Well, y'all, I had what my peeps refer to as "the Britney moment," as in, "oops, I did it again." I bought another Remington 870. This one is to be my lady's gun (though we all know I'll probably shoot it more than she will).

There's range time on the schedule tomorrow after work, a great opportunity to take "her" gun and run a few through it.

We took a few minutes earlier this evening to have a closer look at it, exercise the action a little, and drop a snap cap in for a few trigger presses.

And that's where things turned weird. First up, I dropped a snap cap into the magazine and found that it wouldn't get pulled up into the chamber. Then I found I couldn't easily remove it. So I removed the magazine cap and watched the spring go "sproing!" across the room. That one's on me -- I should have known better. I went on and pushed a rod into the tube, poking the snap cap out, then proceeded to push the follower back out the other end.

Picking up the mag cap and spring, I found a lump of what looked like graham cracker crumbs. Yep, that stuff was up in the mag tube, and all over the "far end" of the spring. Eww. So I cleaned that out, ran an oiled patch through, and proceeded to treat the barrel the same way. The barrel was clean, but I don't know what that crumb-like stuff was.

Having cleaned it and reassembled it, it seems it all works as it should. I still can't get it to pull a snap cap from the magazine into the chamber, and when I drop one into the chamber directly then the action won't lock up. Honestly, I think it's these particular snap caps. I have a set similar for the 12-gauge and they function as expected.

The moral of the story, I suppose, is the reiteration of the statement that even a new gun needs a cleaning before use. Not what I had planned to do this evening, but it certainly beat scrubbing floors!

New gun, or new used gun?

I've had calls from several folks over the years from folks that have just bought a gun, and thought you just loaded the magazine and go to shooting,


never a good idea, always give them a good cleaning and lube, factory new esp,


the oil they (apparently sometimes dip them in) is not a lube, but a rust perventitive,

edit to add,, the gunk in the mag body does sount a bit off, as in QC missed that ,

and no retaining cap on the tube to hold the spring when the barrel nut is removed?

Years ago, I bought a "used" but never fired blue Colt Delta Elite made in the early 80's if I recall correctly. I thought about "just shooting it", but then decided to clean it before I did. Boy, I'm glad I did. The firing pin channel ws absolutely full of fairly large metal chips from when it had been drilled. You would have been shocked at how many metal chips came out. The frame was apparantly never cleaned after machining and Colt just stuck in a firing pin and spring with all the metal chips and boxed it up. Lesson learned.

Yeah, be sure to push out the pins and remove the trigger group. Then spray it down with brake cleaner to remove any of the rust preventative gunk they use. That is probably what is keeping the rounds from feeding.

We got some new 870s from the factory when the CG went to the 14” barrel and they were full of alox-rust preventative. Some of them looked like they just dunked the guns.

Give us an update

I would say no but I bought a brand new Sig P239 off a guy a few years back... never fired and when I took it out of the bag it was bone dry... I decided to not clean it but did lube it before breaking her in... (Always a good idea with any 'virgin'

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
New gun, or new used gun?

It's a new-new gun.

quote:

Originally posted by MikeinNC:
Yeah, be sure to push out the pins and remove the trigger group. Then spray it down with brake cleaner to remove any of the rust preventative gunk they use. That is probably what is keeping the rounds from feeding.

{snip}

Give us an update

I didn't remove the trigger group yet, but will give that a shot when I remove the stock and forend to replace them with compact goods from Hogue -- she needs the shorter length of pull, so a conversion is imminent.

After last night's findings, I did throw some oil at it and work things around a bit. Then I took it to the trap range after work. Runs like a champ! My shooting wasn't so great, but there wasn't even a hint of a hiccup from the mechanical side of things. I think I hit 8 of 25 with that 18" 20-ga; I did much better with Old Faithful, the 26" Rem 11-87.

Both get cleaned this weekend, and we'll go again!