Article Two of 2026 is now upon you! Read all about this project that I have been under taking for many years and has almost reached completion. This one is a long one, as there was a lot to discuss overhauling the good ‘ole M&P40. Enjoy!
The first pistol I ever bought, a first generation .40 caliber Smith & Wesson M&P, has gotten a bit long in the tooth. When I bought the pistol, .40S&W was still all the rage, red-dot optics on pistols was reserved for Open Division in USPSA matches, and Smith & Wesson’s Military & Police polymer framed pistol had only been on the market for a few years. Now, the .40 caliber is plummeting into obscurity, optics are on basically every pistol, and Smith & Wesson celebrated the M&P’s 20th birthday while working on refining the pistol’s second generation.
This specific M&P left the factory in 2010, and owned by a college friend of mine before selling it to me when he needed money to buy new tires for his Audi. For a good while, it was the only pistol I owned, which meant I used it for competition, concealed carry, and shooting trash in the Colorado mountains. Later in my pistol-shooting arc, even after I had other options, I still carried this pistol from time to time.
When I bought my M&P, I didn’t yet know a whole lot about shooting handguns. I knew quite a bit about shooting rifles and shotguns, but had only shot pistols and revolvers a couple of times. Instead of a modern, polymer framed pistol like this M&P, I originally wanted to by a semi-custom 1911. The deal I got on this M&P, however, was far too good to pass up, so I spent some of my hard-earned cash on it and some ammo and didn’t look back.
For my first three years of shooting USPSA, I exclusively used my M&P, mostly shooting in Limited Division and getting my ass kicked. I stuck to Limited because, at the time, Production Division limited magazine capacity to ten rounds and I paid for the whole magazine so I wanted to use the whole magazine. Eventually, I bought a few more handguns, including the Beretta M9 I still use for shooting Production.
When I bought the pistol, the M&P series had a reputation for being “okay.” One of the main complaints was a “mushy,” heavy trigger with a poor reset, which the previous owner had fixed by putting in an Apex “duty” trigger kit. The previous owner had also swapped the factory three-dot sights for a set of night sights. For awhile, those were the only modifications made to the pistol.
After a couple years and several thousand rounds of .40S&W fired, I decided to replace the factory barrel with one from KKM precision. There were some complaints about the mechanical accuracy of the first generation M&P pistols, and while I wasn’t (and still aren’t) good enough to really notice, I figured it was better safe than sorry.
I also added some hockey-style tape on the grip, but decided I didn’t really like it so I pulled it off and stuck with the factory grip panels. For over a decade, my M&P40 was set up this way with little or no change. When I made the switch to shooting my Beretta in USPSA matches and carrying either a Glock 19 or Walther CCP for concealed carry, the M&P40 left the safe only rarely.
When Jenny and I moved to Hawai’i with the Air Force, Hawai’i really wasn’t issuing concealed carry permits. Additionally, Hawai’i’s gun laws are strict, with magazine limits and registration requirements. There is a thriving USPSA scene on Oahu, so I decided it was unlikely I would apply for yet another state’s concealed carry permit and stick to range days and USPSA. To simplify the move, we only shipped a couple hunting implements, a pair of SHTF rifles, and three pistols for competition. I put the rest of my guns in storage at an undisclosed and secure location.
Even though I hadn’t used it in competition for years, I opted to bring my M&P40 along simply because I was (am) emotionally attached to the first pistol I ever purchased. As I was preparing for my departure from the Air Force, putting a “refresh” on life if you will, I decided I wanted to give the M&P a refresh as well.
First, I replaced the factory trigger shoe with an Apex polymer trigger shoe. This replacement changed the trigger safety from the hinge-style of the Generation 1 M&Ps to the “dingus” style borrowed from Glocks. With the previous Apex trigger job, I figure this brings the trigger to almost Gen 2 M&P standards.
As an aside, I absolutely despise the 10-round magazines for the M&P. For the Beretta, the reduced-capacity magazines are the same as the standard magazines, but with crimps in the magazines to prevent loading more than 10 rounds. In the M&P, the reduced-capacity magazine is shorter, with a longer, plastic base-plate to match the grip length of the pistol. I have several, and they are all extremely challenging to load, even with a magazine loader. One only can fit five rounds in it, no matter how hard I push the sixth round in.
My next step was to send the pistol slide off to get it updated to modern standards, most importantly, the pistol needed to get an optic mounted. This brought up a new problem: optic footprint.
The proliferation of red dots on pistols led to a glut of manufacturers producing pistol-specific optics. Unlike rifles, which have mostly standardized on using Military Standard 1913 “Picatinny” rail for attaching optics and accessories, pistols do not yet have a standard optic attachment footprint. Many of the optic manufacturers came up with their own footprint to go along with their brand of optics.
Nowadays, pistol manufacturers solve this footprint issue by selling their pistols with an interchangeable plate system. A shooter can pick an optic, attach the corresponding footprint plate to the pistol, then attach the optic to the plate. This is nice if you might want to experiment with different optics, but it adds another failure point.
In the days between when I bought my M&P40 and the days optic plates came into vogue, if you wanted to mount an optic to your pistol you had to send your slide off to get a portion of the slide milled out to match the footprint of your chosen optic. It is a permanent modification, which means you have to be absolutely sure which optic you want to mount to your pistol.
So there was my problem, my old-school M&P needed to have its slide cut for an optic, which meant I needed to pick an optic in advance. After a ton of deliberation, I had narrowed my choices down to three footprints across four brands and encompassing six different optics: an Aimpoint ACRO, a Vortex Defender XL, a Leupold Delta Point Pro or a Trijicon RMR, SRO, or RCR. After shopping around for gun smiths to mill my slide and looking at pictures of M&Ps with the various optics attached, I eliminated the ACRO. The Vortex and the Leupold options used the same footprint, and all the Trijicon options shared the same footprint as well.
I eliminated the RMR because you have to take the whole optic off the pistol to change the battery. That was annoying to me in concept, especially since the other optics allowed you to more easily change the battery. Then, I got an email about a sale on the Trijicon RCR that seemed like divine messaging, so I bought one. With the optic secured, it was off to my chosen gunsmith to mill the slide, re-coat the slide, replace the iron sights, and mount the optic.
The milling process left a lot of exposed metal, which needed to be re-coated. I took the opportunity to get the whole slide coated in a burnt bronze Cerakote. The new coat looks pretty slick in my opinion.
This is where my frustrations started.
First, while I think the gunsmith did a good job of milling the slide and applying Cerakote, they not only didn’t mount the optic for me, they forgot to send it back with my slide. I let them know I was missing my RCR and they sent it to me quickly, but that was super annoying. Even more annoying because the RCR is actually a huge pain to mount.
The RCR is an enclosed optic, so rather than normal, top-down screws, it uses these weird holes in the side of their screws. The installer is supposed to stick an Allen key or other similar piece of metal inside the hole and rotate the screws a little bit at a time. Instead of screwing them down to the proper torque specs, Trijicon gives you a flimsy piece of paper to stick above the screws to indicate where the Allen key should bend to when you crank them down.
So I did all that, and the first time I took the pistol to the range, the optic came loose every five or six shots. I kept cranking the screws down, and the optic kept coming loose. Eventually, I bent the Allen key trying to torque the screws down, and the optic rattled itself loose anyway. Taking the pistol back home and back to my own workbench, I slathered the screws in thread locker, remounted the RCR, torqued the piss out of it, and waited to go back to the range.
I went back to the range a week later with my extra thread-locked and torqued RCR. Now a new problem reared its head. The slide stopped returning to battery on the first five rounds of my ten-round magazines.
This happened on the first five rounds of every magazine, and I was unsure if the culprit was the newly torqued RCR, a dirty pistol, worn out recoil springs, or stiff magazine springs. My suspicion was that the added weight of the RCR on the slide necessitated a new recoil spring, but the carbon build-up inside the pistol and the annoying capacity compliant magazines couldn’t be ignored.
I took the pistol back home, cleaned it thoroughly and inspected it for abnormal wear. The only notable wear item was the missing slide stop/slide release on the right side of the pistol. That broke off years ago, but I’m right handed so I use the one of the left side anyway. I have a replacement part but I don’t yet feel like removing the whole trigger assembly to change the parts out.
The recoil spring is the original, which meant it was almost fifteen years old and had gone through untold thousands of .40S&W rounds. During my first range trips trying to sight in the RCR, I had noticed the slide felt sluggish returning to battery. Plus, when I shake the pistol, the slide clearly comes out of battery, where it wouldn’t do that prior to installing the RCR. I ordered a recoil spring tuning kit from Wolff Springs, and got slapped with another bout of frustration.
When I ordered the springs from Wolff, I also needed buy a new guide rod. That was fine, it was less than $30, or so I thought. I placed my order for a spring tuning kit and new guide rod, and sat back to wait for USPS to bring me my goodies. A package from Wolff arrived sooner than I expected, and I eagerly tore it open like a kid on Christmas. I was then mildly disappointed. The recoil springs did arrive, but lo-and-behold, the guide rod was not included, just a note of the packing slip that said the guide rod was backordered.
Wolff’s website is not the most up to date looking site on the internet, but they could have at least warned me the guide rod was out of stock before I placed my order. The guide rod did, admittedly, ship very shortly thereafter, but it put yet another delay in finishing this project.
I finally took the pistol to the range with the recoil spring calibration pack a couple weeks ago. Following the instructions printed on the packaging, I calibrated the M&P’s recoil system. After about forty rounds and four recoil spring weights, my moment of triumph finally arrived. The pistol ran comfortably, and the RCR did not wiggle its way loose. After almost a year of ordering parts, fiddling with the pistol, sending the slide off to be milled and re-coated, installing the optic and other parts, and countless range trips I was finally complete refreshing my M&P40.
My intention with this M&P refresh is to bring it back to competitions. Since I am in Hawai’i, I thought it would be fun to start shooting Limited 10 with my old M&P40 with its brand new Cerakote and RCR. Through the myriad of rule changes USPSA has implemented in the past several years, the “Limited 10” division now allows both optics and major power factor, unlike the “Limited Optics” division which allows optics but doesn’t give any consideration for shooting a major power factor load.
