Taurus PT99 AF 9mm Para

[ncbearman]

I have an opportunity to buy one of these from a friend for about $300. He bought it brand new back in the mid 80's. Everything is in good shape. I have shot it and am pleased with it. Haven't seen many for sale so I was wondering if this is a good price and what are some reviews any of you might have for it. The sight blade breaking seems to be a common occurrence with it but he has been through that already and replaced it. Thanks.

[tazman]

I have one that has had over 5000 rounds through it with no serious problems other than relatively poor accuracy using cast boolits. I swapped out the barrel for a Beretta 92FS barrel(drop in replacement) and now it shoots well with cast as well as jacketed and feeds almost anything.
The only thing I had happen was the roll pin that holds the front of the rear sight in place broke 2 different times. As long as you catch it quickly replacing it is easy. If you shoot it much after the pin breaks, you can break the sight adjustment screw which is currently impossible to get replaced. I went through that on a PT101 in 40S&W.

[ncbearman]

^^^^thanks taz he said that he had to buy the whole rear sight assembly when he went to replace the sight blade. What do you think the difference was from the 99 barrel to the 92 barrel?

[tazman]

^^^^thanks taz he said that he had to buy the whole rear sight assembly when he went to replace the sight blade. What do you think the difference was from the 99 barrel to the 92 barrel?

The rifling in the Taurus barrel is narrower and not as tall. You can actually see this(really obvious) in pictures or when they are side by side.
I think the thinner rifling wasn't gripping the cast boolits well enough. I didn't recover any of the boolits to be certain though. I only know my groups shrunk by half when I switched barrels.
The Taurus barrel worked fine with jacketed.
You can get barrels on eBay for well under $100 and often near $70. Just be patient and wait for the right deal.
I'm glad that the sight got fixed. Taurus would neither fix it(lifetime warranty doesn't cover sights) or sell the parts to my gunsmith so he could do it. My gunsmith ended up finding a sight assembly online somewhere and installed it for me.

[Big Dangle]

Sweet, I never heard of people switching barrels definitely looking into that. I just used softer bullets with more lube (2 applications of alox) and slowed em down a bit, it helped but it still leads up a little bit.
Other then that I love mine had it for around 8 or so years, even modified some old gov magizines for it.

[tazman]

Right now I have over 800 rounds of cast through my Taurus with the Beretta barrel and still no leading.I haven't cleaned the barrel in months. The action gets cleaned after every range trip.
I am using water dropped range scrap lubed with either White Label X-lox or 45-45-10 sized to .358(several different boolit designs). The Beretta barrels tend to run a little large in the groove diameter.
.357 shot well but left a slight amount of leading.

[lightload]

I have owned a couple older versions like yours. You'll do fine with it unless you have to the Taurus customer service which is poor. My opinion is Taurus got too big for their britches.

[tazman]

I have owned a couple older versions like yours. You'll do fine with it unless you have to the Taurus customer service which is poor. My opinion is Taurus got too big for their britches.

I agree with that.

[Combat Diver]

My FIL had a Taurus 92. You have to remember the history of Taurus. Beretta had the Brazilian military contract back in the 70s, contract complete and Beretta was stuck with machinery in Brazil. They sold it to Taurus. So Taurus 92s are just a earlier Beretta. Some parts are interchangble. I installed a spare M9 barrel on his gun and it ran fine for my limited testing. I also modified lower cost and more plentiful USGI mags to work (had to open mag catch up on the magazine body)


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