my shotguns choke up on winchester ammo. common problem?

cajun47

New member
i have 2 remington 870 express 12 gauge pumps and a very old winchester 12 gauge pump. they all choke up on winchester ammo(low and full brass). the winchester shells seem to open too much after being shot and sometimes fail to eject. remington ammo works fine.

simple fix is to use remington ammo but im wondering if this is a common problem or not.
 
I recall years ago ( 10 or so ) that I had a similar problem with winchester 1oz #8 game loads in two of our 12 ga shotguns, a local gunshop owner told me that there was a batch of ammo that had rims that were just far enough out of spec to cause the extractors to slip off them after firing. Perhaps this is your problem, or perhaps you have chambers that need a good scrubbing to keep the cases from sticking.
 
i cleaned on of my 870s spotless just now and went shooting. about 10 rounds of winchester high and low brass. all of them only came out the chamber half way when i pumped. i shot 10 rounds of remington low and high brass, no problems at all.

i can see the opening of the empty winchester shells are much wider than the spent remington shells. the winchester ones open up too much causing extracting problems(my guess).
 
You should have a Mossberg...dual extracors. Id bet my 500 would breeze through those. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA Mossberg 1 Remington 0 Just kidding
 
Cajon,
Something just doesn't sound right here. Your extractor will pull the shells half way out, and then something goes wrong. Once the shell is half way out, there really is nothing left to hold them in. The brass is clear of the chamber and the plastic is moving, so nothing is holding on to the shell.
Does the shell clear the chamber and doesn't eject? IN other words, does the shell sort of just sit there?
Extraction and ejection are both part of the shell removal process, but they are different functions.
 
1. Run from Win promo value pack shells.
These cause problems from training to clay fields to dove hunts.
Out of spec, cheap metal is prone to catch as it is not up against plastic, ...etc.
Oh, while I am thinking of it - Win Reduced Recoil has a plastic "ball" that will ricochet. Not good! I mean it will come back at shooter if used against hard targets such as steels.

2. Most shotgun extraction problems are dirty, gritty chambers.
Paper hulls with wax did not cause the problem cause by modern plastic hulls.
Plastic leaves a plastic, dirty, grimy chamber that causes extraction / ejection in pumps, semi-autos, O/U, SxS and single shots.

Take a cleaning rod that will fit into a battery operated drill.
Put some wisps of the finest grit of Scotch-Brite kitchen cleaning pad onto a bronze brush and attach to cleaning rod.
This will clean the chamber.
LEAVE SCREW-IN CHOKES INSTALLED , and continue to clean the rest of the bore.

After chamber and bore is cleaned, remove choke, apply anti-seize, re-install to snug, and good to go.

This is what we have done forever, and those that shoot tubed guns , clean between changing tubes this way.

Tubed guns meaning a 12 ga with tubes for 20, 28 and .410. Same gun shoots all 4 gauges.

Manual version.
Take a cleaning rod and bend so will fit into breech while gun is assembled.
Repeat with bronze brush with wisps of Scotch-Brite.
Twist and turn to clean chamber.

We keep these tools handy , and have gotten so many guns back in the game so many times , we have lost count over the years.

Folks clean "barrels" for some reason the chamber gets overlooked.

One tip is to use a gauge larger brush on chambers. i.e 10 ga for a 12, 12 for a 20 .

Pipe clean the extractor.

Money Gun is a 870 in 28 gauge with ~ 300,000 rds, and still using original extractor.
Many of the OLDer guns are still using OEM extractors with high round counts.
My SX1 has the original extrator with approx 300,000 fired through it as well.

New guns may have MIM extractors. Have it checked, and if so replaced with a OLD OEM, and get a spare for "just haves".

HTH
 
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