ZT 3XX spring durability

They are very good. they will last for a long time, and when they do break, then all it takes is an e-mail to kershaw and they ship them out to you. they are very easy to replace, and that package, or a follow up package usually have about 4 in there. even if the torsion bar fails, then most of their knives work just fine without assistance. with the flippers on the 03XXs, then you would most likely be just fine.
 
thegeek574 said:
They are very good. they will last for a long time, and when they do break, then all it takes is an e-mail to kershaw and they ship them out to you. they are very easy to replace, and that package, or a follow up package usually have about 4 in there. even if the torsion bar fails, then most of their knives work just fine without assistance. with the flippers on the 03XXs, then you would most likely be just fine.
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QFT. IME, I've never had one break in an 030X series, EDC'ing one for nearly a year.
 
I've had many assisted openings over the years, with only one break. I'd say you have a good ten years on your 0300 before you should worry.

But even then, a broken torsion spring doesn't make the knife ineffective. It just makes it a manual. So if it broke camping, etc, you're not without a knife anyway.

As per my one knife, it broke within a year. I liked it a lot more as a manual. From what I can tell, if your AO survives a year, you're pretty much golden.
 
I've beat the heck out of this 0301 I have here and no telling how many times I've opened it, must be in the thousands as it's been in my pocket since Dec '07.
Still using the same torsion bar that came in it. #1289 dated Nov '07.

I took it apart a few months ago because someone asked for a step by step take-a-part.
Along with the Tyrade it is one of the easiest to assemble/disassemble.
 
Hey, this thread is a couple days old now but I didn't wanna start a new thread blabbing about my knife and I thought it would fit in perfectly here with all the good talk about Kershaw...

The background is I have been scouring the internetz for some time now looking for a second hand ZT0301 and I found one for dirt cheap. With a catch! Bad torsion bar...

I just took it apart today and it looked nasty! I got the fracture well, but you can't really see the twist at the bottom unless you scrutinize the first picture. Personally I think it looks like a broken leg with a twisted ankle.

ZTTorsion-1.jpg

ZTTorsion-2.jpg

ZTTorsion-4.jpg

ZTTorsion-3.jpg


It's stamp says Mar 08. Every other part of the knife is in perfect condition. Now, I have no idea how the previous owner got it to happen and I'll add that I have a Blur that I've opened somewhere short of a hundred thousand times with a perfect torsion bar. But what I do know is that a quick email over to Kershaw's customer service and I've already got a free replacement on the way, that they said I'll have in a week, and they even made sure to include some tips on reassembly. In the meantime I've been using it as a non A/O blade and it's awesome that way. It's so easy to flick that thing out, that fat blade just hates staying in. I'd rather have the option to go A/O than not. In summation... Kershaw is awesome. :thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:
 
they do break. it recently happened to me. no big deal. kershaw sent out the needed parts for free.

the mechanism may sound complicated and hard to work with but i thought it was pretty easy. took me about 5 minutes to fix.

mine also broke in the same way that Glocklobsters did.
 
well, there's no question, they eventually will break, it's just that 99% of the AO knives last for many years. I don't think there's anything you can do to make them break faster or slower.
 
Question: for those of you who have busted a torsion bar, does the blade still bias toward closed ie...does it stay closed or flop out with any forward motion. The reason I ask is because I just recently busted the spring on my g10 leek and I was hoping I could use it as a manual but the blade opens freely with zero resistance.
 
zrfunited said:
Question: for those of you who have busted a torsion bar, does the blade still bias toward closed ie...does it stay closed or flop out with any forward motion. The reason I ask is because I just recently busted the spring on my g10 leek and I was hoping I could use it as a manual but the blade opens freely with zero resistance.
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depends on the knife. my shallot didnt really have a detent. but my blur works pretty well, (so much so that i like it as a manual)
 
zrfunited said:
Question: for those of you who have busted a torsion bar, does the blade still bias toward closed ie...does it stay closed or flop out with any forward motion. The reason I ask is because I just recently busted the spring on my g10 leek and I was hoping I could use it as a manual but the blade opens freely with zero resistance.
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My old mini Mojo, as far as I could tell, did NOT have a detent. The spring broke a few months after I bought it. For whatever reason, it still acted as if it had a detent. It didn't hold it closed that well, but it held it closed well enough, as well as my old para 2. The knife was totally usable in that condition and indeed, I continued to use it as a manual for 5 or so years.
 
Artfully Martial said:
My old mini Mojo, as far as I could tell, did NOT have a detent. The spring broke a few months after I bought it. For whatever reason, it still acted as if it had a detent. It didn't hold it closed that well, but it held it closed well enough, as well as my old para 2. The knife was totally usable in that condition and indeed, I continued to use it as a manual for 5 or so years.
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Weird, I'd swear I posted the same reply elsewhere, but the Mini Mojo/Mojito has a safety built into the flipper that locks the blade closed until your finger engages the flipper correctly (sorta like the grip safety on a 1911.)
 
the safety didn't work, or appear to do anything anyway, after the spring broke. it was a weird safety in that knife...

I could pretty easily wrist flick it without using the flipper or studs after the spring broke. But it was a lot of fun.

One of the really interesting side effects of the studlock is that it produces the least resistance to the opening/closing blade of any lock, so when the spring isn't resisting anymore, that thing is crazy smooth and it will snap shut on your fingers as soon as you touch the stud (again with no spring). Once I got used to it, I liked it a lot more since I could flick it closed like an axis.
 
They are pretty solid.

I have a Leek and a ZT 350 that are on EDC rotation. Both have been cycled tens maybe hundreds of times a day (the "schlack" sound of the locked blade is awesome) and are still going strong.

I actually took the torsion bar out of the ZT 350 and I've been flipping it open; it's as much fun as the assisted opening.
 
zrfunited said:
Question: for those of you who have busted a torsion bar, does the blade still bias toward closed ie...does it stay closed or flop out with any forward motion. The reason I ask is because I just recently busted the spring on my g10 leek and I was hoping I could use it as a manual but the blade opens freely with zero resistance.
Click to expand...

That's a tough one. When I first took the bar out of mine I hardly tightened the pivot at all because I wanted to move the oil around... but really just flip it all day in the house. I noticed that there was hardly a bias for closing... of course there wasn't a bias for opening either. Removing the torsion bar completely turns it into a regular knife - none of my Spydercos have ever had any bias for closing either. When I went outside the thought crossed my mind that it was definitely a gravity knife and I didn't want to get on any LEO's bad side.

I tightened the pivot down and it certainly wasn't as fun to flip open but it had blade retention... I still wouldn't say there was a bias for closing... but it has good blade retention. Maybe some pivot adjustments are in store for the leek?
 
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