My new Ethos started to fail to load the second shell 20% of the time. Benelli was great and offered to repair it at their site. I wanted to skip that and get it running by understanding and repairing the problem myself if possible. After the first shot I would find shell #2 sitting on the carrier arm as in the earlier post's pictures. After much field testing and simulations I found what was happening is that shell #2 would fly out of the magazine tube, hit and bounce off of the stops on the trigger group casting and miss the step ground into the shell carrier latch. By miss I mean the shell and its rim will proceed back toward the magazine tube sliding past the shell carrier latch notch by 1/8-1/4". All of this activity is normal except if the shell's rim doesn't stop at the notch ground into the shell carrier latch the Ethos design will not allow the carrier to raise hanging up shell #2. (Oddly when I simulated the shell missing the latch notch on a SBE or M2 the carrier would still raise and load shell #2. The Ethos has a profile machined into the receiver that won't allow shell #2 to load unless its held by the notch. Why the difference I don't know. I do know my SBE and M2 has never behaved like my Ethos). I determined the shell carrier latch was not doing its job so I ordered a new one. It arrived and right away I noticed the notch ground into the arm was sharp and stepped nicely with a slight undercut. By appearance it was cut differently then the one in my Ethos. Installation was uneventful. The new carrier latch is in and I can say that after about 500+ shells fired as doubles on clays my Ethos has not missed a beat! If things change I will repost, otherwise if yours is acting like the others in these posts take a look at the shell carrier latch....
