I was practicing trigger pulls on my M&P 9mm, as I do once or twice every once in a while. I believe I was feeling the trigger reset. (Empty gun, pull trigger, hold back, rack, release to reset,) when I went to pull the trigger there was simply nothing. I felt no snap, heard no crack, nothing felt broken, there just was no click. :fie:
A little panicked now, I broke the gun down. The lower seems to be fine, but the little bar in the center of the slide towards the back (I’m no smith unfortunately) seems to be moving freely, which doesn’t seem normal at all.
I put the DCAEK in a while back, and had a local gun store put Weaver sights on (they did an awful job). I can’t think of what has happened.
If it helps the diagnosis any, this is the model with the “can’t fire without the magazine” feature.
It has ceased to fire on trigger pull. I obviously haven’t tested with live ammo, it just doesn’t click on trigger pull. The reset bit was just describing when I noticed it failed, in case that helps with identifying what has gone wrong.
As could be expected, Randy is dead on. The striker was broken in half, and the little grey piece of plastic that fits around it was shattered. Looks like I’m the market for replacement parts, and I have yet another reason to be indebted to Mr. Lee.
Apologies if this is a thread jack but I was having a very similar issue. Mine had just mush upon firing, performed immediate action, round ejected, new round chambered. Still mushy trigger. Performed immediate action one more time in desperation (I had transitioned to my secondary during rifle training and now it wasn’t working!) and finally bang. Gun didn’t malfunction at all the rest of the day, although I only put maybe 80 more rounds through it.
Any idea why this would have happened? The gun had that round in the chamber for a long time (it’s my carry gun, I left the round in the chamber and replaced the mag with a mag full of training ammo before holstering it).
Is my striker also possibly an issue? What should I look for when I examine it?
It was very cold out that day too, not sure if that matters or not.
Just very concerned because this is a carry gun and if it failed to go bang like that upon drawing, things would be looking very bad for me.
More details: Gun has about 1000 rounds through it, 600 or so of it are with the APEX DCAEK installed. It was originally a MA gun so it has the larger trigger spring. No manual safety, no mag safety.
From your description, it sounds like a dead trigger. If there was oil or grease that could have congealed due to cold, it could have slowed the response of the sear to cause the problem.
If your striker were broken, I don’t think the gun would have fired.
The fact that it happened twice in a row with manual cycling of the slide leads me to believe this might be the case.
Thanks Randy! Do you have any recommendations to avoid this happening in the future? I do tend to keep my guns pretty heavily oiled… Should I wipe all the oil off and only apply a very light coat to areas that need it?
As far as lubes I was using Breakfree LP (not CLP) but recently transitioned to Slip 2000 EWL.
I think any light oil that doesn’t increase its viscosity in your operating temperature range should be fine. One of the problems I have encountered is that unburned powder and carbon tend to accumulate rapidly in the sear housing block. Depending on how long it is carried and your maintenance schedule, inspecting and cleaning the area out with compressed air is not a bad thing.
Ah, well, that’s info I definitely needed. Thank you. I think I actually intentionally oiled the striker area a few times… That apparently was a dumb dumb mistake. I’ll remove it and clean it out and keep it dry.
Randy, I’ll also check out the sear area and make sure it is clean as well.
