Today, while stripping my new M&P Shield, i noticed the takedown lever had ceased up and would not budge. After a little elbow grease (far past what should have rotated the lever) it free'd up. Once taking the slide off the takedown lever popped out. No worries right? Well, i noticed the spring was missing and also, the tiny notch on the end of the lever had rub'd off. It now is able to rotate without having the slide racked. It still takes a little pressure to move it, so it doesnt move freely but is this something that is potentially catastrophic or will it be fine.

I had emailed S&W about the takedown lever not rotating right before i got it to move and noticed the new issue. Any tips would be great.

Call rather than email, and describe what you are seeing. I suspect that they will have you send it back.

Welcome j_d_owen!!

The Shield's don't have the spring (take down lever retaining wire) like the other M&P's do, it's the nub on the end of the take down lever that holds it in place, so it being missing is a problem. I'd call CS @ S&W and talk to them. Hopefully they'll just send you a new Take Down Lever...but don't hold your breath, I read a post about a guy having a casting flaw on his take down lever that was chewing up the end of his recoil guiderod assembly and they wanted him to send the whole gun in.

If you think about it a moment you should realize that often when the "Factory" (Any factory) asks that a product be returned to them for what many believe is a very simple part replacement, that they could have simply sent the purchaser a replacement to install, it is because they want the item in-house so they can evaluate the failure from an engineering standpoint and hopefully discover a change that can be made to improve safety and/or reliability!

__________________
Gunsmithing since 1961

Yes, that is a reason, but not the main reason. Guns are a high liability item. They want the whole gun mostly because most people don't really know what the problem is. They'll say it's a lever or screw when the real problem is something else. So, to avoid sending a part that doesn't fix the issue, they ask for the gun. This way they can get it fixed right the first time.

__________________
Freedom isn't free.

...all that in both of the prior posts AND they want to see what might have caused the failure, because they want to try to replicate it...in other words,, they want to see if a user did something they never anticipated would happen that they need to build for. Weapon failures because of design or poor build quality for a company like S&W are a zero tolerance issue. They have too much to lose.