Who has had a Kershaw Speed Safe mech. fail?

M

MEatVT

Joined
Oct 2, 2005
Messages
56
Today my leek wont AO. It springs about half way and stops. The knife is about 3 months old and is opened multipul times a day. My buddy has a Blur and he experienced an identical failure after 2 months of use. Kershaw, of course, addressed the issue promptly. He actually decided he liked it better un assisted, however, and now keeps it without the AO part. Thoughts? Sorry if this is a dupe I can never seem to get the search to work.
 
you could try to take it apart and clean and lube it up.

the torsion bar only works till halfway anyways.
 
I have had a leek torsion spring brake twice, Kershaw sent me a replacement no problem.
 
Never had one fail, but I can't open my Leek with those ridiculous thumbstuds... still, it makes the knife look a lot more like a manual opener, and that's sometimes useful.
 
Yeah. The thumb studs are worthless. Sure fire way to cut myself. Flipper is mandatory on an AO knife for me, and prefereable on all folders.
 
I see people come in to my store about once a month asking if we can repair broken springs. Kershaw does take care of them. And yeah, it does happen time to time.
 
I've actuall seen it happen a couple times (several peoples knives and thousands of openings). The torsion bars can crack, or break out-right. The ones that crack, or devolop a fissure may look ok, but f it's not pop'in the blade out, best to replace it.

I'm convinced that Kershaw, with their excellent customer service, would send you the parts for a complete knife over a period of time (like the old jokes about jeeps and WWII). Just give them a call, and they will send you a couple of new torsion bars. With a #6 and a #8 torx driver, you're good to go. Take care not to tighten the pivot screw too tight, and some loc-tite would be helpfull as well. Oh... and be sure the blade is open when you go to disassemble it, even if you think the torsion bar is broken!
 
Yep. I emailed them and have not yet heard back. We shall see. Ive only had the knife for 3 months. I asked them to send a couple if this is going to be a reqular maintenece. I cant be bothered to call them every 3 months and wait for a spring for my EDC. I will post pictures after class of the failure. Cracked right apart at the aft curve.
 
Ok. Here it is. My camera couldnt take a picture of the crack as it came out of the knife, so i bent it a little for you to see where the failure was. It was broken almost all the way across, held together by that small sliver.

Picture009.jpg
 
That's interesting. Never had any problems with mine and I've cycled it literally thousands of times. Let us know how long it takes for Kershaw to rectify the problem. I've never had to deal with their customer service dept. and would be interested to know how good they are.
 
I replaced the torsion spring so many times in my Scallion that I finally just gave up and use it as a regular one hand opener. I even drilled a small hole in the blade for the detent ball to work now and ground off the flipper.

STR
 
I've seen it happen once on a buddies kershaw. He bought another one and it hasn't happened on this one.
 
I emailed their Warrenty dept Sunday at 5:10 PM. I recieved a reply at 6:26PM today, Monday. Very pleased with their quick response. They gave me no trouble at all and said they would send the parts asap. A+ for Kershaw.


FYI their website says the mech. is designed to last 10,000 openings. I may have had a lemon cause I dont think I reached that. Would have averaged approx 110 openings a day for the duration I've had it to reach 10k by now.
 
New here and thought I chime in.

I have a Ken Onion 1550 and I was a little worried at one point because I felt the action kind of weak. Since I have it in my back pocket it just picked up some lint from the blue jeans and dirt so I did a quick burst of air and put some oil and it works flawless.
 
Never had one fail, but the "safety" pin on my first Scallion broke when I dropped it on my bed. I've had about 3 or 4 Scallions, no other problems.
 
Looks like a material problem.

Gotta be drivein' Kershaw to destraction.

Little pissant stuff can effect the rep of a great product design.
 
I've had to get new torsion bars from Kershaw many times. On one occasion I got a reply from Kershaw that basically said that they view the torsion bars like the brake pads on your car. A part that simply needs to be replaced from time to time. I mean, if you look at the way the mechanism works it should be obvious that over time the bar is going to develop a weak spot and then break. So, I mean, it sounds like yours was a bit of a lemon based on how many times you say you opened it. Or, if you bought it in a retail store, it's possible it got cycled in the store by customers looking and handling the knives. But, despite that, the design has the necessity of needing the torsion bar replace every so often either way.
 
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