M&P Failure to Feed

[patrick_pk]

I've never posted here but have read a lot of good advice on the site.

I have an M&P 9mm CORE which is driving me crazy with failures to feed. I also have a 9mm Pro Series 5" so I know it is not the ammo (new Federal, Winchester and Hornaday).

The pistol will stove pipe about 1 out of 50 rounds and even do it when manually cycling a clip.

S&W had it for full month and returned it with huge scratches. They gave me a 3 word description "Replaced Striker Bushing". The striker couldn't possibly of been the issue as it fails when manually cycling. Needless to say it did nothing to fix the failures.

My guess is it took a month for the lazy guy at S&W to change out a 1 dollar part and hope I'd go away.

I have to return it again for the scratches (another month lost) and after speaking with Joe at S&W I have strong feeling that they could not care less if my pistol ever works and will do as little as last time to fix it.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I could do when S&W fails again?

Am I wrong to think if it fails to cycle manually and it has been polished that it is likely the extractor is off by a small tolerance?

Sorry if my frustration is showing but as the owner of 15 S&Ws I am seriously thinking of giving up on them based on all the M&P problems I have had.

Thanks,
Patrick

 

[AGoyette]

We bought a used CORE that had stove pipe issues. But our CORE had the Apex competition kit in it. Once I replaced it with the Apex FSS kit, all the issues went away. I don't know what it was, but something in the kit made the gun very happy.

 

[patrick_pk]

Thanks, I saw that on the Apex site. I have different Apex trigger kits in my other M&Ps.

Starting to resent having to spend hundreds of extra dollars to get an M&P to work correctly.

The extractor is only about $50 with taxes and shipping so if it cures my problem it is worth it.

 

[Rastoff]

Is this a failure-to-feed or a failure-to-extract? In other words, are the cartridges feeding into the chamber correctly, but sometimes blocked by a stovepipe (Type II) malfunction. Or, do you have two problems? One being a stovepipe malfunction and another being the feeding issue.

 

[patrick_pk]

I might be using 'Stove Pipe' wrong here. What is happening is the new round coming in is jamming. I see the round cocked up with the bullet end higher than the primer and it jams up.

This has happened when manually cocking the pistol (overhand) on the very first round but also mid clip when firing. I've slowly cleared the rounds so I can get a look at what is happening and it is always jammed up with the bullet higher than the brass.

The extraction does seem a bit week and maybe 1 or 2 times out of 1000 rounds at this point did I get the ejected brass caught in the returning slide.

 

[Rastoff]

I might be using 'Stove Pipe' wrong here. What is happening is the new round coming in is jamming. I see the round cocked up with the bullet end higher than the primer and it jams up.

Like this?

If it's like I pictured above, I had this problem early on. I did two things and it hasn't happened again in over 1,500 rounds. I replaced the Extractor and polished the chamber.

I called S&W, told them about it and they sent me an Extractor free of charge. Then I polished the chamber using a felt tip on my Dremel and Mother's polish. I'm not sure if one or both fixed the issue, but it is gone now.

 

[rsrocket1]

Be sure to clean the extractor groove and if you are comfortable with driving out roll pins, remove the extractor roll pin and clean the space underneath the extractor. After 20k+ rounds, the area under my extractor was full of soot "gunk", so much that they looked like rolled up extruded powder sticks.

I was getting failures to fully lock and light primer strikes that were off center once in a great while. The sticky extractor was preventing the cartridge from sliding smoothly into the chamber and the slide would stop just short of all the way. Riding the slide would duplicate this problem and when I tried it with a fired case, I could get the striker to hit the primer very lightly and above center. That was the cause of the off center light primer strikes.

After cleaning, I could ride the slide all the way and the recoil spring would be able to overcome all resistance and put the case fully into battery. No more light strikes or failures to RTB any more.

 

[patrick_pk]

Thanks for the advice. I will try to get them to put in a new extractor and will keep it clean.

I am more made that they took it for a month and changed the striker bushing like that could possibly have anything to do with it.

My guess is the guy in the shop had to change something to say it was fixed so he choose a 1 dollar part and sent it on its way.

I have tested a couple more pistols and have 2 more to send back so we will see what they do about them.