870 Jamming
 

alright so i have a Remington 870 and it continues to jam on the extraction of the shell after the shot. It wont jam if the shell has not been shot, extraction and ejection is perfect.

I did some looking around and i have found people saying that the 870's love the cheap federal bird shot (100 for $20) so i switched to that and it is SO much better but it still happens.

I clean the gun after every time shooting and it is spotless when im done. I love the gun so i'm not going to give up on it just getting slightly frustrated. If this has happened to you with your 870 or you have an idea of how to fix it please chime in. whenever i think of a pump action shotgun i think of indestructible and consistent. I cant let a bird get away because of a jam. Thanks in advance for your input!

If it is the Express model you might want to polish the chamber a bit. One of mine did not extract smoothly until I polished out some sort of crud that had been left during the manufacturing process. Some fine steel wool on a wooden dowel did the job. Just pull the barrel off and polish the chamber - not the barrel.

wow i forgot to add the express part. it is an express. thank you i will try it.

Not sure if you ever fixed your problem but my cousin has one that did the same thing, I took it home and broke it down. They seem to get really bad carbon build up around the rod behind the bolt once I clean it it works ahwile until he shoots for three months and brings it back 7 months later never being cleaned.

Never had a jam till a particular goose load. Dirty,dirty,dirty. Started carrying a bronze brush to scrub chamber after a couple shots. It too involved spent brass wedging. Outside of that load,never had a problem.

Yep, polish the chamber. That said, many of the ones I've seen still weren't 100% reliable after that, but they were a lot better.

+1

My daughter's boyfriend has a new 870 Express and had the same problem extracting shells. I did the "dowel rod & ultra fine 0000 steel wool" trick along with some gun oil, and polished the chamber for him. Voila! Problem solved, and his 870 functions perfectly fine without skipping a beat.

Thank goodness my three 870s are older versions. Never had any problem with them - ever. My 12 ga 3 1/2" Express goes through countless rounds every year in upland fields and waterfowl blinds. It never fails to fire or extract or feed.
Looks like big green has found another way to cut corners on quality.

I have owned several 870 expresses in the past and just bought a brand new one this year. I have never had any issues with the older ones nor have I ran into issues with the new one. It is still a no nonsense, throw it off a mountain, drag it thru the mud and keep on going gun that I remember. At least mine is..

Here's an update about the 870 Express models... I talked to a gunsmith about the supposed "870 Express problem". Some models have it, some don't...

What it is: Leftover residue and gunk and Lord knows what from the manufacturing at Remington. It can be found inside the chamber and worse - even down a few more inches in the barrel from the chamber. The plastic shell casing will occasionally get "hung up" after the shot is fired, causing the 870 Express not to extract the shell - not without brute force from the butt stock to force it to eject the spent plastic shell casing.

Remington is so busy trying to make 900 Gazillion Remington 870's that their quality control is starting to slip a little, and some Express models slip by with residue and gunk still left in there. The "dowel rod and ultra fine steel wool" trick takes care of the issue quickly, and you'll never have a problem again.