15-22 consistently fails to eject

[32Special]

I bought one of the S&W M&P 15-22 carbines that most people have been having good luck with. Looks like a few get out of the factory that won’t run, however. Below are excerpts from a note I sent to S&W giving my experience over two trips to the range with the gun. Thought others might be interested, or even have had similar experiences with ideas on how to fix, but I expect this one will be going back. Pasted from my note to S&W:


I purchased a new M&P 15/22 on Tuesday, 2/2/2010. It is one of the brand new ones with a flash hider. It refuses to run, and stovepipes the empty case about 20% of the time. All I have run have been Federal Copper plated HPs, CCI Mini Mag solids and CCI Mini Mag HPs. I have attempted to run 7 full magazines through the gun, but cleaned it twice during the course of this (fully cleaned it before last range trip).

I shot my S&W Friday for the first time. Loaded up my 5 mags and shot them all dry; I wanted to test all my mags. I set the gun up as close as possible to my Colt 6940 carbines: EOTech, Vltor stock, rail covers, flip up front/rear sights. My idea was to have it act just like my Colt. I’ve been unable to rig up a single point attachment on the buffer tube like I have for all the other collapsible stock ARs that I’ve owned. Maybe someone will come up with something that will work.
I disassembled the gun before I went to the range. It looked pretty clean, and it was obvious they shot it before shipment and didn’t clean. I wiped off the excess oil and smoke and shot it that way. At the range, my first magazine of Federal HP (bulk) went just fine. However, a few rounds into the second mag, I started getting stovepipes, sometimes with rim pointing out and sometimes with casemouth pointing out; I got 3 SPs with that mag. Thinking it was possibly a defective mag, I changed to another new mag and had probably 8 more SPs. Thinking it was ammo related, I pulled the gun apart and bore-snaked it. Using a dry patch, I wiped off all the internals.
My experience is that EVERY semiauto 22 runs better/longer on MiniMags. So, I loaded up a magazine full. Once again, the first magazine went just fine. However, I started getting SPs again on the next mag and probably had 6 or 8.
I fully cleaned and lubed the gun. I ran some ammo through dry, and it works okay as long as you do it fast. Doing it slow finds the top round in the mag knocking the extracting round off the extractor thus creating a stovepipe.
Tried it again Saturday starting with a perfectly clean gun and Minimag HP. EVEN WORSE THAN FRIDAY!
As for firing out of battery as some have reported, I didn’t have this happen, but the hammer dropped each time I had a stovepipe, so there is nothing that keeps the hammer from falling when out of battery.

 

[BELT_FED]

Sounds like maybe you need to do the ejector mod or send it back to s&w.. search on here and you'll find links to the mod... its just an adjustment

 

[chrish]

Mine does the same thing. I took it out for the first time today and got what sounds like identical results to yours. I used Federal bulk pack and ran about 200 rounds through it. Lots of FTE's just like you described.

I orderd 2 magazines to go with the one that came with the rifle. I made the mistake of not numbering them before this first range session. (I number all of my magazines) The last magazine I fired ran through all 25 without a hitch, so I don't know if it was luck or 2 of my magazines are bad.

Have you found out anything after contacting S&W?

 

[~tc~]

How are you loading the magazine? You MUST load one round at a time, using minimal pressure on the load assist. Look in the back of the mag and make sure the rounds are double stacking properly (alternating sides). Give the magazine a good solid whack on the back to make sure the rounds are seated to the back.

 

[snakepit]

I agree with tc's post. I took my 15-22 out for the first time and fired 250 rounds of assorted brands including one old bag of 10+ years old shells with no problems. I did slow fire, medium fire and 2 clips of rapid fire as fast as a could pull the trigger. I have one new style clip and one old clip and no problems. My friend was having trouble with failure to feed and when I checked his clip I saw some of his shells were misaligned and angled down a little. I showed him how I load my clips and how I use the spring assist and check each shell for the proper angle. You can usually check the side of the clip and see if any are misaligned. Once my friend figured out how to properly load the clip he had no problems with failure to feed. It does not take much longer to load the clips once you do it a few times and you figure out your method on keeping the shells in alignment during loading.

 

[chuck s]

I've had pretty good luck loading my magazines one round at at time and checking then for cartridge-stagger in the mag. Not perfect feeding, though.

Left good (rounds staggered); right not good.

I'm also pretty much setup to mimic my old (circa 1989) M4 Carbine (original version with the fixed handle). The M68 on the M4 is real, the one on the M&P 15-22 is an inexpensive Chinese copy. Seems to work fine with .22LR. (I grew up with the M16 pistol grip so have discarded the M16A2 grips on all my rifles.)

-- Chuck