Life Of An 1100

[codyb]

Was cleaning out my rem 1100 cm this am and cut my finger inside the Receiver Assembly while wiping it out. I notice that around the rail or groves where the link sits there was a fair amount of wear on the Receiver Assembly. I was just curious as the how many rounds I should expect out of a well cared for Remmy?

Cody

[HSMITH]

Welcome to the 1100 world. It will get sharper over time until it makes a razor blade feel like a wet rag. Keep your fingers OUT of there!!! Use some sort of a tool to push your rag around when cleaning. I just hose it out with brake cleaner and re-lube from a distance, when I learned this lesson I cut my finger to the bone!!

The good news is the gun will last a LONG time and this sharp edge is not an indication of any sort of problem. It happens on 870's and 11-87's also.

[Neil Beverley]

I had to slice my finger open many times over before I finally learnt my lesson. Even "protecting" it behind layers of cloth still wasn't enough. Old Remington or new Remington - you'll still bleed.

Gun Scrubber or brake cleaner work well. WD40 also works well to flush the cr*p out. I also save up old toothbrushes to help with scrubbing the internals.

Edited July 10, 2006 by Neil Beverley

[Flyin40]

I have had my 1100 since I was 12. I'm 35 now. I have had it reblued at least 5 times because of hard use. I couldn't even guess how many rounds I have put through it. It just keeps going and going. Its not cleaned very often either. The last blueing I had the smith go through it and check everything else out. He replaced a couple springs and a couple small parts that I can't remember what they were but that was it and of course the O-ring was replaced quite a few times.

Flyin40

[JD45]

The part about being cut by the receiver gave me the chills....again. I've had that happen more than once and it sucks.

My first repeating shotgun was an 1100 field. I got it when I was 13. The first couple of years I shot 7-10 boxes per year. From about age 16-26 I shot around two cases minimum each year. Before I was 27 I had jumped into a gun club with both feet, so my shooting increased like crazy. Sometimes I would shoot a flat on Sunday alone. And in the spring and summer we would shot 4-8 boxes on Thursday nights.

After about two years of clay shooting I broke a firing pin (it was 14 years old). I hunted ducks with the gun too, even around the salty coastal rivers.

I shot light target loads and heavy steel duck loads. The gun had one O-ring replaced in all those years.

It got finicky with steel by the time I turned 30, and I just had to have a Citori, so I traded it and several other guns.

To this day I still want that gun back.

[wsimpso1]

At Lordship Point (Remington Gun Club in Stratford CT, now closed) we had M1100's that had so many rounds on them that the chamber had a step worn in it from the brass cap on the shells. They would be cleaned when they began to malfunction, but it was usually thousands of rounds between cleanings, and some had over 100,000 rounds. They worked fine.

In our function test rack (Remington Ammo R&D Labs at Bridgeport), we had three M1100 12 ga magnums with many many thousands of 1 5/8 to 1 7/8 oz magnum shotshells through them. They worked fine too.

The burr rolled up inside is part of the deal, but it soes not seem to hurt the functioning. Learn not to reach inside Remington recievers with your fingers.

Usually, the only thing a M1100 needs is cleaning and an occaisional O-Ring. EricW has cheap one's that you just replace everytime you clean the piece.

Remington's may not be the sexiest guns, but most of them will run for two or three generations of shooters.

Billski

[Big Bore]

I have a 11-87 SP that I picked up at a gun shop here that was a Police buy back from a Sheriff's dept. in southern Utah. I got #34 out of 35 it was pretty rough looking. But I have shot it for 4 years in 3 gun competitions. and with only a few O rings and a bolt carrier it has never let me down. In June it went through it's 3rd Ironman with only one malfunction, the bolt locked back when it was not empty.

My shooting buddies have been trying to talk me into a SX2 or a Bennilli but I'll stick with this ugly duck until it fails me.

[Jaxshooter]

I have a Remington 1100 that I bought in 1972. It has approximately 250,000 rounds thru it give or take a couple of thousand. It still runs like the day I bought it.

[Kestrel]

I have a question about the 1100's longevity compared to the 11-87. I've read a lot about the durability of the 1100, but the 11-87 often gets more negative feedback. On a lot of forums, I see many, many more problems noted about 11-87s, than I do the 1100.

Are the actual internal parts better on the 1100? Do the internal parts in the 11-87 break more often? Are the parts designed differently between the two? I thought the 11-87 was supposed to be very similar to the 1100?

Thanks for any help.

[Patrick Sweeney]

The big thing about the 11-87 was/is the ability to use 2-3/4 and 3" shells interchangeably. As for relative durability, only the Remington warranty records could tell us that, and we'd have a better chance at asking the Pope about "The DaVinci Code" than accessing Remmies records.

I learned first day as a gunsmith not to reach into an 1100. I even kept a separate scrub brush just for 1100s, one designated the "slice and dice" brush because I knew it wouldn't last long.