I purchased this 40c about a year ago, and I have shot it once. I know I should be in jail for neglecting this gun, but I have fell in love with my Pro 9mm 5" and have been shooting it almost exclusively. I was snowed in today and bored out of my mind so I decided to do a detail strip of the entire gun to properly clean it before I can start carrying it...CCW in Illinois soon! When I shot it after purchase, the trigger was horrible. Much worse than my 40FS and my Pro. I figured I would think about APEX, and it would get better with time. Before field stripping the gun I noticed a few areas of concern. The muzzle of the barrel is actually sitting on the bottom of the slide. The barrel is not centered in the slide at all. Again, my 40FS and Pro are centered. My take down lever seems to actually be set in the frame at an angle and it catches on the slide when reassembling. I have to hold down the take down lever while holding the slide and slide stop in order for the take down lever to clear. And finally, the trigger safety tab contacts the frame every time I pull the trigger. The picture is horrible, but I have to purposely pull down on the trigger in order for the tab to clear the frame notch behind trigger. When I shot it, I did notice that I was no where near accurate with it. I'm not a new shooter and I know I wasn't jerking the trigger. I even had an experienced buddy shoot it and he wasn't all that accurate with it either. Targets were at 10yds and we could barely keep them in a 12" pattern. What would you do? Apex parts and shoot the snot out of it, send it back to S&W for them to take a look, or do nothing.

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Looking at my own 40c. The Barrel does not seem to be centered in the slide for me either. The take down lever seems straight for me. The trigger however seems fine but I cant tell what your actually explaining. Hope this helps!ImageUploadedByTapatalk1389316990.175296.jpgImageUploadedByTapatalk1389317002.572058.jpg


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The barrel fit to the slide looks normal (as the other post said)

There is a spring that controls where the takedown lever rests, maybe that's out of position. If you take the slide off, you can then pull the takedown lever out, you have to rotate it while pulling out to disengage from the spring. Then make sure that the spring is in it's little slot. You will only be able to see the part that partially goes through the hole but it should be obvious if it's out of place, in fact I think the act of taking the lever out and putting it back in will probably seat it correctly.

Is it possible that you're pulling on the top half of the trigger? that would cause the upper part to move and the safety hit the frame prematurely, it kinda looks like it from your picture. I have an Apex on my CORE but stock triggers on my compact and FS so maybe you're on the right track to shoot the snot out of it. But I never had a trigger hangup on either of my stock trigger versions.


Edit: Has your pistol been apart?, looking at the roll pin directly in front of your takedown lever it sure looks like it. Maybe someone was in there before you got it??

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Thanks for the responses and the pics. I feel better about the barrel fit knowing others look the same. Perhaps I can describe the trigger better. When I pull straight back with finger placement in the middle of the trigger, the safety tab comes in contact with the frame and will not clear unless I either A; pull really hard and it "pops" past the frame, or B; pull almost directly down on the trigger, thus moving my sights all over.

The M&P barrel is not supported at the muzzle. What you see is normal.

I'd have to see the take down lever in person. I'm just not following what your actual issue is with it.

The trigger should not do what you say. The trigger is supposed to work with a normal trigger pull. Unless you are actually trying to pull at a kind of upward angle, the trigger safety shouldn't interfere with the operation. You could adjust it yourself, but it would be better to send it back to S&W to have that fixed. It definitely needs to be fixed. The problem could be with the trigger or with the frame. If it's with the trigger, an Apex mod would fix it. However, if it's with the frame, the Apex trigger would just do the same thing. This is why I recommend sending it to S&W.

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Thanks for the help and other photos to compare. When the slide is off of the frame and I try to reassemble, the takedown lever is in the down position. As soon as I try to put the slide back on the frame, the takedown lever catches on the slide. I actually have to hold down the takedown lever for the slide to pass the takedown lever without it catching and hanging up on the slide. A few times now I have actually had to rotate the lever up and remove it in order to get the slide back off the frame. Again, I am not new to the M&P platform, as I have been shooting them for going on 5 years now. Guess I'll call Smith and see what they say.

I forget the name (Browning tilt barrel?) but yes the barrel is normal. Lock the slide back and the barrel tips back and the front tilts up a little taking up that gap just above in your pic. Without that gap the gun wouldn't work.

Barrel position is normal - the hole in the slide is elongated to allow the barrel to tilt. The shorter the barrel, the more pronounced the hole elongation needs to be, since the angle becomes steeper.

As for the takedown lever, it is possible that there is a 'burr' of sorts left over from the injection molding process. Pull the lever out of the frame and look at the edge of the flat part where the recoil spring seats. There may be an area of the flat/edge that is not smooth - a bit of light filing will clean that up. This 'burr' can cause the recoil spring to grab the takedown lever and cause it to twist when reassembling the slide onto the frame. This problem is again more pronounced on the compact frame than a full-size. I find it much easier to field strip my 40FS than the 40c, mostly due to the takedown lever not staying in place on its own on the compact.

As for the trigger, have you changed out any trigger parts? springs? sear? striker block? anything to make the trigger lighter? After installing the Apex DCAEK, keeping the factory trigger spring for a <5 lb trigger pull, I found that the trigger safety would 'catch' on the frame unless I consciously placed my finger towards the bottom of the trigger. The lighter pull caused the hinged trigger to not straighten and allow the notch to clear before it had travelled backward and hit the frame. Since I didn't like the hinged trigger to begin with, I replaced it with an Apex polymer AEK trigger - problem solved. Not saying that you should have to install aftermarket parts to make your pistol work correctly.

Thanks again for the explanations on the barrel. Makes sense that the complact would tilt more than the FS and 5" Pro. The entire gun is 100% stock. The only thing I have done is completely disassemble the the gun to clean and investigate the problems. The gun had the issues before I disassembled. After reassembly, the trigger was the exact same.

Well here I am eating crow! I went to the gun shop/shooting range today to seek some advice. It turns out that even though I am an experienced M&P shooter, I needed to learn a thing or two. The owner and his crew at the shop took me out to the range to show the my trigger problems. They immediately noticed that on the shorter grip of the compact, that I was gripping the gun with too high of a trigger finger, and my support hand wasn't wrapping around my dominant hand. Made the adjustments, and now the 40c shoots like a dream! I'm glad I didn't send it back to Smith for me not knowing how to correctly grip the shorter compact compared to my FS frames.

Interesting, could you post pics of the different grips?

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I can sure try. I will have my wife take a few pics and post them up tomorrow. In my attempt to have a solid grip before the adjustments, I wasn't allowing my support palm to touch the left grip panel. This was causing my strong hand to ride higher than normal causing my trigger finger to ride up on the trigger after a few shots. Of course, the higher my finger was on the trigger, the more the safety tab on the trigger would catch the frame.

The reason I ask is because I don't believe it's possible to get too high into the grip. The only grip that's too high would be if the slide hits the web of your hand.

I'm not particularly fond of the trigger safety design on the M&P, but it should work even with a super high grip. The higher the grip, the better the recoil control. Of course your support hand should also make full contact.

I hope you can get the pics up. This will be a good learning situation for us all.

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It wasn't that my strong hand was too high on the grip frame, rather my long fingers riding up too high on the trigger when my support palm was not contacting the grip. After the adjustment of palm and strong hand, my grip is now rock solid on the compact frame. After firing the compact, I switched to a full size frame...no adjustment needed. I'm sure it was just me and others have figured this out without thinking something was wrong with their gun. I was inadvertently choosing comfort over a solid grip.

that gap on top of the barrel on the slide is necessary in order for the barrel to till down.