870 wingmaster, new barrel failure to fire.

[.223Rem]

Hi, I'm having a strange issue and I'd like to know what you guys think.

I have an older wing master (70's) I think and it's always worked perfectly with it's stock 28" barrel. It'd feed, fire and eject any brands of shells i'd put through it.

A while ago I bought an 18" barrel to have something a little more handy to take in the bush.

With the new barrel I'll get a FTF 99% of the time unless I slam the pump forward really hard.
It almost seems like the new barrel sits to deep in the receiver, if I loosen the nut (just by 3 'clicks' or so) I can see the bolt shift the barrel forward very slightly when I pump it and it'll fire perfectly. I should mention that it is a name brand Remington barrel (I think it's a lot newer then the gun tho).

I took the trigger out and checked it out, every thing in there seems to be working perfectly.
The gun also seems to dry fire just fine with the barrel tightened down. This is whats really strange to me.

I'd like to get to the bottom of this because I don't really like the idea of gun that only shoots if the barrel isn't tightened down lol.

 

[blasted_saber]

Is it a 3.5" chamber barrel?

I believe they are different then the standard/magnum chambered barrels.

Age shouldnt have anything to do with it. I have two wingmasters over 40 years, one of which sports a barrel less then ten years old.

 

[Can-down]

I've noticed slight dimensional differences in barrels and receivers between 870's of different vintage.
Maybe try another barrel?

 

[.223Rem]

It's a 2 3/4 barrel just like the original one.

Can-down, I'm curious about what differences you've seen? I did a few quick measurements. I checked the distance from the back of the barrel down to the chamber face (where the bolt face touches) and from the back to the notch for the locking lug. The chamber face was about 0.010" deeper on the original and the locking lug cutout was the same.

I'd be surprised if 10 thou caused this.