction, which effectively locks the safety lever in the OFF position because one is reluctant to apply more force to the lever for fear of breaking something. As it was, I don't think I could have exerted much more force on the safety lever without a pair of pliers (which would probably have been a stupid thing to try).
I suppose the problem could be something else entirely, but clearly, there is an issue for Beretta to deal with. Maybe it's a manufacturing defect in my particular gun, where the Safety Plunger hole is drilled at the wrong angle. Maybe the Safety Plunger wasn't machined correctly, but then why didn't they catch that when they worked on this gun? Maybe the Safety Plunger Contact Pin is not positioned correctly in the frame due to some manufacturing issue. Maybe the Safety Plunger Spring is too strong. Whatever.
I don't know, but it seems that the safety lever on this particular Beretta Tomcat is now working correctly as a function of repeated rotations having polished the contact points of the Safety Plunger and the Safety Plunger Contact Pin, thereby reducing friction between them to an acceptable level.
I hope this was a unique circumstance with this one pistol, but that seems unlikely at the moment. I know I could have benefited from a post like this as I searched the Internet, so here it is in case anybody else has this problem.
Beretta, you owe me.
Beretta
A Magnum Opus on heavy loads for the .32 ACP < for use in suitably strong, STEEL framed guns> is being submitted soon for The Fouling Shot, but important safety information needs to get out now and not wait for publication!
My advice is to severely limit loads producing over 130 ft.-lbs. to occasional/emergency use only in micro pistols like the Beretta Tomcat for two reasons:
1) because they may cause serious “slide bite” if you have meaty hands and don't use a Hogue Grip Sleeve, as I painfully found out. And
Beretta Tomcat Cracked Frame Fix For Iphone
2) after prolonged firing,
My Beretta Model 3032 INOX Tomcat until recently had digested over 2000 rounds of hot Euro and heavy bullet hand loads before eventually failing.
If you own a Beretta Tomcat, open the tip-up barrel and inspect the frame rail above the trigger pivot hole for cracks, as shown in the photo.
Beretta doesn't “repair or replace” these any more, nor do they warrant them for use with hand loads or ammunition which exceeds 130 ft.-lbs. manufacturer's rating.
Beretta Tomcat Cracked Frame Fix For Sale
If you choose to use “hot” loads in yours, then you are on “your own nickel.”
Beretta Tomcat Problems
I will continue to use my Tomcat as a teaching tool to demonstrate the advantages of the tip-up barrel for women or elderly who have trouble racking the slide, but any shooting will be VERY limited from now on, with more sedate loads than my hand loaded “Buffalo Bore” approximations.
I still have no reservations firing the heavy .32 ACP loads in STEEL FRAME, standard sized guns such as the Colt M1903, Walther PP, Beretta M1935, CZ27, etc., replacing recoil springs with the heavier Wolff .380 ACP replacements where available.
73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in 'Almost Heaven' West Virginia