traci

My Police Dept. has been having trouble with our shotguns and cannot figure out the problem. The problem is after firing the round it is often very hard to pull the slide back to extract/eject shell. This is happening with several guns, on and off, and we cannot pinpoint problem. Any help appreciated.

Remington 870 20 inch barrel rifle sights, factory extended tube, surefire forearm lights.

Problem occurs with duty Winchester standard 00 buck, Winchester reduced recoil slugs, and Federal reduced recoil 00 buck.

Dave Berryhill

It could be several things - hard to say without looking at them. The action bars could be bent or the action bar lock may not be dropping enough to unlock the action as well as several other problems. Have you swapped trigger groups between guns?

dfariswheel

A local private guard agency had a simular problem some years ago. The guns hadn't been detail stripped and cleaned for many years. The guns were dirty and gummed up with dried oil, but still functioned. Somebody decided to lube them up with a new type of lube. The new lube wasn't compatible with whatever they had been oiled with, and the new lube interacted with the old lube/dirt. The guns got really gummed up, and were so sticky the slide releases would hang up causing a failure to open. After a good detail cleaning they were Ok again.

Since this is happening to a number of guns, and with different ammo, I would suspect it might be old oil and dirt related. It's unlikely a number of guns would ALL have the SAME problem, unless their dirty, or somebody has been fooling around with them.

Dave Berryhill

Good call, dfariswheel. That's probably the #1 source of gun malfunctions. When working on "arsenal" guns (like a whole bunch of shotguns) I always engrave the last 3 digits of the serial number on the trigger housing so I know it will go back to the correct gun (mark it on the side where it will be covered by the receiver when you put it back together).

Mark Garrity

traci,
I recently had a similar problem with one of our department 870's. Check the action bar lock and see if it is bent slightly. It should ride underneath the left action bar. On the gun in question, it was riding out and over the action bar on the loading-port side. This took a while to pinpoint, as it was only occurring occasionally. When it did happen, it was prevent a shell from coming completely out of the mag-tube because the rim of the shell (at about 8 o'clock position) was hitting against the edge of the action lock.
Remove the trigger assembly, carefully bend the action-lock lever inward.
I also lightly Dremeled the right corner and polished it. This seems to ahve cured the problem.
Safe shooting,
Mark Garrity
Garrity's Gunleather

N-Frame Guy

I have found that the #1 problem w/most heavy use guns is that they do not get cleaned properly or often enough. Make sure the chamber is well cleaned and not pitted. If that does not do it, try exchanging trigger groups.