Magazzene spring/plunger probem on 1886/71 Winchester?

[Lastmohecken]

Well, this was a 2 or 3 part problem for me, but I think it have it fixed now.

I got to noticing that if I just had one round in the Magazzene of my Model 71 in 450 Alaskan, sometimes the plunger would not push the last round out of the tube completely or fast enough to advoid a jam. I was starting to suspect a weak mag spring. It worked fine when the gun was fully loaded.

So tonight I took the end cap off of the mag tube and pulled the spring and plunger. The plunger did have a small gob of (looked like maybe bullet lube or hard waxy material) on the outside edge of the metal plunger. I wiped that off, but the spring did seem weak, so I stretched it some on the muzzle end of the spring and reinstalled it. It seems to be fixed, no problem now, it kicks that last shell out onto the carrier with athority now.

My other issue, but I guess it's not really a problem with my 71, but it was more of a problem with an 1886 Extra Lightweight reproduction by Winchester was the fact that you really have to hit the bottom stroke on the lever travel to make the carrier snap up and feed the next shell or you will end up shoving the shell back into the Magazzene and ending up with an empty chamber. I have noticed it on several reproduction 1886's and can even do it on my old original 71.

I have shot leveractions all of my life but it seems on these particular models, you need to really bottom that lever out hard to guarantee this doesn't happen.

Does anyone else run into that? I know it's the way John Browning designed it. You got to hit the bottom of that lever stroke pretty hard, to pop up that carrier.

[Mike D.]

It's in the design, but I don't have to hit the lever bottom stroke too hard. You have to complete the cycle for the action to do it's job. I did disassemble my gun and polish the internals so maybe that helped some.