I was cleaning my 870 and noticed that my action bars are curved a little to the left:
Is this a problem? The gun still cycles fine and doesn't feel any different when I work the action. This might have been caused by a poor fitting barrel I tried on my gun for a short time. The bolt would only lock up if I used a lot of force and then would be stuck until I yanked really hard back on the fore end.
Doesn't seem too severe, even from that perspective. The design of the 870 is such that slight misalignment in the action bars should be nullified when the gun is fully assembled. If the action bars are bent inward, they'll be held the proper distance apart by the slide assembly; and if the bars are bent outward, they 'll be pushed back parallel by the receiver.
Does the alignment of the action bars improve if you place the slide assembly on them? And when the gun is assembled, does the action bar lock still have a good engagement with the end of the left action bar? If so, and assuming the gun still functions properly, you probably don't have anything to worry about. If you want, you could try bending the action bars straight, but you'll want to do it carefully, and make sure you're not putting stress on the brazed joint where the action bars connect to the fore-end tube.
Thanks for the help! No improvement with the slide assembly mounted but the bolt carrier plate sits comfortably on the bars. The action lock seems to work perfectly and locks up quite easily. Although, after the action release button pops down, I still have a bit more forward movement in the forend - is that normal? Everything is locked up tight, but I can move the pump forward and backward a little bit.
I may try to bend the bars straight if that won't weaken them.
The poorly fitting barrel was an NEA 14" heavy barrel. At first I had trouble even getting the barrel into the receiver so I lightly sanded down some metal on the outside of the barrel. But then the bolt wouldn't lock up so I was working at slowly removing metal in the barrel's lug cutout with a dremel tool, trying to match the shape and size on the factory Remington barrel. The last straw was learning that I'd have to modify my nice old-school wooden police forend just to get the barrel on so I bit the bullet and bought a nice Dlask 12.5" that is miles ahead of the NEA in quality. I'm sick of farting around with the NEA at the moment but eventually I'll probably try to get it fit properly so I don't just have it sitting around useless.
stereo joe wrote:Thanks for the help! No improvement with the slide assembly mounted but the bolt carrier plate sits comfortably on the bars. The action lock seems to work perfectly and locks up quite easily. Although, after the action release button pops down, I still have a bit more forward movement in the forend - is that normal? Everything is locked up tight, but I can move the pump forward and backward a little bit.
How much is "a little bit"? How much is it compared to the amount of travel necessary for the bolt to unlock from the barrel? As long as the fore-end & slide can't move far enough back to unlock the bolt, the gun should function fine.
