I picked up a Gen-1 UTS-15 with upgraded barrel and monoblock recently. Although I bought it with just 50 shots of previous use at a great price the shotgun had major hidden issues. Here's about how it went
During first rebuild stage the action would not lock up (could pull the pump back and forth at any time) so I lightly filed the grove to make it lock up properly and installed the correct size o-ring. Once I managed to take it apart, found the trigger group was cracked in 3 places due to shrinkage issues in the plastic material on casting (was literally falling apart before use), hammer spring assembly was side swiping the release badly creating a lot of side force and not leaving enough energy to unlock the now working action. There was also a ton of rough edges cutting into various pieces including the plastic followers (which I will make new out of aluminum later on I expect) and I in general cleaned all that up including all the ultra square inner edges of all the little cut windows in the magazine tubes which were razor sharp using a tiny file.
Tested it and found that the left side door was coming open due to stripped screws during use because it was screwed into a plastic top rail which couldn't handle the stress of small screw threads and latch pressure. I cut a couple of tiny recesses and added metal nuts on the underside of the top rail and it was best kind (with a little loctite). The guys at Wolverine were kind enough to provide a new trigger body in aluminum to swap over which did the trick along with some light fitting....THANKS GUYS! For what it's worth I hugely appreciate what these guys have done to support the firearms with upgraded parts.
On testing today it all finally worked fine. Fast fired 15 shots no issue, slides smooth as glass but I have no illusions, the plastic will wear poorly in time due to all the steel on plastic contact even with thick oil. Overall excluding the shells coming out the unlocked side door I've gotten it to cycle about 130 shots with 3 miss-feeds so not too shabby but it did take about 6 hours of work and several more hours of reading.
Anyway, was a cool project and a great learning experience but if I had paid full price for it brand new from the store I would have been pissed! From what I've read the new gen 4's have replaced many of the plastic parts I've mentioned with metal. Anyone know if the mag followers are still plastic or are they now metal? Also are there any further areas in need of upgrade? How's the fit and finish on the newest ones?
My final impression, it has all the features you would want other than an easy access release on the action (will look at that later on) but at least in the first ones there are many little details in need of attention and a few larger ones that are real killers but most seem to have been addressed.
Anyone with similar experiences? Comments welcome.
During first rebuild stage the action would not lock up (could pull the pump back and forth at any time) so I lightly filed the grove to make it lock up properly and installed the correct size o-ring. Once I managed to take it apart, found the trigger group was cracked in 3 places due to shrinkage issues in the plastic material on casting (was literally falling apart before use), hammer spring assembly was side swiping the release badly creating a lot of side force and not leaving enough energy to unlock the now working action. There was also a ton of rough edges cutting into various pieces including the plastic followers (which I will make new out of aluminum later on I expect) and I in general cleaned all that up including all the ultra square inner edges of all the little cut windows in the magazine tubes which were razor sharp using a tiny file.
Tested it and found that the left side door was coming open due to stripped screws during use because it was screwed into a plastic top rail which couldn't handle the stress of small screw threads and latch pressure. I cut a couple of tiny recesses and added metal nuts on the underside of the top rail and it was best kind (with a little loctite). The guys at Wolverine were kind enough to provide a new trigger body in aluminum to swap over which did the trick along with some light fitting....THANKS GUYS! For what it's worth I hugely appreciate what these guys have done to support the firearms with upgraded parts.
On testing today it all finally worked fine. Fast fired 15 shots no issue, slides smooth as glass but I have no illusions, the plastic will wear poorly in time due to all the steel on plastic contact even with thick oil. Overall excluding the shells coming out the unlocked side door I've gotten it to cycle about 130 shots with 3 miss-feeds so not too shabby but it did take about 6 hours of work and several more hours of reading.
Anyway, was a cool project and a great learning experience but if I had paid full price for it brand new from the store I would have been pissed! From what I've read the new gen 4's have replaced many of the plastic parts I've mentioned with metal. Anyone know if the mag followers are still plastic or are they now metal? Also are there any further areas in need of upgrade? How's the fit and finish on the newest ones?
My final impression, it has all the features you would want other than an easy access release on the action (will look at that later on) but at least in the first ones there are many little details in need of attention and a few larger ones that are real killers but most seem to have been addressed.
Anyone with similar experiences? Comments welcome.
