[Fabius]

Just answered your question in the other post. My FNP-40 has the line or seam near the pinhole as you described. Don't think that the crack is necessarily related to that seam. There is a picture in another thread that shows a crack further to the rear of the assembly. That one is on the right side also. This is the picture that was posted on the other thread. You can see the seam near the pin, but the crack is much further back and seems to be unrelated to the seam.

Those are pictures of batakgt's gun posted in another thread.

 

[Fabius]

That is from batakgt's gun. He posted these pictures in another thread. I don't see any stress risers in that area on my gun, so it might be that the area is the part that is stressed by dry firing or decocking with the gun disassembled or without a mag.

I have dry fired quite a bit without a mag in the gun and mine is fine, so it may be a bad batch of parts or it may be the combination of dropping the hammer when the gun is disassembled and mag is out as suggested in another thread.

 

[Fabius]

Is it correct to say that we've seen 4 frames crack on the right side at the weakest point? Either starting at the pin and running up , or from a point lower in the frame that creates a crack running back and up toward the hammer

I count 4 who have reported cracks like batakgt's, closer to the back of the frame and 1 cracked near the pin. All of the reports surfaced within a few weeks of each other late in 2007 and I haven't seen any new reports since then. That's why I was trying to get information on manufacture dates. With 40,000 guns out there, many with thousands or tens of thousands of rounds, if this were a design problem then it should have started showing up two years ago when the guns first hit the market. The posters reporting problems are experiencing them in the first few hundred rounds, so it didn't take long for the problem to surface in those guns.

I don't intend to take any special precautions other than not dropping the hammer while the gun is disassembled and I will probably keep a mag in place while dry firing, although I've dry fired a lot without a mag and haven't had a problem.

 

[Fabius]

I have that line in my gun and others have reported the same. Looks like its normal and part of the design of the piece. I noticed that there is a slight notch at the top of the line that may have been put there as a stress relief.