11/87 Extractor

[Lee Watne]

Old reliable just spit out it's extractor,causing me to zero the biggest point stage of our annual three gun match. Thinking back, it warned me but I wasn't clever enough to understand. It might be a good idea to keep an extractor, spring, and plunger in your kit.

[DBChaffin]

Thanks for the tip.  Can I ask how it "warned you"?  I would prefer to avoid that if possible.  

[Lee Watne]

Disciple,

The warning was a failure to extract when I was in a multiple shot string. The empty hung in the port without turning out. But under the stress of firing I just cleared it and chalked it up to a possible gas problem because I was using some new low cost shells. Thanks to a local gunsmith that had the parts I was able to finish the two day match with my repaired gun, but way down because of the 260 point stage zero. This match was at The Snow Shoe Gun Cub in Kenai, Alaska. A great match by the way.

[DBChaffin]

I was worried you were going to say that.  My 1187 has had a failure to extract problem recently (about 1 or 2 a  box), but I was shooting some cheap discount store (7/8 oz. low dram) stuff.  I didn't understand how the low power would make the hull slip out from under the extractor and stay halfway in the chamber.  Local gunsmith told me it was my loads, so I moved up to a 11/8 oz. max dram load and it has been 100% for 50 rounds or so.  I thought that was it.  Will be looking into some new parts though.  Thanks.

[Lee Watne]

You may have had  low gas pressure with the lighter loads. I had a similar situation way back when we ported the factory barrel three lines of holes behind the choke tube. It was the short barrel with an i/c choke tube. It didn't eject reliably. I finally drilled out the gas orifises till it worked. It was a different problem with similar symptoms. The short factory barrel doesn't have the automatic gas regulating system of the longer hunting barrels and you have less latitude gaswise.The instructions on these shorter barrels say you need full power loads. On the bad ejector I just had, all the parts were lost so I don't know if they broke or if the spring and plunger got stuck or what. I have an idea it was a bad spring or plunger. At any rate the loads were 3 3/4 dram equivilent 1 1/4 oz. factory Remington. They ran fine with the new extractor.