Originally Posted by
Sanch
I ran into a weird problem with of my 590s. To be honest I haven't shot this 590 too much accept to zero the ghost rings and maybe very little after that.
I noticed that when I pump the slide kind of loosy goosy, it doesn't pick a round up from the tube. So I analyzed what's going on with the operation and looked up technical terms to best describe it.
It seems like in normal operation, when you pump the slide, the elevator moves down inside the receiver as the bolt goes back. The elevator exerts force on the cartridge stop, which pushes the cartridge stop in and frees a shell from the tube. The shells don't "want" to be in the tube because the follower has a spring behind it but the cartridge stop holds the last shell in. When you push that cartridge stop in with your finger you can unload rounds from the tube (as I already knew from operating 590s for years), and now I figured out the elevator is what's pushing that in to release rounds.
Well, under casual pump force, the elevator isn't dropping down enough to engage the cartridge stop. If I do a super forceful racking, it works fine. I'm not sure if I got spoiled that my main 590 is NP3 coated and pumps like butter, almost no friction. So maybe I forgot that you really do need to massively force the pump. But I wonder if something is off inside my gun.
Maybe it needs to be worn in and if I forcefully rack the pump a few thousand times in my living room over a few hours it will break in? Or maybe I jacked something up inside the receiver and the elevator isn't being pushed down enough because something is off in how I reassembled it. I don't remember taking this gun apart ever, but I might have. I have taken my other 590 apart many many times to clean, to install (and uninstall and reinstall and re-uninstall) the mesa tactical side saddle.
I'm somewhat familiar with taking them apart, so if this sounds like normal break in required, please let me know. Or maybe I need to dissassemble and reassemble and if so is there any error that might specifically cause this? When I say forcefully rack the slide I mean pretty forcefully required to load a round from the tube. To the level of force where I'm afraid I'll get off target a bit too much and also that there's a much much higher chance of short-stroking because even if I full-stroke, if I don't put enough pressure, it won't strip.
I'm pretty dang sure on any 590 I played with up to now, I could gently ease the slide back and the elevator would drop enough to release the cartrdige stop just fine.