How about an update from you SPX owners? Still happy? POS? Best buy you ever made or biggest waste of $600?
I have an 870P that I just absolutely love, however, I’m left eye dominate and shoot shotguns and rifles lefthanded. I have a LH trigger group in my 870, but when my boys or friends shoot it, it always worries me that they are walking around with the safety off or if someone in my house needs it for a bump in the night scenario they click the safety ON instead of OFF at a critical moment.
So longer story short, I’m thinkin’ of the 930 as it has a tang mounted safety which is pretty much ambidextrous, I can make it my HD shotgun and put the RH trigger group back in the 870. So let me hear what you guys think of your 930’s after a little time on them. Thanks
I have a standard field 930 that I love. My pump gun is an 870, but I am considering swapping it out for a 590. Tang mounted safety is easier to use, and more ambi. My 930 runs like a champ.
Someone posted about a month ago how they got creative and came up with a solution for mounting a light on theirs. It looks like they did a very nice job with it. Here’s the link to the thread:
Quite happy with mine, has digested everything from birdshot to heavy slug loads without fail except for a few bobbles with Fiocchi that I suspect were due to having a dead dry bolt (my fault).
Is it the best thing out there? Maybe not, but what more can you ask from a shotgun other than it consistently launched masses of lead downrange one time after the other?
What are you looking for?
Sidesaddle and safety-
Bolt knobs-
Another safety-
Followers-
Even the WTFBBQ-
And more-
And one more-
These don’t include the Choate bolt handle, the other Choate extensions, the new Mossberg bolt handle, the Choate stock, the shorter/smaller rail from ETA, the Mesa carrier, the 6 round TacStar, the 3 Gun Gear sidesaddle, the receiver sling plates, the railed forend replacements (which hopefully will be out soon), the Brownell’s safety, and maybe a few other things I can’t remember.
I am still looking for a light mount option for mine. Maybe someone will chime in on this thread and give some options
Don’t feel bad, a lot of people don’t know just how much is out there. Part of the problem is that while there is some stuff made/marketed/labelled as being for the 930, a lot of stuff for other shotguns will work as well. There are parts for the 1187/870 and 590 that will work on the 930. You just have to know what to look for.
The sling plate is indeed the GG&G model. It just came out within the last month or maybe two. There is another guy who is making a similar unit, but it is a single man operation I think and I don’t know if they are still available and if they are of suitable quality.
If you have a NOB, then you have the best bolt knob I’ve ever used on the 930. It is my favorite for the way I run the bolt.
I have 400+ rounds in mine and have owned it for about a month and a half. Some of the malfs that happened were self induced (guess you could say shotgun version of limpwristing). I fired off the shoulder rotating it from the 3,6, & 9 o’clock position. At every position mentioned the gun would not extract but I am not too dissatisfied with this considering how the gun was being held. With that said the shotgun will cycle one handed (shoulder mounted) and from the hip Hollywood style. Yeh I know hip shooting, but I was trying to make it malfunction. (ETA: all of the failure to extracts were with 3 dram 1 1/8 oz shot 7 1/2 shot 1200 fps shells)
The others malfunctions that were not self induced have been 3 failure to extracts with some older low power (1180 fps) #8 shot shells and that’s it so far.
If you look you can find accessories. They are just no where near abundant as say an 870 or 500/590. I have a Nordic charging handle and it is very well made but it does need ,IMO, the knurling to be smoothed down around the edges. Its a little too sharp when I rack the handle during malf drills. Also mounted is a Nordic clamp with rail attachment. This clamp I highly recommend. I did do a little alteration to it just to fit my personal tastes. Mounted on the clamp is a surefire x300 with the u mount. I use the universal mount because the light is switched on occasion from the mossberg to my handgun. Well with the u mount there is way too much play on the Nordic rail so I replaced the Nordic rail with a 5 slot magpul moe rail and problem solved.
I do have an eta safety, a 3 gun gear Velcro side saddle and bolt lock shell caddie on its way and I’ll let you guys know what I think of these products if anyone is interested.
Guys if you are interested in one of these I highly recommend purchasing one that was recently built. Mine was manufactured this June and has had zero issues so far. Yeh I know 400 rounds isn’t much but there have been a couple of issues with this shotty for a while but it appears mossberg has fixed the problem as of late. Two complaints so far: I wish it had interchangeable chokes (a trip to aimpro later will remedy this) and for goodness sake somebody make a forearm rail for this thing! M24 any leads on this? I am considering mounting a kac hand stop on the bottom of the forearm but I need to see if this can be mounted securely without interfering with the action.
Sorry to be so long winded but I can say that in my experience with my own 930 spx I am impressed so far. Now if I put it up against my buddies benelli m2 the difference is night and day. The m2 is lighter, balances better, and the felt recoil is smoother but look at the $ difference between the 2. For what it was made for and what it costs it is well worth the asking price. YMMV of course. That 500-600 or so dollars saved can buy alot of useful accessories and ammo.
-Jax
P.S. If you get one CLEAN IT BEFORE you go bang. Mossberg puts some kind of cosmoline looking rust inhibitor in the action before shipping. On other forums I have read more than once guys complaining about their new 930 not working right out of the box. A little advice on cleaning it and no more Mr Angry thread poster.
WRT railed forends:
Yes. I know of two outfits that are working on them. They were expected to be out late summer. I will see if I can find out a little more and get a better idea of a release date.
I’d personally like to see them come out, I know a lot of people would be happy to have them.
Thanks bud. Hopefully the delay wont be much longer on those rails. Do you know about fitting heat shields to a 930 m24 and will a 590 shield fit? What brand would recommend? Not trying to look cool but my support hand using my rifles and pistols is at thumbs forward position and I want to keep it this way with the shotgun. The problem is with the mossberg is that if I do this I end up burning the crap out of my thumb. Maybe even cut a heat shield down and just mount it where my thumb will be plus a few inches fore and aft to save weight possibly.
I know there are some people that have adapted some heatshields to fit. I know the heatshields had to be cut to clear the forend, but I’m not sure what make they used. I am pretty sure one was a John Masen version. However I think that one was held on with zipties, so that may not be the best way to go.
Given the forend, I think no matter what you’re going to have to modify the heatshield or the forend, and you might need to make a clearance cut at the back for the barrel band too.
It isn’t something that has really interested me, so I haven’t really paid attention to how it has been done. Sorry I can’t help you more there.
Gotcha and thanks. Oh and fyi if anyone has questions on the 930 (and not trying to blow smoke up or kiss his a$$) but M24 is the dude to ask about this gun. Heck half the stuff I wrote about earlier I discovered through some threads of his.
Yeah it’s the first one that was made, I believe MAX100 was the guy who made them. I do love it and found no need to try any of the new models released.
Thanks on the info, I will pick up the rear sling plate.
I haven’t seen a lot about this shotgun, and the first time I saw one in a store I mistakenly thought it was an FN SLP for a minute. How well do the two compare in terms of reliability and overall quality like fit and finish?
Re: FN SLP:
The FN has better fit and finish, without a doubt. FN hasn’t had nearly the problems that Mossberg has had. At the time the SPX came out there was a substantial difference in price, although I believe that gap has narrowed.
Mossberg set up a perfect storm of dickup with the SPX. It was very highly sought after when it was released. It was not a limited production gun, but it was not made in super large numbers. They basically subcontracted it out with Choate doing extension components, LPA doing the sights and rails, a third place installing those, and then the normal Mossberg production/assembly.
The sight assembly REALLY got screwed up when the barrels were not correctly placed in the jigs to have the sights attached to the barrel. QC screwed up because the cant wasn’t caught before it left the factory. Because of the large number of screwed up sight towers, the Service Center was very quickly overwhelmed by the numbers of repairs. Add in that the Service Center further aggravated the situation by not taking care of customers, not havign enough repair items, sending back new barrels that were canted as badly as the original barrels, and the limited number of staff having to deal with way more complaints than they were staffed to handle.
Another problem was that the front sight height could be off enough to cause POI issues. There is apparently enough of a tolerance issue between the sight, the receiver, the rail, the rear sight, and the barrel that some people had no problems with POI, while others had all kinds of problems with the sights maxed out. On top of this, OFM once again screwed themselves when they didn’t put any info in the pubs that even told owners that the front sight was adjustable. To this day, I still talk to people that do not know that the front sight is adjustable. Who knows how many front sight problems weren’t problems at all but were actully improperly adjusted.
There were also problems with mis-installing the screws that hold the rail on. There are two different lengths of screws, and sometimes the incorrect length was used. Some of them were overtorqued and stripped the receiver threads out and would literally fall out if the shotgun was inverted.
Reliability issues have generally been with brand new shotguns. The shotgun needs to be cleaned well before it is shot. Mossberg uses some heavy thick preservatives that can cause some problems. Best results with those that have had problems has been to run hotter loads through it to start, usually above 1200 fps. Some people never have problems. I haven’t had any.
Some people have gotten the shotgun out of the box with a broken forearm retainer. Not a big deal, but should not be an issue with a new gun.
The Choate extension has been responsible for some reliability issues due to the extension nut not interfacing with the mag tube body correctly, the extension body being incorrectly aligned, dents in the mag tube extension, and followers hanging up in the transition area. A new problem with the Choate extensions has been that the springs supplied by Choate (both to the Mossberg assemblers and also to aftermarket purchasers) are too long. This has put too much spring pressure on the shell latches, and the first round of a fully loaded mag tube will not release. This is being seen in people with new from the factory shotguns and also those that purchased just the extension kit from Choate. The spring should be I think in the area of 25" and some of them have been up to 40" in length.
If you shoot it for long sessions, you will notice the bolt slowing down after some time. When it does this, I squirt CLP in the open receiver and on the bolt body, then operate the bolt by hand a couple of times. It picks right back up.
I’ve been able to shoot even light loads in mine, and FedTac buck and slugs have been absolutely no problem.
If you get a newer production gun, you are not as likely to have the problems I mentioned above. The sight tower is on it’s third version now, and they haven’t had issues with the cant in a while. I haven’t heard of a lot of the problems in a long time, so hopefully OFM has gotten their act together.
Had to remind me of the stripped out screws on the top rail. The front 2 on mine are stripped. Never sent it in though, rail is pretty tight with the remaining screws and i’m not throwing a heavy optic on it.
Sucks though. Man forgot how many issues they had in the beginning.
