Got a new shield today, 9 mm without safety and took it to the range.

I installed the magguts springs and followers in both mags before firing a shot.

We used a maglula to load initially, as the springs are fairly tight the first time, although after this they were not that difficult to load by hand.  The 7 now takes 8 rounds, and the 8 takes 9, as advertised.

My 13 year old son and I  shot 100 rounds of the cheap aluminum cased federal.

I had one double feed while shooting one handed.  He had the hold open fail several times with the 7 round magazine, although this never happened to me, so I think that he may have been limp wristing a little.

Only 100 rounds through a brand new gun, so we will see how things go, a few more hundred until it is "broken in".  The double feed is unusual in my experience with a pistol, I doubt it would be due to the springs.

I am usually a glock guy, and have a 26, but I really liked the shield.  I like the sights, it fits my hand well, and I shot it single handed both left and right, as well as at some steel at 60 yards and it shot very well for me.  If the magguts springs prove reliable, I think the shield will take the place of the 26.

Anyone else have experience with the magguts springs?

ETA:  Looks like someone in this thread had a double feed with them, so will have to watch for this.



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EDIT:  I CURRENTLY HAVE 400 ROUNDS OF BRASS CASED AMMO THROUGH THE GUN WITH THE NEW MAGGUTS SPRINGS WITH NO ISSUES, SEE LATER POSTS

Just curious why you would not fire the gun with the factory springs first.

My intent is to carry it with the magguts springs, but won't until I have perhaps 500 trouble free rounds through it, so I might as well get started putting them through.

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I don't own a Shield.  Are the factory springs causing problems?

The mag guts spring set up allows for an extra round in the magazine.  He didn't replace them because of issues with the stock springs.

I just got a couple sets but haven't been able to try them yet.  Being able to carry 9 rds w the short mag is really attractive.

Gotcha.

I assume the double feed in your story is actually a nose to primer failure to extract.

The failure to lock open your son had is interesting.

The failed ejection in the other thread is also interesting.  Good picture.

All three can, but don't necessarily have the same cause.  That usual cause being a lack of slide velocity or slide travel speed or total slide travel to the rear.

The ordinary cause is weak ammo OR excess friction of the slide/top cartridge in the magazine interface slowing slide travel.

The effect is that cases are not striking the ejector firmly so as to be kicked out.  The effect is also that the slide doesn't travel far enough to allow the mag follower to actuate the hold open or travels and returns too soon for the follower to raise the hold open.

Most auto pistols operate because the slide fully travels to the rear, hits the slide stop interface with the frame in front of the trigger guard, sits still for a moment of dwell, the ejected case disappears, the magazine rises a new round into the feed lips, and the slide goes forward chambering the new round.  In slow motion, you can see every step.  That's why an AK is so reliable.  Over travel.  And why the mini guns are so not reliable.  No over travel.  Without the full travel or time dwell at the rear, the system goes to hell.

I think the substitute spring system is interesting.  I also think it is causing problems.  One round versus reliability is a no brainer.

My Shield 9mm has in the vicinity of 1000 rounds now with one failure to eject in the first 200.  Otherwise, it has fired and cycled properly since then with a collection of strong and weak ball and various self defense rounds and handloads.  I use Hornady Critical Defense 115 which it cycles with alacrity.

(Full disclosure:  It would not hand cycle Hornady Critical Duty 135 and I never tried firing any in the first 100 rounds.)

Yes, interesting insights about slide velocity.

The increased spring tension from the two spring system could increase drag on the  slide.  However, anecdotally, I don't notice a significant increase in force needed to load a magazine over say a glock or kahr mag.

My double feed was a failure to completely extract.  The empty partially extracted, but was still partially in the chamber, and the slide cycled back enough to pick up the next round.  The nose of the second was caught by the upper.   It was in the first 50 rounds fired, we will see if it repeats itself.

I have not chronographed the cheap aluminum federal 9 mm, but I would not be surprised if it was pretty low power.  That combined with increased friction from more spring pressure, and possibly some limp wristing on the part of my son led to the problems locking back.

I also agree about capacity vs reliability.  If I can have both, I will take both, but if not, obviously reliability is paramount.  We will see what the next few hundred rounds bring.

Interesting enough, I had a double feed about two weeks ago on my glock 19 using glock mags and tula 9 mm.  I think that was possibly the first I have ever had in a pistol.  They are not very common in my limited experience.

So uou're making a reliable firearm unreliable for one extra round?

My shield 9 has been flawless. Its a late build date gun never a problem > I took it out of the box wiped the packing oil off lube it up and good to go . The dynamics of the gun might not like a spring change like that

No I am breaking in a brand new firearm and at the same time trying a new product which may increase its carrying capacity.

If the springs prove to make  it unreliable, I put the factory ones back in and see how it functions.

It really is not that hard to understand.

A guy I shot with two weeks ago had two brand new shields he was breaking in.

Both were brand new and stock from the factory.  One frequently would not lock the slide back on the last round, the other would.

It sounds from the way LampShade above posted that his gun is stock and had a failure to eject in the first 200 rounds as well.  Thus far I have had one failure to eject, and several failures to lock back in the hands of a single fairly new shooter, which has not happened in my hands yet.  I will continue to shoot it and see what happens.

Guns are mechanical devices and are subject to manufacturing errors and tolerance stacking.  That is why I am putting many hundreds of rounds through before I trust the gun.  I would do this whether I replaced the mag springs or not.

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IF your goal is to prove or eliminate the new spring system, you could have done it two ways, neither of which are more right than the other, and both logical.

You could have used the stock gun and magazines and seen if it worked.  
-If the stock mags malfunctioned, you would know it was the gun/magazine as manufactured.  
-If the stock system worked without malfunction, you could have tried the spring sets for +1 round.  
-If the second test worked, you were done.  
-If the second test parts malfunctioned, a guess would be the +1 caused a working gun to malfunction.  
-(A baseline plus a change, so to speak.)

OR, as you did, you can start with the spring sets for +1 round, and see if they work.  
-If they do work, you are done.  
-If they don't, you are then still stuck testing the stock mag springs to see if that is a cure.  
-If the stock mags malfunction, its the gun system itself.

Your way has the potential to skip half the ammo wastage just for testing so your's is probably the right way given you wish to use the +1 springs.

The grin is that no matter what you do, testing produces results which have consequences.  Good or bad, easy, hard, or yeah, I'm done.

The headache is that attempting to discount the boy shooting and his malfunctions is a mistake.  What his malfunctions mean is that the system as tested is working for you and not for him.  That perhaps means it is functioning with a perfect hold, but not with a lesser degree of resistance to recoil if you buy into the limp wrist theory.   It is not one of my favorites.  Guns that work tend to work no matter the screwed up hold.

Translated into engineering babble, it means the system is marginally functioning and should not be depended upon in sub marginal conditions.  

Dirty, hot, sweaty, blood, rain, weak ammo, loose hold, one hand hold, left hand hold.  It may not work in your hand.

You want it working in the boy's hand.  Then you know it will work in yours.  As much as we can know machinery.

The slide locking back is usually a result of holding down the slide stop with your thumb - a very common issue for new shooters who don't use a proper grip with the strong hand thumb riding over the support hand thumb.  I doubt the mag springs had anything to do with that.

I hope the OP continues to update this thread.  The double feed may be mag related, but is more likely related to ammunition and/or a tight new pistol.  

The OP is going about it the right way, or close to it.  Ideally he'd have a couple of stock mags to run alongside the magguts-modified mags, and see if there is any difference in performance/reliability.   That is what I will be doing with mine shortly.

By all accounts, the Federal Aluminum 9mm is loaded on the hot side.  Subjectively they feel that way too.

I have put hundreds of them through my Walther P99s without issues.

I've learned threw trial and error when changing parts or specs in any device (gun, vehicle, computer, etc.) it is best to only change one thing at a time.  

In this case, I would've made sure the gun functioned with the OEM mags first before trying the new springs.  

Anyway, good luck and keep us posted.

Fwiw my gf had a couple jams shooting the aluminum case federal through her shield. The shield had previously 2-3 hundred trouble free rounds and then 2 jams from one 50 rd box of fed aluminum case.

My g19 has chugged through a couple hundred rounds of the aluminum case without a problem.

Update Range Report

I put another 150 rounds through today.  

I had another failure to eject/double feed.  This is unlikely to be related to the springs in my opinion, and may have to do with the aluminum ammo.

I also had the 7 round magazine suddenly stop being able to take 8 rounds.  When I took it apart, the metal cup in the larger magguts spring had slipped on one end, and the smaller spring was tangled in the larger one.

On the 8 round (9 with the magguts spring), I loaded the magazine and racked the slide once only to have the bullet nose dive under the feed ramp (again, aluminum federal FMJs).

At this point I am done with the magguts springs.  I am bummed, as I really hoped they would work.  The factory springs went back into the mags, and we will see how they do.

I have requested a refund.  They don't list a warranty on the site, so we will see what happens.

Thanks for the report.

I received an email back this morning from  Magguts.  They had several questions about the malfunctions and are giving me a refund.  They said they have had very few issues and are eager to look at my spring cup which bent.

Good customer service.



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i started the "Check it out thread"

i have had my Shield since release day with well over 1K rounds thru it. no major malfunctions. im up to several hundred thru the mags with magguts with no issues.

Well, given evnash's good experience, I emailed magguts back again.

I proposed to them that I send my mags and the springs back, and they will install new ones (essentially removing error on my part causing the issues).

I will then do a 500 round test with a different ammo and post results.

The gun has about 250 rounds through it so far, we will see.

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I was curious about these when I first heard of them, but I was waiting to see what kind of results consumer testing would yield. Thanks for the feedback. I would probably stick with the factory configuration myself.

I had about 600-700 rds through magguts mags in an LCP, and about 400-500rds through two magguts for the G42.  Never had a problem besides when the LCP would get about 300rds through it, I'd get a failure with weak range ammo (but it would still shoot SD stuff).

*In fact, the G42 DID have some issues when shot with the OEM followers/springs.  But when I changed to magguts, it's possible the spring was a tad bit weaker and caused less drag (at least one Youtuber thought the G42 OEM springs were too strong).  In any case, I've never had an issue with magguts, so I can't wait to break them in with a G43 when it and they come out.

The cost is not worth one round.  I would experiment with chopping the follower legs If I really wanted to have an extra round.

I finally had a chance to try out two mags (one 7rd and one 8rd) with the mag guts set up in my Shield.  I was not able to run through the whole program I had planned because the range I used for that outing bans steel-jacketed ammo (Wolf and Tula).  I did shoot one mag of Tula through the 8 rd mag before being told I couldn't continue with that ammo.  Oddly enough, I did have a failure to lock back on empty with that first mag.  I'm just switching back over to the Shield for the summer so it's possible it was me, but I can't remember that ever happening before.

After that, the gun ran reliably with both mags using a combination of Hot Shot 124gr FMJ and Blazer Brass 115gr (50 rds of each spread through both mags).  No failures of any kind with either ammo or either mag.  Other than that the only thing I noticed was that my shooting performance with the Shield was dismal compared to the last time I shot it last fall....  Much remedial shooting practice needed.

Not the exhaustive test I had hoped for.  More to follow as soon as possible.

To each his own but you take a brand new firearm and modify something and have issues without testing it stock first. OK....

My Shield has around 1K rounds and it has been nothing but reliable. The only issues I had was from out of spec Tula.

I received the mags back again from maggguts last week, but didn't get a chance to shoot until today.

In the interest of science, I spent the big bucks on some "TulAmmo" Brass from Walmart in the 100 round round containers.

100 rounds with no jams or misfeeds

I shot about half the rounds one handed, as I am working on this.  I did have one failure to lock back while shooting one handed on the right, but realized that I had my thumb on the slide lock- my fault.

So far so good.

I will update as I shoot more.

Good to hear! I need to get some of these for my Shield.

Another 100 rounds yesterday of the TulAmmo brass cased.  No issues.

200 down and counting.

I just installed these in two M&p bodyguard .380 mags. Haven't test fired them yet, but they did seem to make loading smoother (the spring was a bit easier to compress).  Going to test them this weekend.

This. Is it really $23 to upgrade one mag? I'd just buy another mag. They're so small you can carry 2. Interested in the new testing though.

I have been very happy with my maggutted G42 followers

May have to try the Shield followers

ny further updates on the Magguts spring kit?

Just bought a shield and I am thinking about buying a set.

But it's a carry pistol and I need 100% reliability

Any updates?

Did you ever run rounds with the stock spring after the first Magguts spring issues?

Thanks and I look forward to an updated OP'ers reply. :)

They work flawlessly in my bodyguard .380.

ive ran another 100+ rounds thru two of my shield mags with magguts. no issues.

I shot another 75-85 rds through my two magguts shield mags this weekend.  I did a quickie cleaning of the pistol before going out this time, and used brass ammo (albeit cheap stuff - Hotshot 124gr from Slovakia).  No more feeding/extraction issues.  I did get several failures to lock back with both mags this time though.  When I tried to duplicate the failure using extra caution to keep my thumb away from the slide stop, they worked fine.  They also worked fine in a friend's pistol on several attempts to duplicate the failure.  So, not sure if it was me (which I doubt, because I generally don't have my thumb near the slide stop), an ammo issue, or a mag issue.

Next time I go out I will use higher quality American made ammo, and start running some "duty" style HP's through them.

ETA - we also shot 50rds through two magguts G42 mags.  They were perfect. No issues whatsoever.

This is great news!

Update in first post.  200 more rounds today- no issues.  I now have put 400 total of the brass cased tula through with no problems.

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