The slide on my M&P drops so easily when loading a fresh magazine on slide lock that auto-loading occurs more often than not. This creates a consistency issue while running reloads and so far my solution has been to go with it and let the slide do the work since it happens so often. This would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that now and then the slide fails to strip a round, even occasionally on magazines which are not fully loaded. With Apex’s DCAEK installed Smith won’t touch it. Any idea of what part(s) if any affect the ease of the slide dropping?
Do you have the factor parts that came out when the Apex kit went in? If so, swap them back out and send it in.
You just need a new slide catch/release (as yours might have worn out).
C4
An option, although a pain in the ass option.
Drrrrrr. That’s an easy enough fix, thanks much. I don’t see them on your website so I’ll call Smith. Now if only Apex would come up with one that works more consistently…
I called Smith & Wesson and explained the auto-loading issue and with no questions asked they put a slide catch in the mail for me. Excellent customer service.
Yep, they do stuff like that.
C4
Panzerr,
Good to hear CS such as this.
Grant,
I may have missed a thread on this but did Smith change to type of steel used in the mag catch?
-Jax
My slide stop broke on the port side. S&W sent me a new one, and my gun auto forwards as often as before.
This year, I sent a 9C with Apex trigger parts back to Smith for an extraction problem, and the Apex parts were a non issue. Why do you think they will be a problem?
I live the auto forward. Speeds up reloads. Seat the mags with some authority using the 45 degree bump and you will find it to be more consistent and not suffer from failing to strip a fresh round.
Because I sent it in for an unrelated issue with Apex parts in it and it WAS an issue for them.
Panzerr,
Not sure if you’ve tried it and it just doesn’t work for you, but when mine does it (rarely), I’ve found that if I just treat it like it didn’t auto-forward and just rack the slide back and let go like I normally do in a normal slide-lock reload, then the round “always” seats. (I hate using the word “always”, but it has worked so far for me). I already have it engrained in me to seat a mag and immediately grab for the slide (vs. using the slide catch button), so it really doesn’t bother me much if it auto-forwards and the round does get hung up or doesn’t feed at all…ymmv
Once I get the slide catch replaced hopefully my M&P won’t auto-load so readily and then I’ll roll with this technique. I ruled it out in the past as I didn’t want to drop live rounds nearly every time I conducted a reload!
Mine does it also depending upon how I insert another magazine. If you insert the mag at an angle it will always auto-forward. If I make sure to insert it as straight as possible it does not. LAV mentioned this in class for all of us that were experienceing this.
Interesting. I suppose if you insert the mag at an angle it will require more force to seat it and thus you will be more likely to induce an auto-load.
Yeah I agree…now that I think about it though, I haven’t had the problem with the round not stripping, and when it actually does auto-forward and successfully seats the round in the chamber, I don’t rack the slide. If the round gets hung up on the feedramp, then I’ll rack it. But then again, mine doesn’t do it much.
I’m assuming you’re using ball ammo right? I’ve heard that hollow points catch the feedramp moreso…
Try it with hollowpoints. Yeh it works great with ball,but with a HP? No way, don’t trust it. When I first got the M&P I thought it was a cool feature until I discovered this. Now I am training not to trip the slide release.
https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=90030
-Jax
For the record, mag insertion is a FINESSE exercise.
So auto-forwarding your pistol (on purpose) is really poor weapons handling and or technique.
C4
It’s not an amount of force issue, it’s direction of force.
If you drive it in at an angle, you are imparting SOME forward energy…think sine, cosine stuff from high school.
The slide has substantialy more mass than the frame, so it has more inertia (IE: objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force).
So, when you drive the gun forward (in part) by that sudden bump of the mag being seated, you accelerate the frame forward faster than the slide… the slide stays at rest longer than the frame does (more inertia). When these move in relation to each other, you relax the tension of the slide pressing into the slide release for a moment and that’s all that’s needed for the slide stop to spring back down out of the way… hence, auto-forward.
I can’t think of any way they can fix this issue without changing a LOT about the gun.