What is the average life expectancy of an 870 round wise

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horsemen61

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Ok guys title says it all I am wondering what the average life expeantcy for an 870 is round wise

Thanks horsemen61
 
I guess it would depend on the type of ammo used (light target loads versus retina-detaching uber goose loads) but that isn't saying something can't be fixed either, so I am not sure what you mean by life expectancy.........if you mean to the point where the gun is completely inoperable or repairable, I would surmise more than that 250K number as there really isn't much that can go wrong unless you abuse it terribly.
That said, I have a Browning O/U with about 300,000 through it that needed some minor parts at 90,000; just goes to show that a quality gun, no matter the type or brand will be your best purchase over a cheap POS because you saved a few bucks up front
 
The really high round count clay pigeon shooters say the aluminum pump guns start to fail somewhere around 70,000 rounds or so.

The 870 may start developing cracks around the ejection port around 250,000 rounds.
 
I am well past 350,000 on my 1972 TB trap gun which has also been used for ducks and geese with steel and lead, for deer with slugs and for a few 3 gun matches. Did have a crack in the receiver at about round count 300K. Put on another vintage receiver and am still shooting all the other original parts except for trigger (200,000) and firing pin (250,000). Looking to go for 700k if I live long enough.
 
From what I see come through the shop, poor care and dirt are harder on 870's than rounds. I agree with the multi generation statements.
 
i saw a 870 express in 12ga that a amish farmer bought from another amish farmer and i could not believe the condition it was in, i ask if the shotgun worked and was told yes and he had no problems with it, it sat in the milk house with a partial box of shells ready for any use as needed. it looked like he just poured motor oil or fuel oil on it and thats all. i believe he said he paid 150.00 for it and it was in just about the same condition then. eastbank.
 
Yea some of those old 870 trapguns have hundreds of thousands of rounds.
I suppose my 870Competition has around 15-20K. I have replaced firing pin springs twice(because they broke).
 
There is not one. There is an 870 at the Museum in Illion that was used by a famous trap shooter (can't remmember his name) that Remington Sponsered for over 40 years, and he used that 870 and the round count on it is well over a million. Remington then gave him a new one and put his old one in the Museum at Illion.

Parts can wear out like the ejector spring, ejector and maybe even a shell latch, maybe. These are easily replaced. How can a solid steel receiver wear out? It can not. Some manufacturers build on aluminum receivers such as Mossberg. That shows that a shotgun receivers takes no wear or stress.

Trigger plate assemblies are replaceable as are barrels. The breech bolt assembly of the 870 is also a single block of steel and other then the firing pin and firing pin retractor spring there is nothing to wear out. So the true success of the 870 is the simplisity of the individual componets and how well they are made and how they interact with each other. 870's do not wear out.

Except for the ones lost in fires, lost into the bottoms of lakes, destroyed by Law Enforcement programs or neglected beyond repair, all the rest, over 10,000,000 are still shooting like the day they were built, just a lot smoother due to that high round count.
 
Last edited:
AI&P Tactical said:
How can a solid steel receiver wear out?
Click to expand...
Well, barring gross manufacturing flaw...

Since the receiver is a subject to the stress of both recoil and the bolt slamming out of and into battery it is axiomatic that eventually, eventually the receiver will either deform or fracture to the point that the firearm will no longer function.
The only real question is how long it will take. Second Law of Thermodynamics and all that.

Since I've seen more than one 870 trap gun with a cracked receiver we must accept that fact that some 870s will fail under normative patterns of use.

AI&P Tactical said:
There is an 870 at the Museum in Illion that was used by a famous trap shooter (can't remmember his name) that Remington Sponsered for over 40 years, and he used that 870 and the round count on it is well over a million.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination
 
Agency guns

My agency guns have a few rounds through them as we all qual'ed with them and shot them yearly.

I would guess that one hundred thousand would be a conservative count,as the guns are at least 40 years old.

They still go bang every time.
 
Are there particular years of 870 wingmasters that are more or less prone to malfunctions/failures? I'm looking to add one (maybe '50s/'60s with fixed choke) to save the wear on my '47 Winchester Model 12
 
In my opinion, a cracked receiver is an indication of a manufacturing defect, either design or materials, at any round count. In order to crack, the receiver must flex repeatedly beyond it's plastic limits. It should not. The Sportsman 58s would develop cracks at high round counts and/or heavy loads, likewise the LW20 1100s (or so I was told by Wayne Leek, though I have never personally seen one of those). Remington redesigned both of those receivers to eliminate the problem(s).
Everyone knows the MIM extractors are frowned upon. The reasons for this are that they can break, and the reason for that is that the MIM process is much more sensitive to control conditions and is therefore much more likely to produce "bad" parts than forging, but there is no economical non-destructive way to test the finished parts to separate the good from the bad. MIM doesn't produce a lot of bad parts, just several times more than forgings. No good way to test the forgings either, but in that case the process is much less likely to produce a bad part. A good MIM part should work every bit as well as a forging - if properly designed for the application, etc. There can also be problems with parts produced by forgings; material fluctuation, temperature fluctuations, etc.
In the case of 870s, if it was a design defect, they would all fail at around a certain round count. Particularly target guns where the loads are similar. They don't. So I believe the differences are caused by variations in the material or manufacturing process. And while these do lower the failure point, even the "bad" ones seem to be good for 100,000 rounds plus.
I have broken a forged extractor on an 1100, and they are the same as an 870 extractor - only one - in over 50 years and hundreds of thousands of rounds, but they must have been being pushed by the semiauto design, because Remington made them larger when they introduced the 11-87.
I have seen one cracked receiver on an 870 where the receiver was actually worn a little thinner in the area of the action bars, at reportedly over 300,000 rounds, and the crack was in the same area. I have seen another one at the top front of the ejection port at a reported 150,000 round count. I would say the second one had some type of material or manufacturing process defect that occurred during manufacture.
 
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