Look at the first post on this page, "a buddy and his brother" no personal experience at all!! Typical of Taurus bashing.
Ok, I wasn't going to repost this, but I guess I have to, because the Taurus koolaid drinkers think that we're all making crap up.
I purchased a PT-99 new around 1989. It was a very nice looking gun - nickle finish, pretty wood grips, nice decocker, and I was accurate with it - YES, I too once thought this was a great gun.
After only having fired about 500 rounds through it, the locking block shattered, locking the slide, barrle and frame together to where you couldn't rack the slide at all. For the record, I was shooting Fiocchi factory 9mm copper jacketed ammo. Not reloads, not hot loads, just plain-jane factory ammo.
At first I thought that a case was stuck in the barrel. So, not knowing that it was broken, I tried several times to rack the slide. I even tried putting a rod down the barrle and lightly tapping on it to hopefully knock the stuck caseing out. When none of that worked, I took it to a local gunsmith - again, at this point I had no reason to think it needed to be sent back to the factory.
The smith finally got the gun apart. In the process of doing this, the soft rails on the aluminum frame became gouged by the broken schards of locking block. (Many years later Taurus actually anounced that the "fix" for a broken locking block was to cut the barrel to get the gun dissasembled - but this wasn't generally known at this time)
After the gun was apart, the smith saw what happened, was able to fix the soft rails to a point where they worked. The first two locking blocks that he ordered from Taurus were so out of spec that he didn't even want to attempt to fit it. The thrid one he got was really rough, but he got it to fit. He showed me two of the locking blocks. They were very rough, sloppily cast parts - they didn't even look like the original locking block.
After 6 months of farting around with this POS gun it was shootable. I promptly traded it and a wad of cash for a Smith 659. 20 years and thousands of rounds later, I still have that Smith 659 which has never needed one thing fixed or replaced.
I've followed the PT-99, PT-92 and Beretta 92 for years to see if what I experienced was just a fluke or if there was a design problem with the locking block. Well, after reading many stories of this same thing happening to others, and recommendations from the factory(ies) that the locking block should be examined for cracks after every couple thousand rounds, I discovered that this was a rather common problem. I believe that Beretta has since re-designed their locking blocks several years ago. I don't know about Taurus.
BUYER BE WARE!
