Over a year ago, I removed my pistol's magazine safety lever and spring after reading that doing so could lessen trigger pull weight. It was an easy procedure and there were no immediate issues. Then sometime later I started noticing that my pistol began to have stovepipe issues. This got worse each outing to the point where the gun was having feed and ejection problems almost every round (stovepipe ejections, failure to pick up next round, failure to cock the hammer, etc.). I'd have to manually cock the slide every shot for the first 6 or 7 shots in a mag before the last three would function. I tried different ammos and different lubes and greases, but the problems persisted.
Finally before returning it to ATI for evaluation, I decided I'd better return the pistol to original factory configuration by reinstalling the mag safety. And just for science sake, I took the pistol back out to the range to see if that had any effect. It made all the difference in the world. I fired over 350 rounds of different ammos with only one stove pipe.
So, in my pistol, removing the mag safety somehow increased the drag on the slide which eventually resulted in feeding and ejecting problems. This did not occur immediately after removing the mag safety or I would have realized the connection. It was a gradual loss in reliability that got worse and worse.
Has anyone else removed their mag safety and experienced reliability issues that were not there previously? If so, you might want to reinstall your mag safety and see if that solves your problems.