Hi all,
As per the title I recently brought a Pardus lever action, its the external box fed variety with a 20in barrel on it. Stock standard and its had less than 30 rounds through it even now. A beautiful (looking) gun and from new cycled dry like a dream, nice and light, easy to whack around the bush and the recoil doesn't bother me. Unfortunately first impressions and visuals are all I've got to be pleased about...
First time loading up the magazine I had all manner of issues, nothing would feed, it would jam up, sideways or in some cases the feed lug would even tear a slice through the next round in the mag. Really slamming it as per the standard advice certainly helped but at best you could only hope to feed 2 consecutive rounds. I managed 20 rounds or so and a few missed opportunities before deciding that wasn't good enough. Back to the factory it went and back it came (promptly and with no questions asked I would note, no issues with customer service thus far) with a new barrel, apparently the barrel had been machined off center and thus wasn't aligning with the round on a feed.
Certainly that seemed to improve the issue, I cycled rounds through it a few hundred times to test it out and could usually manage roughly 1 hangup every 2 mags, not spectacular but not the end of the world. Took it out yesterday for a run and got a hangup immediately which was quickly resolved in the heat of everything, 4 rounds total were fired. Got it out today and the lever mechanism was catching on the full open stroke, turned out it was out of alignment for some reason and the screw at that first joint was digging into the stock. Thinking I could cycle it out I ran a mag through it (not firing just cycling) and the whole thing fell apart on me. The internal hinge on the lever mechanism had come apart, it's stripped most of the threading from the slide. Having put the screw back in the entire thing is rough as guts, it takes a fair whack of force to even move the mechanism, you can hear and feel the innards scraping against each other.
Given the young age of this gun what am I best to do? I'm not ready to give up on Pardus yet (although I'll admit that I'm getting closer) but nor am I too keen on another shoddy half solution, it'll be years before I iron the bugs out of it at this rate. Additionally I'd like to do the least damage to my local bloke, he's been super helpful with everything and it hardly seems fair on him. Do I send it back for a warranty job, ask for a replacement or flat out ask for my money back? Perhaps get the local to make some improvements to the mechanism (there's certainly some easily identifiable improvements to be made)?
I appreciate any thoughts or suggestions, hoping for a few different opinions to bounce around the options. Especially with the current COVID-19 related restrictions in place, I'd rather not be out of action for an extended duration.
Thanks.