Some people have been having some issues with wearing out mag catches on M&Ps. About a month ago I replaced both of mine in the fullsize M&Ps that I have. I never had a mag drop. In the pics you can clearly see that the stainless one is rounding off from wear. I had about 6K rounds on the stainless one.
S&Ws remedy for the catch is using tool steel in the mag catch instead of stainless and making it fit the frame tighter.
The new one is the blackened one.
Here’s a pic of how the new gray follower lifts higher up in the mags. I have a few mags with black followers that don’t lock the slide back when empty (and helped screw me up in an IDPA classifier). My 9 other mags with black followers will have gray followers soon.
M&P strikers, you have heard of people breaking strikers. The old ones break pretty easily (I’ve broken two old style ones myself). They’ve since been upgraded and as far as I know I haven’t heard of a new style one breaking. S&W sells them as an assembly with spring cups, spring etc. They upgraded them for light strikes. I’m not an engineer but IMO to cure light strikes they should have made the tip of the striker longer for more firing pin protrusion, increased the rate of the firing pin spring and even lightened the striker a little. Adding mass to the striker and making travel more rearward may work in the short term but I think it’ll just wear the firing pin springs faster. Hammer/firing pin velocity and more protrusion works (I’ve had to add a longer Limcat firing pin and a faster lock time via a C&S FCG kit to my STI to get it to run 100%) I believe that faster striker velocity and more protrusion would cure the light strikes better than more mass. I also think that the striker should be machined from tool steel instead of MIM.
S&W isn’t recommending it but I recommend dryfiring with an Azoom snap cap to avoid damage and/or breaking the firing pin (old or new style).
Thank you for the pics. I certainly haven’t put that many rounds through mine, but I think it would be wise to upgrade nonetheless. That and I need a spare striker assembly and replacements for my black followers.
Thanks for putting this info out there i didnt know about some of these issues.GOTM4 Do you know when they made these changes to the mag catch and the other items you listed?My pistol was made on 8-25 of this year i wonder if my pistol has these upgrades allready?
I don’t know when the new mag catches started making it to the new guns. To be 100% sure just pop yours out and look at it. It’s even easier than a Glock to remove.
Will do,If my pistol has these 'older" parts should i send it to S&W for new parts or do dealers here(Grant) have these updated parts in stock, So that i could just replace these buy myself?
They’ll give you a bunch of crap but just insist that you know how to change it (or that I’ll be changing it for you) and they’ll sell it to you. The people that answere the 800 number pretty out of the loop.
Yukon from M&P forums says the newest one looks like this that he just got (the one on the left):
