originally titled: Replacing an old style M&P striker
Originally posted by Reg on 7 July 2010 and moved from my other site.
I want to clear a little confusion regarding the S&W M&P striker breakage and replacement issue resulting from dry firing from first hand experience.
First, the issue is only with the BLACK old style strikers!
Interestingly these were machined parts.
I have heard of NO breakages of the new silver style. That is pretty amazing for the internet.
Interestingly, these are MIM produced. They are thicker, reinforced and harder. For a striker that is probably a good thing.
How can you tell which one you have?
Rack the slide and lock it in the open position. Flip the pistol upside down so that you can see the bottom. The striker will be either black or silver. It is in the center of the slide and looks like a hook. If yours is silver and matches the round plunger next to it, you can quit worrying For those that have an older black striker, read on...
My pistol was made and purchased in 2008. It is a fullsize 9mm. I have been dry furing it daily for about 4 months. When I say daily I mean several hundred times a day. I did this for a number of reasons: 1. trigger/front site control, 2. to get familiar with the grip, 3. to see if smoothed out the trigger which on these earlier pistols I feel was a little gritty and heavy (the current cop of 2010's are much nicer). Before anyone asks YES the trigger smoothed out incredibly! And NO I do not use "snap caps." There are no limitations on dry firing from S&W and I don't feel that ejecting a snap cap every time or partially racking is equivalent to my practicing.
Let me make this clear so that I am not flamed or the problem is over-stated --
THIS PISTOL HAS BEEN DRY-FIRED 12,000+ TIMES!!!
Think about it -- 100 times per day times 4 months = 12,000 dry fires. Not exactly just a few times as some folks would have you believe. AND this only pertains to the old black strikers. Anything new will not have this problem.
Well, anyway to continue....during a a dry fire run I heard a click, racked the slide and then nothing. Immediate examination made it obvious what had happened -- the hook at the rear of striker had simply broken off. Shaking the pistol revealed the broken piece.
I called S&W. They wanted me to send the pistol in, however, I explained that I had the broken pieces of the striker in hand and would be happy to ship it to them for examination. They agreed to send me out a new striker. S&W is legendary for customer service -- this was, of course, covered under warranty.
Unfortunately, they were on back order and for some reason I got a recoil rod assembly instead, but after a follow up call I received my new striker assembly in a couple of days.
What I did finally receive was a complete striker assembly. NOTE: the old parts will not work with the new one so complete replacement is required. This is noteworthy because I have seen new replacement striker (only) for as little as $6! The complete assembly is usually in the $30'ish range. Here is a pic of them both:
It took less than a minute to remove and replace it with the new one. I was concerned that my smoothed out trigger would suffer, however, it is even better than before. It feels very close to my 2010 M&P 9c which had a smooth trigger out of the box.
I document this as a real case example of the striker issue that has been overblown, exagerrated, and often repeated on the internet. This is not a problem with current production pistols and S&W repairs/sends parts to fix the pistols with problems. The modified parts show that the product is continually improving and they are listening to users (the triggers on the new pistols are much better than the original).
I would not hesitate to recommend or purchase a S&W M&P (in fact I did recently buy a 9c to accompany my 9FS). I have no affiliation with S&W, although they did send me a new recoil rod assembly. I will let everybody know if I somehow manage to break this one.
