Bodyguard 380: Anyone had their misfires fixed??

[maddtrapper]

Its hammered fired. A Glock is striker fired.

 

[Lost Lake]

I'll admit when Oldtrader3 said a striker and a hammer are not even close to the same thing and then said he was an engineer and knew what he was talking about I had to pause a bit....

But I know what I'm looking at (I think anyway) when I hold my BG and by golly I don't want to swear it's a hammer if it isn't....

I am left wondering if OT3 has a BG380. I mean if you hold one you can pretty much see the hammer right in front of you.... No disrespect sir, you made me question myself though and that is probably a good thing!

Now the M&P semi-auto's - Those are striker fired. I have no idea how they work, I haven't dug into them yet, I just pull the trigger and they go bang and I'm happy. How they cock with just a slight pull on the slide puzzles me so I'm going to go learn that right now.

No hard feelings I hope!

 

[BuckeyeChuck]

The body guard has a striker! They are not the same intent design or even complete funtion. I have owned S&W revolvers for over 50 years and am a Mechanical Engineer. I believe that I know the difference.

Clearly not. The Bodyguard 380 has a hammer and is a hammer-fired gun. The trigger retracts a sprung hammer, which upon release strikes a firing pin, the tip of which impacts the chambered cartridge's primer, firing the cartridge. Some may interchangeably use the terms "firing pin" and "striker" but this terminology does not make the gun striker-fired.


The difference between a striker-fired gun and a hammer-fired gun lies in mechanism by which energy is imparted to the firing pin to propel it into the primer.


In a hammer-fired gun, a momentum transfer from the hammer into the pin is what propels the firing pin into the primer. In a striker-fired gun, the striker is propelled forward by the energy stored in a compressed spring, which in most striker-fired guns is mostly compressed by the action of the cycling slide, with the remainder of the compression occuring by pulling the trigger. This last little bit of striker movement during the trigger pull is how S&W gets away with calling the M&P line "DAO", which stretches the bounds of credibility, I think.

Call it a hammer, call it a striker, whatever! I called it the nomenclature that the gun writer's who wrote it up in magazine reviews called this part.

The writer is wrong. The Bodyguard 380 is a hammer-fired gun. It is not striker-fired.

All I wanted to know is what did I buy and will it work for its intended purpose?

You bought a gun that has a history of breaking firing pins in a percentage of guns high enough to get noticed on the Internet. What is not yet clear to those of us who own a Bodyguard 380 and/or are following this issue is whether this problem is created or worsened by dry firing. Based on reports from BG 380 owners with broken pins, there may be either a tolerancing problem putting stress on the firing pin, or a timing problem with the release of the firing pin block that also stresses the pin, or both. If this is true, and the problem is not directly related to the design of the firing pin, then it is unclear that dry firing (without snap caps) would worsen the problem.

Some of us have dry-fired our BG 380's several hundred times and put hundreds of rounds through the gun with very few hiccups and certainly no broken firing pin. My opinion is that there is a tolerancing and/or timing issue in some percentage of the guns and that the rest of us have pretty reliable weapons. This is only my opinion; I have no data to support it.

Your stated purpose for this gun is home defense. I would be interested in hearing why you selected the BG 380 for that role, especially since you prize reliability (as you should) and you own several revolvers, which tend to be reknowned for their reliability. I have a BG 380 as an everyday carry gun, but I have other guns for home defense, like an M&P9. I chose the BG 380 as an EDC gun because I only pocket carry and it fits oh-so-nicely into just about any pocket. But for home defense, it isn't my first choice.

Instead here we are with the Thread Ninja's picking fly scat out of pepper!

Your error is worthy of correction because people learn by reading Web forums. Given your belligerence on the matter of the BG 380's action, including a useless appeal to authority, this isn't picking fly scat out of pepper; it's calling ServPro to clean up after the sewer has discharged into the basement: unpleasant for everybody.

None of you seem to know the answer to the question, data and testing is the only answer that floats here.

You came to a Web forum populated by gun enthusiasts and expected to find data and testing? And then you have the gall to pull the diploma off of the wall so that everybody here would know you're an M.E., a person who should know that a Web forum like this one is the last place to find "data and testing"? Remarkable.

All else is opinion.

Yes, this is what Web forums like this are full of: biased opinion. Maybe Lee can start a subforum for "Data and Testing Likely to Pass a Chest-Thumping M.E.'s Approval."

Also, when you say "All else is opinion" you mean all else is opinion except that the Bodyguard 380 is hammer-fired. That is a fact.

 

[turbo38gn]

I was being nice and asking questions. MTBF gives a place to start. then you can maybe define the failure mode with some element analysis. Save the attitude for someone who cares!

I care about what I spend my money on and whether it does what it supposed to. A semi auto pistol like this is designed to protect people, not breakdown because someone value engineered the reliability out of it!

I came on this forum looking for answers, I admit the error on the striker, so cut my big toe off in penance and move on! In the meantime, some guy was mopping the floor and making fun of anybody who asked about failure mode in this pistol. What is the failure mode and why? The rest of this is a waste of time!

oh boy... you are good, thanks for the humor... I tend to respond in like fashion, thanks Lake for reminding me to be better and Buckeye... great response, I was gonna say that, just didn't have the patience... by the way, my BG380 really has been a fine pocket gun out of the box.. and guys I shoot with have had the same results as me, no complaints, none of them care for the laser, it's ok, it works, but no one I know trains with it on. If one is trying to use it in the daylite, forget it.. no laser works outside in the bright sun, or for that matter in any outside light. It's a night tool if at all used.

 

[turbo38gn]

Cool Jack! Mine is EALXXXX. As I said upfront, it has not been an issue. However, I have only fired it about 25 rounds of two different factory HP loads. It is surprisingly accurate but hard to manage the trigger pull for me, probably because I am a revolver shooter. I finally figured out to pull and stop before camover on the sear linkage and then aim and fire. This technique works much better for accurate fire at least for me.

I thought that it smoothed out a little after dry firing a couple dozen times? Maybe small burrs or tooling marks are the reason which is normal. Fortunately, I live in western Washington where there is NO SUN! So the laser even outdoors, has not been a problem to see at least to 15 yard silouettes

I am done here. Someday, maybe somebody will let us know what the. scoop is on this system? In the meantime, I will keep reading.

it's all good like this, mines an EAMxxxx, built soon after yours and I have somewhere in the 300 rd range on it. I'll never shoot too much more, I'm comfy enough with the gun, it's proven itself to me for it's intended use. I will probably shoot 50 rounds through it every couple months just to remember how it shoots as I only carry it maybe a few times a month. I usually carry my M&P's or one of my scandium 1911's daily and usually my M&P45 with nite sites and a TRL under the rail.. for home duty.. I'm thinking the new HD rifle\shotgun is gonna be my new .458 Socom AR with some of them frang.... ammo... that ought to stop a train in it's tracks..

 

[BuckeyeChuck]

I care about what I spend my money on and whether it does what it supposed to. A semi auto pistol like this is designed to protect people, not breakdown because someone value engineered the reliability out of it!

There is no evidence that "someone value engineered the reliability out of it." For that you'd need to know the rate and the cause of the failures, and you've been complaining that neither is known.

What is the failure mode and why? The rest of this is a waste of time!

There seem to be five failures in the Bodyguard 380 that appear repeatedly in Internet stories:

(1) Ineffective laser buttons. Failure mode is probably that the nub on the backside of the button either too short, or not stiff enough, or both. S&W has revised the button design. This is not a reliability problem, in my opinion.

(2) Laser assembly screw backs out. Failure mode is obviously that the screw turns counterclockwise due to vibration. I am unaware of any fix issued by S&W. I advise including a laser assembly screw inspection in routine maintenance, including using the wrench that came with the gun to check that the screw is tight. Do not overtighten the screw. Some owners have stripped threads trying to make the screw very tight.

Since the screw blocks the motion of the slide, this is a reliabity problem. (This has happened once to my BG 380. Guess who now checks the screw?)

(3) Takedown lever ejection. Failure mode is that the takedown lever grooves escape their retainers and the pin flies off during slide cycling. The slide often winds up separated from the frame and a considerable distance downrange. S&W revised the takedown lever design. It no longer ejects itself during firing, but it is *ridiculously* difficult to actuate until it's been cycled quite a bit, at which point finger force is sufficient to rotate the lever. This was a reliability problem.

(4) Light primer strikes. Failure mode unknown. I personally think it's related to firing pin fractures, but I have no evidence to support this. This is a reliability problem.

(5) Broken firing pins. The failure mode is obvious: the hammer strikes the land on the back of the pin and it fractures just forward of the land, near the firing pin block. However, the cause of the failure has not been positively identified, at least not outside of the hallowed halls of S&W. Stories hint at two causes, which may be separate or work together:

(a) The firing pin block, which is supposed to retract fully as the trigger is pulled, is either not completely retracting, or it is retracting late. This could be due to the tolerancing stack, an assembly issue, or a timing issue. But nobody seems to know.

(b) The firing pin appears to have sharp edges due to machining. These could act as stress risers during the hammer strike. These could also exacerbate stresses introduced to the pin when the hammer strikes it if the block is not fully retracted. Again, nobody seems to know for sure.

As far as I know, S&W has not revised the firing pin design. Obviously, a broken firing pin is a reliability issue.

The following thread has some interesting speculation about the firing pin fractures: http://smith-wessonforum.com/smith-...guard-380-broken-firing-pin-dont-dryfire.html

What's the bottom line here? Reliability is a machine-specific assessment, with statistical analysis aiding in determining the likelihood of failure in an individual gun that has not yet had a failure. Since this is true of all guns, then the standard advice applies: shoot your gun with the ammunition you intend to carry until you are sure it is reliable. Don't rely upon the gun for defense until you've done this. For the BG 380, if it's going to fail, you want to know sooner than later, and in the comfort of your home instead of during the heat of a self-defense situation, so I'd dry fire it liberally. If you get through several hundred dry fires (or more) and fire several hundred round through it (of any ammo brand) and it works well, then that individual gun can be deemed "reliable" and you can decide how/if you wish to use it.

The advice to dry fire the BG 380 early and often is counter to what so many have been saying in this and other threads. The prohibition against dry firing is good advice *only* if it is clear that dry firing is what breaks the firing pin. However, this is not clear and anecdotal evidence suggests that the pin can and does break during live fire, and after descriptions of where the pin in breaking, I'm skeptical that dry firing is more likely to break the pin than live fire.

Some say "I was taught never to dry fire a gun" as a way to say "All who dry fire guns take unnecessary risks." To be frank, I find such advice thoughtless because it uses a taught lesson to avoid the simple and easy learning/reasoning required to know the right answer about dry firing on a model-by-model basis.

The M&P9 provides an excellent example. Once you learn how the gun operates, you realize that the only difference between dry firing and live firing is the presence of the primer. Naturally, there is energy transferred from the pin to the primer, and the pin may hit an internall stop during dry firing that it never hits when a primer is present. This means, then, that the question about dry-fire risk is one of the gun's design relative to the pin striking its internal stop. S&W says it is safe to dry fire the gun, and the Web is full of people telling stories of dry-firing the gun thousands upon thousand of times. I have dry fired mine at least several hundred times and I will continue the practice because I am convinced there is zero risk dry firing the gun.

Any .22 provides another good example. I never dry fire a .22 because it uses rimfire cartridges and the pin can strike the barrel. This can dent the barrel and dull the pin. As with the M&P9, this is obvious once one possesses a tiny bit of knowledge about the gun's operation.

S&W says you can dry fire your BG 380. I've dry fired mine quite a bit (though less often than my M&P9) because I find the practice useful and because so far, reason says that dry firing the gun is not the direct cause of breaking the pins. Besides, if mine is going to break, *I want to know in my man cave instead of when I really need the gun." And, if it is prone to breaking, I want Smith and Wesson to see another example of a problem that they may choose to act upon. Do I think there is zero risk associated with dry firing the BG 380, as I do with the M&P9? No, because there are people reporting firing pins broken during dry firing. However, as of right now, I think the risk is small since reliability is applied to each individual machine, and mine has been very good.

 

[Lost Lake]

I keep the Bodyguard and a couple extra clips .......

I won't say anything. But as an Army man you KNOW what a clip is.

My BG380 is an EAL model. I haven't been keeping count but a good guestimate would be that I have dry fired it 400 times and put 300 rounds through it. I have had zero issues with it. My biggest complaint is the difficulty in removing the takedown pin. I have only used the laser for plinking and it was very accurate at 20 feet from the factory. I can put bullets through the same hole at that distance. The laser makes shooting quite easy because the trigger control is so simple to watch just by following the laser.

 

[turbo38gn]

Has anyone ever seEn the movie, " ERASER".. IT'S REAL!!

 

[rogarm43]

I must have a good one.

Bought my BG380 (EATXXXX) 9/5/11 (it was test fired @ S&W 8/24/11). @ range today fired 102 rds 50 American Eagle, 50 WWB, 2 Hornady Critical Defense. NO issues at all. Have been watching the broken firing pin issue on this as well as the BG380 forum. I have dry fired < 5 times and with snap cap < 50 times if that. I've had one FTF with Siberian Ammo (fired on second pull) and several stove pipes on last round in the magazine. I later found I had reinstalled the magazine spring backwards. No issues what so ever. Even laser buttons are great out of box.
I do carry it frequently, and with the firing pin issues, do not really trust it. I have an after market pinkie extension that allows all my fingers on the grip. Feels good to shoot. It's not a range gun but I do practice now & again (480 rds total).
I sort of hoped it would break today, although I do not know what I would substitute for it, as it has all features I like and it is very safe to carry (IMO). Hornady Critical Defense is the most accurate ammo I've shot in it, but cost limits too much of that.

I'm keeping it for now, and will follow the firing pin issues.

 

[Hillbilly Dan]

I have had my Bodyguard 380 since they first came out. I have put somewhere around 300 rounds through it with no failures of any type and that is using many types of ammo including HP's of several brands.

This past week I did get my first problem after a long time of daily carry. I put two mags through the gun when on the third mag after my second shot the take down pin came out and the slide went forward. This is a first and to top it off I could not find the take down pin due to being in a grassy area.
After 45 min of search I gave up and went to my house and called Customer Service at S&W. I am happy to report that my call was taken in a good way and the young man said this had happend to some of the early models of the Bodyguard 380. He offered a new take down pin at no cost to me. I was happy to accept. It came and the gun is fine and I completed my practice with a box of Remington put through it.
I carry this Bodyguard daily. I depend on it as a back up. I will still carry it daily.
Hillbilly Dan
Life Member NRA
Friends of NRA

 

[BuckeyeChuck]

I erased and posted on "Not ready for Prime time". Make fun of me until your ears fall off because I care about the gun not your mouth nearly as much!

Who is making fun of you?

I am going to fight you on this until some one finds a healthy respect for quality and fixing what is not right! I have all day, every day!

Who are you fighting? Who here is failing to admit that the BG 380 appears to have problems? In this thread, between you and me, one of us has been talking about specifics and one has been belligerently yammering in cliches for which no detail is ever provided and promising to "fight", whatever that means.

Fix the hammer, to meet S&W quality and safety expectations equivalent to their contract product MTBF and I will shut up, promise!

What is wrong with the hammer, and why does it need to be fixed? We've been discussing a problem with a broken firing pin. The hammer is a separate part, and I've not read any problems with the BG 380's hammer.

Perhaps you should permit your skin to thicken a little bit so that you are better able to discern between principled, detailed disagreement and personal attack. Also, writing a clearer message with some context will help the rest of us understand whatever it is you're going on about.

 

[Redneckbmxer24]

I can't speak to UMC fired through a BG as I've only fired WWB, Federal, and Hornady through my EBLxxx all which have been flawless. My experience with UMC in 9mm and 40 has been horrible though. I bought several thousand rounds because I got and incredible deal and I get 2-5 fail to fires every 100 rounds. The guns vary from glocks, XD's, and M&P's that were 100% flawless for many thousand rounds with other ammo. My friend has had the same issue with UMC 45 in his XD, XDM, and two 1911's as well. I won't be buying any more UMC once this stuff is gone.

 

[BuckeyeChuck]

You certainly have no standing to tell me what is right and what I should do, so save your breath!

An ironic statement from a man who insisted we accept his error about how the BG 380 is fired because he's got a degree in mechanical engineering.

All I want is S&W to respond to the myriad of issues with this pistol. You far thay have ignored any postings except to arm their attack dog!

Let's review what I have done. I have...

... listed five specific problems of which I'm aware based only on my own experience and reading on this and other Web forums. Between the two of us, only one of us actually provided a detailed list of problems.

... discussed the criticality of those problems and any known failure modes.

... offered knowledge about what S&W has done to address these problems.

... pointed out that your assessments about the cause of the pistol's problems is unwarranted using your own criteria.

If this is ignoring postings, then you have completely lost any sense of critical thought and/or reading comprehension. But this would be consistent with nearly everything you've written on this topic, which seems completely detached from reality. In short, the quote above is par for this course when it comes to your input, which has likely detracted from the topic: problems with the BG 380, what S&W is doing about them, and whether we trust the gun as a viable defense weapon.

This is the context in which I write about the BG 380. As a BG 380 owner, I want to know if my gun will continue its service as a dependable carry gun so I'm interested in a detailed, dispassionate discussion of the problems and their solutions. Your context is difficult to understand at best. I'm never quite sure what you mean, except that you seem angry at somebody about something and want to fight, which is worsened when such behavior is refuted by detailed writing and clear thought.

I stand by what I said until they respond! Here is something to think about. I was in charge of a very large medical device plant for many years. What if I had decided only to worry about product failures with military or tender (large) contracts and ignore safety issues with small hospitals? Would your family like to be treated in this manner? Think about it, we all deserve consideration under the consumer protection laws! Just because we are not hiring lawyers or Congressmen and do not have them on staff should not matter with consumer safety!

Based on your writings here, if you were influential in the quality of medical devices, I would politely ask that my family not be subjected to any of your employer's products, not because they may not be useful, but because I would have no confidence in the presence of detailed, articulate thought required to ensure their quality.

I think the same line of reasoning is valid for the BG 380, in my opinion. If you don't trust the gun or the company, there multiple options:

(1) Avoid buying one.

(2) Sell it, if we've already bought one, and accept the loss of money between the purchase price and the resell price. This is called "cutting your losses" and is an accepted way of addressing mistakes.

(3) Dry fire it and shoot it to verify that the individual gun we own is reliable regardless of the other copies that may be having problems. As I said earlier, reliability is a machine-specific assessment. It is possible to have a completely reliable copy of a machine whose product is plagued with problems. (I once owned a 1985 Renault Encore, a car that anybody with any inkling about cars would rightfully describe as "problem-ridden". Mine was downright dreamy. It ran and ran and ran. Thus, my individual copy of the car was reliable, even if the model line as a whole was considered troublesome.)

(4) If the gun is troublesome, send it back to S&W. Keep sending it back so long as it has problems. If this isn't satisfactory, refer to (2) above.

If you own a BG 380 and you want to rely upon it, it is up to YOU to put the gun through its paces to ascertain its reliability. But this advice is not limited just to the BG 380. It applies to *any* gun upon which you wish to rely.

 

[snw19_357]

Can we behave like adults and continue this thread?

You might want to go take another look at these.
Terms of Service

 

[ballcoach16]

I fixed my misfires by not shooting TulAmmo or other eastern European stuff

 

[Chevy]

BuckeyeChuck had posted a nice summary list of known potential issues with the BG. I was wondering if anyone had a little more information on some of them?

(2) Laser assembly screw backs out.​

Can anyone tell me, or better yet show me, which screw this is? Does anyone have a photo of this?

(3) Take down lever ejection. Failure mode is that the take down lever grooves escape their retainers and the pin flies off during slide cycling. The slide often winds up separated from the frame and a considerable distance downrange. S&W revised the take down lever design. It no longer ejects itself during firing, but it is *ridiculously* difficult to actuate until it's been cycled quite a bit, at which point finger force is sufficient to rotate the lever. This was a reliability problem.​

How can you tell if you have the revised take down level or the original one? Is there a serial number sequence or a date of MFG after which the gun has the new version? Anyone have a photo of the new vs the old?

(5) Broken firing pins. The failure mode is obvious: the hammer strikes the land on the back of the pin and it fractures just forward of the land, near the firing pin block. However, the cause of the failure has not been positively identified, at least not outside of the hallowed halls of S&W.​

Does anyone have a photo they can share of this? Where the fracture actually occurs?

 

[Chevy]

For those of you looking for some nice videos of the exact problems described in this thread check these out . . .

This is the best video I found about the laser screw backing out.
Smith & Wesson Bodyguard 380 Problem Part 2 - YouTube

Here is one that actually shows the take down lever coming off during firing.
S&W Bodyguard 380 Takedown Lever Problem - YouTube

I haven't found one about the broken firing pin yet

 

[s2harry]

just a thought

I believe the answer to your problems seems to be Models 908 469 669 and 3913. I dont have any plastic guns so I dont know how to handle the problem. I sent one gun back to a manufacturer and after 8 weeks they sent it back with a note. "Cant find any problem." I take my guns to a reliable Factory Authorized Warranty Repair Station for warranty work now instead. But I do hope you fix or modify things to your liking. Id want my friends here to be happy with their stuff....H

 

[Oldtrader3]

I won't say anything. But as an Army man you KNOW what a clip is.

My BG380 is an EAL model. I haven't been keeping count but a good guestimate would be that I have dry fired it 400 times and put 300 rounds through it. I have had zero issues with it. My biggest complaint is the difficulty in removing the takedown pin. I have only used the laser for plinking and it was very accurate at 20 feet from the factory. I can put bullets through the same hole at that distance. The laser makes shooting quite easy because the trigger control is so simple to watch just by following the laser.

I realise that you will not believe anything that I say but here goes anyway: S&W sold my clip to me as a "Magazine" when I bought an extra FWIW. You guys are masters at finger pointing but still have not figured out why you can't dry fire this BG.380 pistol? I am still ill and have not had the time or energy to write to someone at S&W who may actually know about the MTBF of this pistol and why it can not be dry fired. Six months has passed and nothing has changed here, I see?


From S&W Website.

Product: BODYGUARD® 380 Magazine 6 RD



SKU #:

prod_397950000

 

[Lost Lake]

Well look who's back!!

The BG380 uses a magazine. A magazine is a container for holding and feeding shells to the action. They have springs and followers and lips.

A clip is a shell holder used to fill a magazine. Clips hold rounds but do not feed them to an action. Revolvers sometimes have clips. A speed loader is a form of a clip, as are half moon clips.