Benelli R1 fail to feed.

D

delboybc

CGN Regular
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Delta BC
Hi All
I have had a Benelli R1 30-06 since May 2015.

Never had a problem with it feeding from the 4 round, stagger feed, detachable magazine. Until Nov of this year. Went target shooting in the snow and none of the rounds on the left side of the magazine would go into the chamber. The 1st and 3rd round when magazine had 4 rounds in it.

I would pull the cocking handle rearward and let it fly. The bolt would hit the round and only move it half way out of the magazine. I would pull the cocking handle fully rearward and let it go again. This would chamber the round. I could then fire the 1st round no problem and it cycled the 2nd round but would then only push the 3rd round half way out of the magazine.

The next day I loaded some dummy rounds at home and the thing worked fine. I decided to order a spare magazine from Wolverine.

Today I headed out to try both magazines. Both magazines worked fine at the start of the day but after 4 hrs in the cold (2C degrees but cold for the lower mainland). The magazine I initially had trouble with started doing the same ting of not feeding 1st and 3rd round. Used factory ammo today.

I have stripped both magazines and they both look the same, clean, roughly same spring tension, magazine lips at same angles etc..

The weird thing seems to be related to how cold it is outside, could the temperature change the pressure the return spring puts on the bolt?

Any suggestions on what could help e.g. do you ever leave dummy rounds in magazine to help loosen magazine springs etc...

Hope ok to have this in black rifle section, figured you would have the best experience with semi’s
 
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Did you use frog lube? in cold temps, frog lub guns things up terribly if not used right and the fact that the rifle was behaving when you started to use it, biut got worse as it cooled down to ambient temps makes me suspicious of it being something temperature related.
 
mustang979 said:
Did you use frog lube? in cold temps, frog lub guns things up terribly if not used right and the fact that the rifle was behaving when you started to use it, biut got worse as it cooled down to ambient temps makes me suspicious of it being something temperature related.
Click to expand...

Regardless of Frog Lube or not I would say the culprit is the magazine and/or it's lubricant or lack of any and if none then some should be used, as Mustang979 states it's likely temperature related and that leans towards lubricant(s).

I would give the mag (and rifle) a good cleaning then re-lube both appropriately (I like G96 or CLP) if it were me. Then re-test in similarly cold conditions for reliability, however I'm far from an expert so perhaps another more knowledgeable shooter could chime in.

Cheers D
 
I am using G96 synthetic, but I haven't taken the rifle completely apart to clean the recoil spring. Makes sense that temperature variations points to the lube. Looks like cleaning the recoil spring will be my next job. Thanks for the suggestions.
 
I took it to my local gunsmith and he suggested not taking the recoil spring apart as the right side round is feeding fine. Most of the time I have been feeding the rounds individually so he just thinks since it is a new rifle and magazine just need to shoot it more with full magazine to work it in.
 
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