This past Monday I got a 9mm Smith & Wesson Shield (the version without the thumb safety) with the intention of using it as a CCW. So the next day I set out putting rounds through it to check reliability, with the goal of putting at least 350-500 rounds of ball through it before then testing it with defensive loads.
The first day I put 100 rounds of Blazer FMJ through it without any issue.
Today I went out again, and fired 49 more rounds of Blazer, again with no problems. I then switched to Speer Lawman FMJ and toward the end of that 50 round box I got an FTE where the case was stuck completely vertically in the ejection port. That was disappointing, but I kept going.
I then switched to the other brand of ammo I had, some Winchester WinClean I’ve had kicking around for years. At this point the shooting session became a disaster, during the course of that 50 round box I had repeated FTEs with all four of the different magazines I was using.
In hindsight I wish I had photographed the first FTE that I got with the Speer Lawman because it was different than the others, but the following pics are of the first of the WinClean FTEs I got. The subsequent ones with that ammo all looked pretty much identical.
The gun was not cleaned at any point. I also deliberately did not lube it, hoping to see how well it would work when dry. Perhaps that was the problem, and it being dry and getting progressively dirtier with continued firing was to blame, but does anyone else have any thoughts?
I’m not clear if it had a particular dislike for the WinClean or if it was simply a case of the issues with the gun compounding by the time I started using that ammo, as the initial FTE was with the Speer stuff after all.
This was kind of a bummer as my initial impressions of it were positive (Aside from the trigger, but I started getting used to it.) and I was hoping to have this thing up and running as a CCW piece by the end of the month. Obviously I can’t do that now until it shows that it will run reliably.
First of all you should have cleaned and lubed it, this is protocol for any new gun. The recoil springs on a new shield are extremely stiff, you need keep the slide locked back for a few days and let the springs break in. A poorly lubed gun combined with stiff springs is your issue. I suggest you CLEAN it, LUBE it and keep the slide locked back until your next range trip.
Honestly I still dont know why people dont clean and lube guns out of the box, its stupid and proves nothing about the reliability of the gun.
I have the exact same gun, except I cleaned it, lubed it out of the box and instructed the dealer to keep the slide locked back until I could pick the gun up as per Grant’s advice. It ran about 1.2k rnds without any additional cleaning or lubing before I got a FTF.
Fair enough, I’ll take that advice and then put some more rounds through it next week. I will be quite happy if all this was just due to user error rather than an actual problem with the gun.
I’m with you, it like buying a new truck and never changing the oil, 'it blew up after 45,000 miles, what’s wrong with it!"
I probably clean excessively, after every trip to the range, looking at the mechanical bits is part of the fun for me.
I am going to pick up my second Shield this Sunday (the first one is fine, the new one is because California) Never any trouble with mine, even after I (a complete amateur) installed an apex kit.
I’m curious about how leaving the slide locked back will soften the recoil spring? I was always under the impression that spring tension decreased with compression and decompression. Much like magazine. People are always worried that storing loaded magazines will wear out the spring. I think we know that is not true. So does a pistols recoil spring react differently?
Problem free shield 9 here. Clean and lube often. I pay special Attn to the extractor. Definately Clean before shooting the thing. It’s a sub compact, not a duty pistol. It will run like one with care. I have around 1k through mine not a single malf.
At this point you don’t know if, as your post titles says “Smith& Wesson Shield troubles.” are Shield troubles, or ammo troubles, or user troubles.
IMHO you wasted your time and ammo on this “reliability test”. You first have to make sure you have a pistol working at 100% reliability. Then if you want to run a “will it work when dry test” then buy one of the many firearms degreasers that are on the market and remove all lube and do your test. Personally I wouldn’t purposely run a dry pistol and run the risk of damaging it but that’s your call.
I’ve had my shield for a couple years and easily have 3k rounds through it. I’ve had a few fte’s and those were with Winchester white box ammo and tulammo. I completely avoid those brands now and I’ve had no problems.
I agree with others in thinking that taking a new and fresh out of the box gun and shooting it without cleaning proves nothing about reliability. Reliability testing should include having the gun in a state in which you would carry it. I’ll go a few hundred rounds before cleaning but I’ll mostly clean it after every range session. Try other brands of self defense ammo. My preference is hornady critical duty and I have never had any issues whatsoever.
Well I’m certainly not going to run it dry again. It absolutely was a waste of ammo. And really, in hindsight it didn’t make much sense as you’ll never see me running an AR dry. I’ve shot Glocks and AKs dry on many occasions without issue and that may have unfairly colored my expectations.
In any case I’m going to follow the advice I’ve been given and hopefully this turns out to be a problem of my own doing.
keep us updated on it, it’s a cool little gun, even my new stupid ca version (the gun is almost to small for all the warning labels and ‘safety’ devices).
My educated guess is that the problem is the ammo–in addition to cleaning/lubing. My experience with Lawman ammo has not been good. I put it in the Walmart white box category that works ok most of the time in the bigger service pistols. Your Shield is a specialty weapon with all the peculiarities of sub compact pistols.
Clean the chamber most thoroughly. Do the same for the breech face and area under the extractor and leave the chamber free of oil.
I suggest that you disassemble and clean the magazines. Next run a couple mags of +P ammo through it. I think that you will be pleased.
This is virtually the same problem i had with my Shield. It did NOT matter what state the weapon was in ( Clean, dirty, or lubricated) or the type of ammunition used. It would not run.
It took 3 trips to S&W for a fix (for now).
They eventually replaced the extractor, spring and recoil assembly.
We will see what the future holds for this weapon. Currently 500 rounds without any FTF or FTE’s. But ejection is still VERY erratic .
I just bought a Shield in 9 mm. It’s jammed on me one time, the very first round I loaded, LOL. The round took a nose dive into the feed ramp and kinda did a reverse stove pipe, but no problems since, I have notice it seems to eject the brass in the same location consistently and that is odd as all I have run through it are mixed head stamp hand loads. Also very accurate with very little recoil. More trigger time will tell me more.
So when I start shooting this again, about how often should it be re-cleaned and lubed during the “test”? I guess I don’t have a clear idea of what to expect as this is pretty much the first handgun that I’ve put a real “round count” through in the last ten years that wasn’t a Gen 3 Glock (I’m actually not much of a pistol guy, my long gun collection is pretty diverse but my handguns are fewer in number and mostly serve utilitarian functions.) I want to make sure i’m not hampering things by having unrealistic expectations.
Some S&W M&P Shields are just lemons. Smith can’t even fix them it seems. My theory is there is a design weakness having to do something with extractor leverage that only rears its head when exacerbated by tolerance stacking. Mine and others have nasty FTE where the extractor claw jumps the case rim leaving an empty round mostly in the chamber with the slide jamming a new round up under it, locking everything up; no tap rack bang will fix it, you have to force the mag out then clear the empty shell from the chamber. My Shield never made it to carry duty. 'Hoping the G43 will be better.
That sucks that this seems to be an issue with some of them. the Shield also gets a lot of good press too though, which is how I ended up deciding to buy one in the first place. I’m going to reserve judgement on mine for now because it sounds likely that the issues I had may have been user generated. We’ll see how it does this week.
I guess my question for you is…what are the parameters for your “test”, what are you trying to test?
Personally I don’t intentionally run any gun dry. I usually shoot 100-200 rounds per range session and usually clean & lube them as per the user’s manual after every range session even though they’re probably designed to run many hundreds of rounds before needing cleaned.
