Remington 11-87 question

[longbeard48]

I have owned a used 11-87 SP Turkey gun for over ten years. It refuses to cycle light loads, but that has never been much of a problem for me, because I normally either shoot turkey loads or heavy loads for crows. While looking through the manual the other day, I noticed that a part seems to be missing! On picture 8 and 19 in the manual, the GAS CYLINDER SPRING on the gas cylinder is missing. The manual warns: DO NOT REMOVE. This spring was appearently not on the gun when I bought it. Just how necessary is this part and could it be the reason for the inability of the gun to cycle light loads? This part is not listed in the parts diagram!!??? Note: I periodically clean out the gas ports and replace the o-rings. Thanks in advance.

 

[Len S]

I got my 11-87 in 1991 and it does not have the spring shown in that manual.
I do not know when they made that change.I will look for my old manual.




Len

 

[jmr40]

What barrel length? Remington 11-87's with barrels shorter than 26" are not designed to shoot light loads. The special purpose guns with slug barrels and short turkey barrels will only function properly with heavy 2 3/4" and 3" mag loads.

 

[Beagle-zebub]

So then to what extent can the rest of them shoot 3" magnum loads?

 

[longbeard48]

Thanks, everyone.

I guess that spring is not so important, after all!

It has a short turkey barrel.

 

[jmr40]

The 11-87's with longer barrels will work fine with all but the very lightest loads. 3" loads should work fine with any of them. Any automatic will struggle with very light target loads, althouigh some work better than others. It is my understanding that the shot leaves the shorter barrels before enough pressure has built up to cycle the action reliably with light loads.

The recoil operated guns such as Benelli are unaffected by barrel length, but may struggle with light loads as well.

 

[longbeard48]

I have heard that it is possible to bore out the gas ports just ever so slightly to improve performance, but I always figured that such modifications were trade-offs in some way. It would probably be hard on o-rings. Does anyone have any experiance with this?