mljdeckard
Member
I spent many years neglecting my 870, because I didn't feel like it was as much fun as my EBRs. Then I caught wind of the Armscor VR80. A M-4gery shotgun. For $550. Too good to be true?
So I bought it, and did some mods. I took off the CA-legal skeleton stock (not a thing wrong with it, btw, I just wanted it to match my other stuff,) and put on a Magpul stock and grip, (COMMERCIAL spec tube, btw, not mil. There are ways to convert it, but I didn't bother,) put on a Vortex red dot, and I unscrewed the barrel shroud and put on a muzzle brake.
I was warned of a couple of things. They need extensive break-in. (2-300 rounds of 1200fps+, hi-brass ammo,) the aftermarket mags are iffy, and if you leave magazines loaded for a long time, the shells will deform and fail to feed. So I bought more mags, (two Pro-mag 10s and a 20 rd drum,) and I left all of them loaded with Federal 00 buck for a year.
I had shot a couple hundred rounds of mixed loads of birdshot, with varied results. I would have PREFERRED to just crank through 300 straight rounds of Winchester AA high-velocity #8, but I had to take what I could get in the shortage. The track record was mostly good, One FTF on the first magazine of 00, a few with the other various loads. It seemed to even out the more I shot it. I also left the bolt locked open for several months to compress the buffer spring.
So today, I took out the long-term stored mags, with a mix of various birdshot, loaded everything all the way, and went out to the gravel pit and picked out a piece of wood on the side of the berm. About 80 straight rounds, zero failures of any kind. If the brake does anything to the recoil, I really can't tell. But it saves a little weight and it looks cool. So what I would likely recommend, is get one, break it in as well as you can, lock the bolt open for a long time, and re-test it. My next plan is to get a few cases of that Wolf 00 to see if it works well enough to shoot and rotate it regularly to make sure I'm not tempting fate with mags that have been in storage too long. Not only will I use this for all the tactical applications, I will likely use it to hunt turkeys and upland birds as well. (I know that makes me a Philistine, hate all you want.
So I bought it, and did some mods. I took off the CA-legal skeleton stock (not a thing wrong with it, btw, I just wanted it to match my other stuff,) and put on a Magpul stock and grip, (COMMERCIAL spec tube, btw, not mil. There are ways to convert it, but I didn't bother,) put on a Vortex red dot, and I unscrewed the barrel shroud and put on a muzzle brake.
I was warned of a couple of things. They need extensive break-in. (2-300 rounds of 1200fps+, hi-brass ammo,) the aftermarket mags are iffy, and if you leave magazines loaded for a long time, the shells will deform and fail to feed. So I bought more mags, (two Pro-mag 10s and a 20 rd drum,) and I left all of them loaded with Federal 00 buck for a year.
I had shot a couple hundred rounds of mixed loads of birdshot, with varied results. I would have PREFERRED to just crank through 300 straight rounds of Winchester AA high-velocity #8, but I had to take what I could get in the shortage. The track record was mostly good, One FTF on the first magazine of 00, a few with the other various loads. It seemed to even out the more I shot it. I also left the bolt locked open for several months to compress the buffer spring.
So today, I took out the long-term stored mags, with a mix of various birdshot, loaded everything all the way, and went out to the gravel pit and picked out a piece of wood on the side of the berm. About 80 straight rounds, zero failures of any kind. If the brake does anything to the recoil, I really can't tell. But it saves a little weight and it looks cool. So what I would likely recommend, is get one, break it in as well as you can, lock the bolt open for a long time, and re-test it. My next plan is to get a few cases of that Wolf 00 to see if it works well enough to shoot and rotate it regularly to make sure I'm not tempting fate with mags that have been in storage too long. Not only will I use this for all the tactical applications, I will likely use it to hunt turkeys and upland birds as well. (I know that makes me a Philistine, hate all you want.
