Seen every type of problem you can imagine with mossbergs. It's a gun with a freaking plastic safety, what do you expect? It doesn't cost much because it's cheaply made.
I've shot a New Haven M-600 (house-brand M-500) since 1979. The plastic safety sucks, pure and simple. I was one disappointed 14 year old kid when mine busted in the middle of a quail hunt thrity years ago. It took me one period of middle school metal shop class to fashion a replacement out of brass, and about thrity minutes of time to install it. With that problem solved, the gun has been trouble-free ever since, with zero failures. For ten years, I shot skeet with it two nights a week, without a hiccup. For the last several years, I used it bi-weekly for sporting clays, generally spending each session warming up with a round of skeet, then shooting two rounds of sporting with it.
Yeah, I know..... It's a pump-gun (and a cheap one at that) and a 20 gauge and everybody knows that sporting is a 12 gauge o/u or gas auto game. You supposedly can't shoot true pairs with a pump. I don't have any problem doing so.
It is cheaply made in the same way that an AR-15 or Savage M-110 is cheaply made, in that it provides reliable funtion with a decided lack of meticulous hand-fitted parts. Those parts can be "slapped together" by relatively unskilled labor, which keeps manufacturing cost low. It also makes detail stripping and re-assembly a cinch, even for a mechanical klutz like me. Here, "cheaply made" is a stellar advantage to me, because I can easily maintain the gun to a very high standard. I shoot clay with it several times a week, even on hot, humid Oklahoma summer days, and I appreciate how easy it is to detail strip this gun down, clean, dry, re-lube, and re-assemble.
It might be a cheap gun ( my parents bought it for me for Christmas in 1979, so it didn't cost me anything), but:
1) From new, it cycled with a positive feel, yet was snot-slick smooth to the point of being virtually self loading
2) With the exception of the broken safety, it has otherwise fed, functioned, and discharged with 100% reliability, and even fed those old all plastic Active-brand shells without a problem
3) It fit me reasonably well when I first got it. It fits me perfectly now.
4) It came stocked with stunning mahogany, every bit as nice as the mahogany that Remington used on 870 LT Wingmasters back in the day, and that was some pretty nice looking wood.
With its original 28" C-Lect Choke barrel, it wasn't a particularly sweet-swinging or dynamic handling gun. However, installation of a 24" vent-rib Accu-Choke barrel totally cured that problem. With this current barrel, which its sported for nearly 20 years, it is a very sweet swinging and dynamic handling gun, with the balance point immediately in front of the loading port, or exactly in the middle. I run extended choke tubes in it and the result is a flat-shooting, "50/50" gun that centers the pattern with every tube from Skeet 1 to Full.
I recently freshened the wood finish and had my local gunsmith re-finish the receiver and install a Limbsaver pad to tweek the LOP to adjust the fit for my current middle aged build. I spent almost as much getting that done as my mom and spent spent on the purchase of the gun when it was new. If the thing was a total POS, I would have spent that money on something else. Now, it is restored to like new condition cosmetically and it still has PLENTY of useful life left in it. I seriously doubt if I'll wear it out in my lifetime.
Aside from the safety, it has been totally reliable. I shoot it well. It is a very sweet-swinging, dynamic handling gun that fits me perfectly. It patterns very well with a variety of choke/load combinations. It is easy to maintain. And while it doesn't have walnut stocks, the wood that it does have is stunning enough to get attention whenever I take it out on the clays course. There really isn't a whole lot more that I can ask of a shotgun than my 30 year old New Haven by Mossberg delivers.
-JP
