Got a Shield .380 EZ about 2 weeks ago. EZ to take apart, EZ to load, EZ to shoot, and soft recoil, but I was having the last round ejected and not chambering about 50% of the time at first and slowly getting down to 20-25% of the time. An Internet search found a few others having the same problem. Even American Rifleman mentioned it in their review without realizing what is happening, thinking it needed breaking in. 1 guy reported S&W has had his EZ for several weeks. Another reported he got his back, but it still malfunction and it's been sent back to S&W. A couple said the malfunction went away after 100-200 rounds were fired. Found a couple of videos of it happening, but the shooters were puzzled by it and cleared the malfunctions and kept shooting. I think that S&W, in their quest to make it easy to load, has such a weak mag spring that it's right on the edge of reliability in some of the .380 EZ's. The target typical buyer of the EZ is probably not going to be firing 100's of rounds. Me, I'll fire thousands in mine.
I determined for MY pistol that the mag spring was exerting too low of pressure on the last loaded round in the mag and thus it wasn't held sturdy enough to endure the recoil and breech face hitting it to chamber it. Long story short, I told my son-in-law what I wanted and he 3D printed an insert that goes into the follower, allows the 8 rounds to still be loaded and exerts slight additional pressure on the mag spring. Perfect functioning!
I told S&W about the problem and my fix, but their reply was vague and didn't acknowledge any such problem. Didn't offer to look at my pistol or mags.
I got 2 more mags from Midway. Both function 100% as-is. Took them apart and compared to the mags that came with my pistol. In both cases, the mag spring was about .2" longer at rest with the same number of coils. 1 spring was lighter in color and about .002" thicker. The other was the same color as the springs in my original mags. The label holding the package the new mags came in does say 429100000-RevA, but I don't know if the mag was revised or was the label revised.
In any case mine now functions perfect. I'm up to 491 rounds fired (148 trying to figure out the malfunction, testing ammo, and adjusting the rear sight and 343 flawless with old mags with insert fix and my new mags. Got a concealment holster coming next week. Also gonna test some 75 grain frangible bullets from American Reloading before I pop for a couple thousand of them at 4.9 cents each if I buy 2000 (frangible so I can shoot steel at closer range). I find it a very fun gun to shoot.
I determined for MY pistol that the mag spring was exerting too low of pressure on the last loaded round in the mag and thus it wasn't held sturdy enough to endure the recoil and breech face hitting it to chamber it. Long story short, I told my son-in-law what I wanted and he 3D printed an insert that goes into the follower, allows the 8 rounds to still be loaded and exerts slight additional pressure on the mag spring. Perfect functioning!
I told S&W about the problem and my fix, but their reply was vague and didn't acknowledge any such problem. Didn't offer to look at my pistol or mags.
I got 2 more mags from Midway. Both function 100% as-is. Took them apart and compared to the mags that came with my pistol. In both cases, the mag spring was about .2" longer at rest with the same number of coils. 1 spring was lighter in color and about .002" thicker. The other was the same color as the springs in my original mags. The label holding the package the new mags came in does say 429100000-RevA, but I don't know if the mag was revised or was the label revised.
In any case mine now functions perfect. I'm up to 491 rounds fired (148 trying to figure out the malfunction, testing ammo, and adjusting the rear sight and 343 flawless with old mags with insert fix and my new mags. Got a concealment holster coming next week. Also gonna test some 75 grain frangible bullets from American Reloading before I pop for a couple thousand of them at 4.9 cents each if I buy 2000 (frangible so I can shoot steel at closer range). I find it a very fun gun to shoot.
