So it’s all back together now. Replaced the recoil follower with the new one just because it was kind of about around… looks like it kind of took a beating with everything else going on in there, even though it was only two years old, so I’ll save it for a spare along with the old repaired trigger guard. New buffer in place as well. I even cleaned inside the two gas ports in the barrel which I’ve never done before since I’ve owned it. The right side had a little buildup, but the left side was good to go. Put it all back together and grabbed one of the federal shells that was keeping the bolt open about 3/4 of an inch. I grabbed another one out of the box and assisted it in to the chamber and it stayed open worse than before! So I grabbed one of my reloads that I sized the brass and it slid right in! The old federal grand slam shells were/are the issue with the bolt carrier not shutting. If I load one from the magazine and let the bolt go when it’s all the way back it will slam shut and resize the brass hull. So it was the ammo causing the bolt carrier to stay open and not the buffer or broken trigger guard pin. I’ll resize the old grand slams in my sizing ring and shoot them. Think I only have around 7 left or so.
Here is the one I tried to load today, testing it after it was all back together. You can see the brass getting resized in the process and the indentations on the face of the hull getting indented from the force of doing so.
The old follower is on the right. I just don’t like the way it looked out around even though it’s only had about a dozen or two dozen shots through it so I put a new one in just to be on the safe side.
