As I am sure many of you know S&W manufactured Walther PP and PPK pistols from 1999 to 2005 under license from Walther. There were some design changes made by S&W, and I recall that in the past there had been some posts about reliability issues with the S&W guns.
On April 1 I purchased a used stainless .380 PPK with a bit of trepidation based on what I have read/heard. While I have never had a problem with any used gun I have bought in the last nearly 60 years, sure enough this one is a lemon! In ca. 70 rounds I have experienced 2 light strikes and a dozen or so cases of the hammer following down. In every case the hammer was stopped by the "Safety Strut" about half-way down. The safety strut is one of several parts added or modified by S&W, and appear only in the S&W guns! Go figure, a design that had been virtually flawless for 65 years they thought they could improve!
I strongly suspect these "improvements" were the root cause of the reliability issues.
My questions to those of you who did buy a S&W Walther and had issues with it is:
What specific problems did you have?
Was S&W able to repair the gun and eliminate the problem, or were there still issues once you got it back?
Did you have the S&W parts replaced with Walther parts, and did this fix your problems with the gun?
Note: Walther USA Lists the S&W specific parts on their parts list. I have not yet asked if I can replace the S&W hammer and associated parts with Walther parts. S&W modified the hammer, hammer strut and hammer strut spring, and added the safety strut and safety strut spring to the revised hammer. Other than these all other parts shown by Walther are the same for all manufacturers..