870 jammed!!!!

[nekwah]

Shooting trap with the 870 just for fun. I shot once and tried to pump another shell in but it woldnt budge. It was cheap trap load and i susect that the expansion of the cheap plastic was the problem. Had to really smack it to make it slide. It did it twice. It scares me because its my main defense weapon and its not suppose to malfuntion. It doesnt seem to happen with other ammo but i did put about a 100 rounds through it and ive never put that much of any other ammo through it at one time. Do you suppose my gun has problems or is it just the cheap ammo??

 

[bearmgc]

Maybe short stroked it?

 

[catfish hunter]

Mine did this too with wal-mart brand skeet loads the first couple hundred rounds i shot with it. take it apart, clean it well, and work the action a few hundred times to de-burr it. mine has been fine ever since.

 

[nekwah]

how does that happen? bearmg Ok Catfish i figured it was something like that even though i though i would have worked the action a lot of times and its been cleaned good a lot of times.

 

[augustino]

Not a good thing when your primary HD firearm jams. But then again when in the HD mode you probably aren't going to have the ammo you referred to as "cheap" loaded. Instead you'll have something substantial ready for the calling that I hope & pray you'll never be forced to use.

I own several Winchester 1300 and I've run just about anything and everything through them and thank goodness they've never jammed.

I had better watch what I'm saying or better yet shut my mouth. I'm turkey hunting this weekend and after saying that, I bet one of them jams! HA HA HA!!!
Good luck, it was most likely the ammo, 870 are good quality shotguns.

 

[MAX100]

Read this thread for the fix. It's a common problem with the 870. Call Remington and complain. Tell them there has been a lot of talk about it on the firearm forums for a while. Maybe if they get enough complaints they will address this QC problem


http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=435376


GC

 

[rbernie]

Betchya that the 'cheap load' said Winchester on the side. It's the base of the Winchester promo stuff, by the way, not the plastic hull, that gets the empty stuck.

Try the WallyWorld Remington SportLoads next time, or even the Federal bulk pack stuff. They'll likely work fine.

 

[okespe04]

Yep, that can happen.

 

[PA4476]

Catfish Hunter ..... I was not aware that Wal-Mart had their own brand of ammo. Does it say WM on the box ? Are they loaded in Bentonville Ak ? OR maybe you are talking about Winchester, Remington or Federal ammo that WM SELLS ?

The same cheapo ammo that Bass Pro sells. Everyone is always so quick to try and blame WM, guess it's the whole "blame the big name first thing"

 

[hometheaterman]

The chamber needs to be polished. I had this same problem and after a couple of years I found out what it was when someone online told me. I had a gunsmith polish the one I had. One shop told me $10 and one $5 so it was cheap. I could have done it but didn't have all the stuff needed and didn't want to mess something up.

Mine did it every 3 shots or with Winchester target loads. I shot a box of 25 after having this done and it worked perfect. That was all the Winchesters I had. The rest were Federals which worked before that anyway.

I posted in that other thread but I will post it again. This should really be made a sticky. As I had trouble finding out about this too.

Here is a link about others having this issue.
http://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=58194&highlight=870+express+jam+polish+chamber


Here is a link on how to fix it if you want to do it yourself.
http://refugeforums.com/refuge/showthread.php?s=&threadid=175266

Imo this is something that should have been fixed on these guns before they ever left the factory. These guns may not be super expensive but $300-350 isn't cheap either. This is just crappy quality control.

 

[AKElroy]

Read this thread for the fix. It's a common problem with the 870. Call Remington and complain. Tell them there has been a lot of talk about it on the firearm forums for a while. Maybe if they get enough complaints they will address this QC problem

After borrowing a friends 870 with this same issue, I bought a 1300 defender as my HDW. Even though the Winchester does not feel as robust, it functions smooth & flawlessly. I know logically that anything can be fixed, and the 870 has a good rep, but when I have 3 fail to feeds in 10 rounds, I'm not relying on it for HD.

 

[hometheaterman]

Mine seemed to work with the Federal 100 round packs from Wally World but not the 100 round packs of Winchester. Not sure what else did this as most else I shot was buckshot in 3" or 3 1/2". I never had it do this but I did have it jam quite often. Probably lucky if you got less than 3 jams every 20 shots with buckshot. It would do random stuff like stovepipe or not hook onto the old shell to pull it out or just random stuff like that. It never had the pump lock up like with the Winchester 100 round pack shells.

I'm not sure if polishing the chamber helped at all with the random jams but it did seem to fix the jamming with the 100 pack Winchester shells. Or the locking up of the pump that is. I'd try it and see if it fixes yours that does it with Federal shells.


If I was to get a pump shotgun right now I think the Winchester 1300 would be close to the top of my list along with the Benelli Nova. The Browning BPS would be up their too. No way a Remington would be near the top after seeing all the problems they have and the lousy quality control.

I'm a semi auto man myself though.

 

[Leaky Waders]

It's the gun...quit blaming the ammo...

I experienced the same problem with a friend's new purchase. The 870 was sent back to Remington, the chamber polished, and all rounds shoot well now.

Remington 870's used to be known for reliability.

People keep posting..."my 870 is ok...it can shoot everything but ________"

If people posted about a Taurus that could "shoot everything but _______" then replies would be like "your guns a piece of %&%#, send it back to the factory."

But, the Remingtonites go on blaming the ammo.

A pump should shuck reliably with any factory brand of ammo.

It's wrong for any model to not be able to relaibly do so.

I strongly disagree with King's statements about the tolerances of individual guns. These are not custom fitted hand pieces, they are assembly line models that are made with a cnc set-up. There parts are drop in from gun to gun with many aftermarket accessories requiring no machining or fitting.

Get your gun fixed right by a good smith or send it back to the factory. You'll be much happier in the long run.

v/r,

LW

 

[Virginian]

It's not 870s, its Express 870s, just make that clear. The issue has been beat to death. Not worth the energy to rehash it.

 

[Hungry Seagull]

Well I dont shoot winchesters anymore, much. Federals neither. Only Brennekes in mine.

Aint hung up yet. And I stroke it with authority to reload.

There is usually a handgun or the Moss in the alamo should the 870 fail in a no &^%$ HD Situation. If nothing works, you all will be reading about me in the paper tomorrow going tsk tsk tsk...

 

[bungalow]

Same thing happened to me. Couldn't pull the action back to eject the spent shell, and had to get somebody at the range to help. The helper took the 870 Express and slammed it on the ground to pull the action back, ejecting the spent shell.

Needless to say, I was disappointed. It is my first shotgun, and I had cleaned it out and everything, expecting it to be able to use anything - after all, pumps are supposed to be reliable. I bought it for HD, too - so that made me even more worried. What disappoints me most is that I was thinking about buying a cheaper Chinese gun, like the NEF, but let my significant other convince me to buy an American product (and I was willing because I heard so many great things about the 870 - plus the 870 felt 'substantial').

Anyways, it is good to know that if I get the chamber polished, I shouldn't have any more problems. And I realize it is 'only' a $350 gun, but come on, that's a lot of money for my budget, and it is marketed as a HD gun!!! Can't have shells jamming in the midst of a home invasion! Shows you how you absolutely need to take your gun to the range to get to know. Many people don't.

 

[hometheaterman]

King polishing the chamber may fix this issue but still doesn't explain why the one I've had jammed quite often on 3" or 3 1/2" buckshot. It was a very common thing for it to not catch the shell to pull it out or to stovepipe or just do something random like that. Who wants a gun that does this and needs any work out of the box? I sure don't. It also had a crappy finish. No ifs ands or buts about it. I was no where near the quality $350 gun should have been at.

 

[MAX100]

It would be easy for Remington to put a end to the QC problems of the rough tight chambers but it would increase their tooling cost. Why change, sales are better than ever.

You very rarely see this problem with other shotgun brands, even with the lower cost brands.


GC

 

[Yo Mama]

I was pissed when my new Express jammed 2 in 25 rounds after cleaning out of the box prior.

1. Took the advice here and ran 200 rounds through it. That was a fun day!
2. For now it's good to go, and worked it out, but if not polishing the chamber is next.

 

[bungalow]

Heck, at one point I thought about selling my 870 Express HD for a loss so I could buy a NEF Pardner Pump (or some other cheaper shotgun, say, a Mossberg).

But I am going to give the 870 Express a chance. I already bought a longer barrel for it, got a SuperCell recoil pad, used Gun Club ammo and didn't have any trouble with jamming like I did before.

But I did notice that occasionally the spent shells wouldn't 'pop out' of the receiver, but instead would get caught on the rim and sort of fall out, even with a hard pump. When I first shot the 870, not only would the bolt get stuck with the spent shell, but for a few rounds the spent shell wouldn't pop out at all, it would stick out half-way and I would have to pull the shell out manually. Polishing issue as well?

 

[hometheaterman]

Yea mine was a Express Super Magnum. So maybe that's why it had soo many issues who knows. To be honest I've never shot the regular 3" version. Mine was the Super Magnum and my buddy that had one who actually loved his was also a Super Magnum one. He had good luck with his and said it never jammed on him but he sold it when he got offered a good price for it.

 

[Leaky Waders]

"You can strongly disagree with me if you like. I'm certainly not perfect. But I'm right about this. Different combinations of shells and guns can cause problems and the fact that particular brands of shells cause problems while others don't says a lot more about the shells than it does the guns IMO."

Let me point out. That while you and others are defending the mediocrity of Remingtons present offerings. Others, using mossbergs, brownings, benelli's, nef's, winchesters etc are shooting and shucking those 'broken cheap winchester and federal hulls' that are too out of standard for you to shoot.

They are not posting on boards asking how to perform the last step in production on their brand new shotguns eg polishing the chamber - at home, with a drill and possibly voiding any warranty they have.

They are not sending their guns back to the manufacturer waiting for a few weeks turn around time hoping that their gun they bought for home defense will go bang twice in a row without some sort of dissasembly in between shucks.

They are not having to special order some kind of hull that will only work in their gun with a specific hull brand personality.

Don't get me wrong, I do like 870's - I own a wingmaster in 28 gauge. It has been a flawless little gun that is fun to shoot.

I recently steered a friend to purchase an 870 - there's a thread about it. It was an embarassing fiasco similiar to other posters. Basically a 350 dollar single shot until it was sent back to the factory and repaired.

I still stand by by assertion that major hull manufacturers aren't the problem. Remington is.

If another friend asked my advice on a pump then my answer would definately be a browning, winchester, or mossberg. If he insisted on a Remington then I'd recommend that he insist for the seller to let him pre-shoot that particular gun or put in writing that he would give him his money back if the gun did not shuck correctly. In other words, let the dealer have the hassle with Remington while he could move along and get a real gun.

 

[SwampWolf]

I still stand by by assertion that major hull manufacturers aren't the problem. Remington is.

And I think you are exactly right. If a shotgun (and I don't give one whit what brand it is ) is so "sensitive" that it discriminates between various brands of popular shotshell ammunition in terms of whether it functions or not, I don't want any part of it and ESPECIALLY not if I plan on relying on it for self-defense.

 

[Handgunner]

If another friend asked my advice on a pump then my answer would definately be a browning, winchester, or mossberg.

Ditto. It happened to me Monday morning. A guy at work was asking me what kind of shotgun I had because he was wanting to get something for HD. I told him to get a Mossberg because that's what I was getting after I sell my Remington.

 

[MCgunner]

My 500 was locking up with Winchester Xpert 3" 1550 fps loads. It would feed Federal 3" steel fine. Finally, I used 4 ought steel wool on the chamber, cleaned it up, seems okay now. However, I've also switched to 2 3/4" Xpert 1550 fps number 3 shot steel, so there was an ammo change. Not sure what did it, but it's working fine, now. I've heard folks gripe about Expert in 870s, too, on a duck hunting site I go to now and then.

YEARS ago, I was using Remington 3" steel in the 500 I had then. All of a sudden, a new box of ammo would hang up on the ejection port, apparently too long for the action. Yet, Federal or Winchester worked fine. At that time, I switched to using Winchester or Federal and never bought another box of 3" Remington steel. Might be fine now, don't know. I'm shooting the high speed 2 3/4" on ducks now cause it works and it works in my Winchester auto with a 2 3/4" chamber, too. I like that stuff. Glad it ain't giving me problems.

Yes, ammo can cause problems. I do prefer the Mossberg primarily because I'm a southpaw shooter. I don't care much for the 870s finish, the express, that is. It's a rust magnet in the salt marshes and bays I hunt. The camo finish on my 500 is quite resilient in those conditions.