Help! Has anyone had this problem?

Bought my Shield plus in April. Notice with a fully loaded 13 round mag it was slightly difficult racking the slide to chamber a round. Doesn't happen with the 10 round mag. Figured over time it would get easier. To date I've put exactly 307 round through it, and it has not gotten any better. I recently purchased two additional 13 round mags and still have the problem. I cleaned the pistol a couple of days ago and it is now extremely difficult, and I mean extremely difficult to rack the slide with a fully loaded 13 round mag. I found that I have to lock the slide, insert the mag then release the slide by pulling the slide back to chamber a round. I tried several different 9mm ammo, both defensive and practice rounds, same thing happens. Until I figure out why this is happening I will have to keep locking the slide back before inserting the 13 round mag.

My first impulse would be polishing the underside of the slide against which the topmost round slides. All of the contact surfaces holding the slide down or pushing it up would be worth inspecting for burrs or roughness.

The top round in the magazine is being pushed down by the bottom of the slide, and you know how hard it is to get the last few rounds into the magazine.

Next time you put a loaded magazine in the thing look at the round through the cutout for the slide release. You can see how far you need to push the magazine to get it locked after the round contacts the bottom of the slide, and you know how much force that last round needed to get in the thing.

Eventually the magazine spring will wear, but 300 rounds is no where near enough. If it's really bothering you I suppose you could oil the bottom of the slide under the striker where it's contacting the top round in the magazine.

Of course there is also the possibility that you got an exceptionally stiff magazine spring, but I've found the same thing in all 3 of the 13 round ones I have.

Leave the 13rd mags loaded for a few weeks. Some magazines are not easily reloadable with the slide forward due to lack of space (when at full capacity) or a stiff magazine spring.
Rule out the latter first and break-in the magazine springs.

Some mags still may not be easily reloadable with the slide forward even after sufficient break-in.
Break-in may help though. Keep it in mind if you want to do tactical reloads and download by one round.

You can squash the spring, you can grind on the gun, but what I would do is to call it a 12 shooter and move on.
At most I would manipulate it to load 13 but be sure that any reload magazine contained only 12 rounds.

Why? On a reload, the slide will already be locked back.

Without having a Shield Plus, my guess is the trade-off for a full magazine is very little room between the top round and the underside of the slide. This may very well get better as the magazine spring relaxes, or you may always have to insert the full mag forcefully.

And there are situations when you want to reload with the slide forward, or at least train to. I learned it as an "administrative" (?) reload as opposed to a "tactical" reload, or the other way around.

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Alan
SWCA LM 2023, SWHF 220

If you can't do it in twelve rounds..... you is in BIG trouble.
Says the revolver guy :-)

IMHO of course,
J.

Only if you run it dry. LE friend who has been in several gunfights said you don't want to do that if you can help it . If, say, you have fired ten but find yourself in a gap in the action, you switch mags then. Better than having things ramp up again only to go bangbang nothing.....

Simple solution. Put a few rounds in the mag, then pop the mag in the gun, & rack the slide. Now remove the mag, & fill it up. Done. But I always load my mags one round lite to avoid this situation. There’s always an extra loaded mag in a pocket. In my 30 round AK, or AR mags I always load 28. GARY

This makes sense, except with a full mag at the end of the process it still has to be inserted on a closed slide. But downloading one or two is also a good alternative.

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Alan
SWCA LM 2023, SWHF 220

Lot's of folks have this problem. It's common across many pistols. As stated above, there's no enough room left to depress the stack when the slide is closed. Similar is not being able to use a Uplula to load the last round in a mag.

Many simply say, just give it a good whack to make sure it seats. On some of mine, that's what I do. Just be wary that you may damage the top round, so check it after a few "test trials".

While you may have difficulty racking the slide against a full mag, I'm pretty confident, firing a round will get the job done. If you haven't, you should try the next time at a range. Fill up all your mags. Load 1 into the chamber, then swap out the 12 for a full 13. Shoot 1 round. Did it cycle OK? If so, swap out the 12 for another 13 (or top off the previous mag). Repeat a few times. If it continues to cycle, you should be good to go.

I have this issue with several handguns and my restricted state 10 round capped mags. There's just no room to even think about an 11th round, so the are always hard to seat. Yet, they all fire and cycle.

He didn’t say he couldn’t insert a full mag, he said “it was slightly difficult racking the slide to chamber a round”

If you don’t run it dry, then you don’t even need to rack it. If you did, then the slide is already back. Either way I still don’t see the need to download by a round.

Daily hand exercises by squeezing racketballs and rollups with a stick/aluminum tube, cord and a weight, will strengthen your hands.
Not long ago I spent a couple of days cleaning all the autos and found my hands/forearms needed some help.
Just took a few days, several times daily, to notice a difference.

Useful for hanging on to the 460 as well.

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Have Fun/Stay Safe

Bought my first M&P Shield Plus this afternoon and noticed the same issue. Not worried about it yet. The spring will loosen or rough spots wear in time. I would rather start with a stiff mag spring.

Get a 14-round mag. Then put 13 rounds in it. Now it will load the top round easily.

Thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions. I loaded up my 13 rnd mags and let them sit for a week. To my surprise using an UpLula I was able to get 14rnd in each of my 13rnd mags. I also put a very small drop of oil on the underside of the slide. With the slide locked back, I inserted the mags with the 14 rounds and racked the slide to unload each mag. I did that a number of time and now the difficulty I was having chambering a round with the slide forward is more manageable. I'm believing it will get better over time. I'm also going to get back to exercising, hoping that will help.(Ha, Ha) Have a great New Year.

The oil on the disconnector rail is probably not necessary and bit more upper body strength will surely make it easier to rack the slide on a fully loaded magazine. Alternatively, load one round in the mag, chamber it, then insert a fully loaded magazine. That's how I load my Model 6946 for serious uses.

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VCDL, GOA, NRA

Some good info here but let’s address some of the bad information so far…

Unless you know exactly what you are doing don’t polish anything.

13 round magazines are designed by engineers to hold 13 rounds… not 12, and not 14. Don’t do that unless you want problems now or down the road (loading 14rds). Loading 12 is not gonna hurt anything but isn’t going to help unless you lack the strength to seat a loaded magazine. If that’s the case… do what you must.

Don’t oil the rail. Don’t oil the slide. Put a bit of oil on the barrel and rub it in with your finger to form a very light (not drippy AT ALL) sheen - then a small drop on the top of the angled portion of the barrel above the chamber and, using your finger, drag the oil over the 90 degree shoulder at the front of the chamber area lockup surface. Put a small drop on each of the frame rails and make sure it (the VERY small drop) gets distributed top, side, and bottom of the metal wear portion in the center where the contact occurs.

That’s it except the slide stop detent on occasion.

Anything else and you’re adding a penetrating lubricant which can affect ammunition performance and attract dust, debris, and carbon buildup and make the pistol less reliable.

(Gen 1 guns have one additional oiling point at the trigger bar tail, but since the thread is about a Shield Plus I left that out.)

Getting caught with your slide back, costs a case of beer for the after action party.
Geoff
Who knows getting caught with your slide back is one of the seven deadly sins of shooting. And now I can't find my list, computers!

clip off 1 - 1.5 coils of magazine spring. Thats what I do to all my 9mm 1911s.

I would not shorten a magazine spring, that's asking for reliability issues.

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VCDL, GOA, NRA

I think 13 round magazines are designed by engineers to BARELY hold 13 rounds, which makes them tight to load and seat. If there were any space left they would have made it a 14.

Back when 7 .45s or 9 .38s or 14 9mms (in a full size service Wonder Nine) were standard, there was no preventive maintenance program of replacing magazine springs.
It was quite common to download an early high capacity magazine to preserve the spring; don't try to get 32 in your Sten gun, matey.
Now the fashion is to squeeze in as many as possible, and the springs get squashed beyond reliable feeding.

USPSA shooters are in regular debate, what spring, follower, and baseplate to use for maximum capacity and pass the word whether a combination and capacity can be seated under a closed slide or not.

I am right now in the process of changing magazine springs for a double stack match gun. Old springs jam, new springs feed.

I agree with you to an extent, but we’re not talking about “back in the day” and modern engineering has developed better practices for the manufacture of magazines. We know that leaving magazines loaded causes little damage as long as the spring is within design parameters and is not over-compressed. We know that the repeated loading and unloading of magazines (or cycling of a slide for that matter vs. a 1911 sitting cocked and locked) creates way more fatigue over time.

While it was a practice over time to download, that is generally no longer the case unless playing with competition gear and much of the issue with that is that there are timing issues with the gun (recoil spring weight, firing pin stop profile, hammer spring weight, compensators if they’re being used), ammunition that is often hand loaded to achieve a particular goal (ie: major/minor/powderpuff steel challenge, etc), and magazines that use higher capacity tubes with springs that have a harder time matching the timing of all of the above from the first round to the last out of that 140 or 170mm tube.

It’s why a 7rd magazine works best out of the most 1911s… but I wouldn’t load it with six. That said… I could and would hurt nothing except my ability to have that extra round. Start trying to cram 8 into the same space? That’s were we get the modern 1911s not-so-stellar reliability reputation (that and some other issues and I won’t even go into my hatred for 10rd 1911 mags).

I do agree that while within design specs and fully capable of reliable function and long term use of fully loaded magazines, they can be a royal pain to load and seat and I don’t blame someone for giving up a round if it is too difficult for them to deal with.

From the prospective of a 30 year LEO firearms instructor… When you try to out engineer the engineers, you usually come up with issues that are not related to how things were designed. This goes from the slide stop / slide release arguments to over loading magazines, cutting springs and not knowing to insert a magazine with an open slide and then sling shot the slide to charge the weapon - while complaining the slide stop wont release the slide instead. Kinda makes your head hurt, so since this is a new year I think I will sit back and watch the younger crowd figure this out on their own!

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S&W factory revolver armorer

I agree. Would you kindly pass some popcorn down to me, thanks.

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VCDL, GOA, NRA

Yet we have MANUFACTURERS recommending leaving these utter maximum magazines loaded for a week to squash the springs to where they will work properly.

But what of the reload? Do you assume your students will ALWAYS shoot to slide lock where inserting a crammed magazine is easy?

Is kind of neat how this discussion has evolved. Started with the OP not being able to work the slide when it was closed on a full magazine, to what it is now. At least there are some workable solutions in all this that the OP can use to solve his problem.

Looking at how this is trending, I'm waiting for the discussion on how hard the slide release is to work on a micro compact, and then the inevitable discussion on if it's a slide release or slide stop, and of course the comments of those who just sling shot the slide and never touch the thing

Don't mess with the mechanicals. As noted, loading these mags full and letting them sit might help. What I do with certain auto-pistols is load the chamber from a single round in the mag, then fill up the mag. Downloading to 12 might be an option, too - SAS supposedly did that with their Brownings back in the day.

I also note you have very little ammo through the pistol. 207 rounds is not a break-in. 500 might be. 1000 is more like it.

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NHI, 10-8.