Remington M870 Review Page

Another option I’m looking into is the the fixing of an aiming device to the M870. As the rifle comes out the box, it has no sights on it, so it’s simply a case of point (& hope) and shoot. While this isn’t a great problem for a shotgun, I’d like to see where I’m pointing the barrel. I wish to remedy this with a pressure activated laser sight. The best kits for this have seen are the SureFire torches, that have an option to replace the lamp unit with a laser bulb.

The fixing can be done by either replacing the original pump grip with a SureFire replacement (with I’m not keen on as that’ll cost a lot to do), or the cheaper method, that simply involves clamping the unit to the lower shell tube. This is achieved with the use of a piece of steel with a hole through the centre, a notch at the top (for the upper barrel), and a clamb attached to the bottom for fitting the SureFire lamp to. You can see this fairly clearly in the image to the left.

Update
30/01/03 “Oh bugger dropped it” – or – “Getting to
that gas tank….”: Well
I’ve been meaning to get the M870 review written for some time now,
and sadly haven’t had a free moment to do so. Well the sad news
is that upon clearing the toy cupboard, the M870 fell off the top
shelf onto the floor, cracking the rear stock near the pistol grip.

Now
it’ll hit you, that is why the power is so shoddy, look at
how long that gas hose is! Seen in the photos you’ll see that the
hose is over a foot long, and as it’s been looped/folded up in the
stock it has constricting bends in it (where the sides touch). Now
if you are looking for a simple power upgrade you can cut the hose
to the length it needs to be and rebuild from here, but that wasn’t
good enough for me.

I’ve
been looking for something fun to build for a bit, and I have a
spare SG1 grip hanging around, so the word “keymaster”
has been ringing in my ears.

One
short runble in the magic cupboard again and I’ve got the 3PSA/SMK
CO2 powerlet adapter. Now I though I recognised that hose dimension!
The CO2 adapter really is a much underrated piece of gear, as with
a valve adapter it’ll fit just about anything, find something with
a BV style gas hose, and you’re laughing all the way to the next
skirmish.

If
you’ll remember I’ve mentioned a few times in forums around the
world that the Maruzen M870 really has issues with much more that
3×0.2g BBs in one shell. Well sling in a CO2 capulet into this design,
and you’ll be smiling. The new gas system kicks out at least 2 times
the power. It’s impossible to chrono the unit effectively, but it
puts out 5 0.2g BBs without a problem, and sticking one BB in the
pipe it goes clean through a folded Sunday paper.. sadly no beer
cans were available for testing as recently I’ve been purchasing
Asahi lager (in bottles) as it’s on offer at the local market. ^_^
Please note I am merely being conservative with my guesses here
at this time, if I had to lay out money on it, it’s doing around
3J. Some people may wince at this, but remember the CO2 adapter
can be unwound to provide lower PSIs, and this shotty has no hopup
and is designed to fire multiples of BBs, so should be safe even
cranked up to the max with this new setup… in short, don’t take
my recommendations and go and hook this system up to try to create
a pain stick – that’s not the point. I was merely disappointed with
the present gas-system so have been looking for something interesting
to do with it.

I
will be trying this setup shortly on the field to see how it fairs,
merely for ranging tests, not for skirmishing yet.

As
you’ll notice in the photos, I’ve hooked the adapter into the 870
by attaching it to the gas hose – this is very easy to do, but I
couldn’t get the original hose off the Maruzen brass gas nozzle,
as it’d been on for some time, so was sadly forced to chop off some
of the length to free the pipe. There’s no great loss here though,
as there’s soooo much pipe there anyway.

The
Maruzen gas pipe is rather poor, it can be crushed (look closely
at the photos and you can see the bends form it being in the stock),
and it’s not reinforced to maintain its ’roundness’, so I will be
replacing the hose with something more akin to SMK/3PSA’s gas hose
that comes with their rig, as it’s much more rugged and useable.

You’ll
also notice that I have the shell catcher in the shots, this is
merely as I’m looking for somewhere to hide the new gas tank – I
think I’ll hide it in a false hi-cap/readymag system, but that is
for me to decide later. All I know is that at the moment it won’t
fit in the SG1 grip…bugger.

Comment
on this article in the forums

Site
links:
3PSA/SMK
CO2 powerlet adapter review

External
Links

Reviews
“Airsoft
Base”
:M870 review -the only English review I could find
Doraguner’s
M870 Riot version review – a review in Japanese
“Airsoft
Guns in Russia” M870 review – a review in Russian

Other
Interesting links:
Remington
M870 Manual – The official manual for the real-steel
Remington Pump action
SureFire
Tac Mount – A Page with details of kits to mount Surefire
lights and lasers onto the shotgun
Magazine
Extension Kit @ ATI Gun Stocks – details of magasine
extension tubes for the M870/M1100
Operator’s
Manual – the official US Government’s operators guide
to the M870
Custom
Remington 870 laser mounting – a custom
method for fitting a laser unit to the end of the 870, not a method
I would recommend though.
“The
Tactical Shotgun”
– an article about shotguns and their use in a tactical environment.
It’s a VERY good read
The original website is from this page here: http://www.angelfire.com/tx/ShotGun/
“The MultiPurpose Shotgun”