I just bought my new A5 today. Removed the duck plug. When I try to put four 2-3/4" shell in the tube. I can't get the last one in. On its own it seems to need almost a quarter of an inch more of room. I can force it in, but then it is so tight against the shell stop, that it wont cycle. When looking at the mag tube, it appears that the mag cap pushes down on the end spacer (movable end cap that the spring fits into) and this then blocks the last shell. Is there some way to fix this on my own. Install a shorter spacer, or follower,etc. Three of the 3" shells work fine as the over all length is shorter than 4 of the 2 3/4" shell. Thanks, azarby
Are the shotguns shells roll or star crimped...!? Roll crimped tend to be fractions of an inch longer than 2 3/4" ...hence the last shell not fitting.
I think found the solution to my problem, although I'm not sure if Browning would approve. It involves the magazine follower, the small metal cap that fits on the end of the spring and spring. I dig some troubleshooting and saw that the end cap was stuck in the follower. I was able to get it out and beneath it was a rubber plug that was 3/4" in length. It almost looks like it was poured into the follower, but I eventually was able to remove it. It was really stuck to the inside of the follower. I reassembled the parts without the rubber plug. Once the gun was fully assembled, I tried to load the mag tube and everything worked as expected. The last round required a little more effort to fully seat it, but it was not an unreasonable mount. You can actually push on the last shell and it has some room to go a little deeper into the tube. This would allow some minor variances in shell length. The gun manually cycles fine and all shells chamber and eject properly. I'm not sure what the purpose of the rubber plug is, but if it was made of a material that would compress, I don't think there would be a problem. I may try to make a different rubber plug and see if a shorted version would work. Doing some additional analysis I think I know the root cause. The rubber plug was adhered to the inside of the follower and the end cap was adhered to the plug. I believe the rubber plug is supposed to compress, allowing the last shell to be inserted, but being adhered to the follower prevents it from doing so. The plug was also pretty stiff, similar to the black adhesive they use to install windshields on cars. I don't know if Browning reads these threads, but I've just completed their failure analysis for them. I probably should send them a bill for my debugging and analysis time. LOL. Any thoughts on what I've done would be welcome.
