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tappedandtagged
3 July 2015, 22:55
For quite some time now I have been under the impression that springs (specifically magazine springs) wear out from use; not from being kept compressed/loaded.

I was perusing Wilson Combat's website tonight and came across a FAQ section. In it, it had the following Q and A:

How often should I replace the magazine spring in my shotgun?
We recommend replacing the magazine spring in your defense shotgun every 6 months if the shotgun is kept loaded.
Source: http://www.wilsoncombat.com/faq_shotgun.htm

My first thought was "Horse poop" (sorry, now that I have two kids, poop is a word I use quite a bit nowadays. Does anyone else subscribe to this theory? I'm gonna start doing some internet research and possibly email a few companies and see what they say about the matter. I've had a Mossberg 500 loaded for over 8 years (unless I was shooting it) by my bedside and have never had any issues. Heck, I shot that gun earlier today with the spring that, apparently, should have been replaced 16 times now. It worked fine and seemed plenty stiff to me.

Thoughts?

kmrtnsn
4 July 2015, 07:04
I have had the same Wilson Combat (Scattergun Tech) issued shot gun for ten years. The shotgun is always kept with a fully loaded magazine tube, although for about the last year I've been loading four instead of five for the faster ability to load select slug from the side saddle. Over the past decade I've had zero issues with the magazine spring. Remember, Wilson Combat is a business, to succeed a business needs to sell stuff, whether you actually need it or not. Think of their suggestion to swap spring in the same vein as 3,000 mile oil changes on a car; completely unnecessary.

SINNER
4 July 2015, 09:00
Springs wear from cycling. By their logic the ones in a package go bad every 6 months. Total BS.

tappedandtagged
4 July 2015, 21:36
Springs wear from cycling. By their logic the ones in a package go bad every 6 months. Total BS.

Not really. They say replace every six months if kept loaded/compressed. Still absurd.

Deadwing
5 July 2015, 02:57
Every 6 months? Complete hogwash. As has been said above, compression cycles are what cause springs to wear/fail. Springs will take a set (i installed a new magazine spring in my Benelli M4 a few months back when i installed a longer mag tube, and after it's shorter now than when i installed it but still has plenty of tension and many, many thousands of rounds of life left in it), but that shouldn't be compared to or confused with wear. That said, semi-automatic shotguns seem to be more sensitive to magazine spring wear than pumps. It's especially noticeable with only one round left in the mag tube and while firing high power loads (such as slugs or buck shot). As the spring wears and loses tension, when the gun is fired, the spring (when worn out) won't have enough tension to overcome recoil, and the last round is "pushed" deeper in to the mag tube while the gun recoils around it, which will result in a failure to feed.