Received my SA15 earlier in the week and today was the first range trip to run it through its paces and see what's up. Basically straight out of the box after generous oil bath.
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Mags I sanded down with 150 grit sand paper to ease the sticky Magwell issues. All the mags are smooth to insert and easy removal, pretty close to dropping free which I'm sure will come with more use. Springs are super tight so I recommend leaving them loaded. After use today I think any issues with this shotgun are going to be mag related, but I'll get into that later.
Size and weight of the shotgun I don't think is a big deal, it feels fairly comfortable to shoulder , retractable stock is good, definitely removed the folding mechanism. Grip is ok, a little larger than a typical AR grip but doable. Forend is .. Well time will tell. The sights are pretty accurate but the carry handle is very cheap all plastic. I'll be running a red dot next time. Ran it with the flash hider installed.
Oh, and the charging handle... Uncomfortable to say the least. This needs to be beefed up like a GG&G for the Benelli.
Ammunition used in this highly scientific review as follows:
Imperial special long range 2 3/4" 1 1/8 oz #6 high velocity 1450 fps
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Remington sportsman hi speed steel 2 3/4" #4 1350 fps
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I think Winchester 3" 1 1/8 oz slug
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Winchester super target 2 3/4" 1 1/8 oz #7.5 shot
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Dominion arms low recoil 2 3/4" round ball slug.
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Winchester 2 3/4" 00 buck 9 pellet standard
So after blowing a few minds on the range with it being NR I commenced my ammo testing
I started off with one Mag of each round to see how they would perform without any specific break in.
First up was the Imperial which was difficult to chamber on a full mag.
Once chambered it would eject the round and jam on a near stove pipe in the loading ramp or just fail to chamber with the round parallel but top front of round stuck at the top of the chamber. Ammo would fire and cycle the action but not feed next round.
Second up was the Remington. These rounds actually cycled through nicely on this mag, but had a few fail to feeds on subsequent mags.
Next up was the Winchester 7.5 shot which I didn't think would work... And as suspected it would cycle the action and eject the spent casing but it just didn't have enough juice to do the job. But stay tuned folks...
Next was the Dominion arms 2 3/4 low recoil slugs. Again I didn't expect them to work but thought I'd run them anyway. My mistake here was only bringing 5 rounds. Dumped that mag like a champ, smooth and problem free. Damn I had 200 more sitting at home. My Benelli m4 wouldn't run them.
Next was the Winchester 3" slugs. Not much to say here except there was no way in hell I could chamber a round. Mag would insert but I couldn't pull the charging handle back and when locked back the bolt wouldn't drop to strip a round off the mag.
I ran 5 rounds of Winchester 00 buck which was a fiasco of fail to feeds with the rounds getting caught at the top of the chamber.
So I started looking at the mags and one issue I discovered is that when loading your mags the top round can have its case rim on the outside of the rim on the lower round in the magazine. Wish I had taken a picture. So be aware when loading rounds. I swapped up the mags and ammo and for the most part the imperial and Remington shells started running better with more use and the shotgun getting broken in. After 40 rounds of the imperial and Remington I went back to the Winchester target loads and surprisingly enough it ran smooth. I managed to run 20 rounds without much issue. Clearly the breaking in of the gun was moving along.
My initial observations of the stoppages is mag related and that brutal feed ramp.
The mags have seriously strong springs which I think is putting so much force on the shell that it's getting pushed hard against the feed lips on the mag. When the round is stripped it's causing the round to flip nose first into the top of the chamber causing a stoppage. I think this is why the Dominin arms slugs ran good because of their hard rounded roll/crimp. The other rounds were all crimped.
With another 100 rounds or so I think the action will smooth out considerably. The mags I'm going to try and work the springs a bit either leaving the mags loaded for a week and to possibly cut the spring down.
I think the shotgun has great potential and a few hundred more rounds will be the real test. So far I'm ok with the shotgun as long as I can get it running reliably. Right now right out of the box id give the shotgun a C+. I'll update this thread as I get more range time and different rounds. This shotgun would be monster if I can get it to run the Dominion arms slugs reliably.
So am I happy?? Sure why not. The shotgun looks cool, works pretty well out of the box and let's face it, it's a $555 semi auto NR. I dont mind tinkering around a bit, and I'm confident it will break in more.
Kudos to Wolverine supplies for bringing these in at a kick a$$ price point. And as usual the customer service from Wolverine has been awesome.
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