Still messing around with turning a cheap pistol into something competition worthy.
These should be my last upgrades, but I finally got my magwell and gas pedal installed.
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Famous last words if you ask me, I have a Mossberg 88 I keep dumping money into but damn is she a lot of fun.
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There’s really not much I more I even can do to this pistol except replace the trigger, but I don’t want to do that because most of the aftermarket triggers disable the restrike feature that I use daily for dry fire.
I’m still gonna upgrade my stuff, but I can’t really even think of much else to do to this one.
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My younger niece has the 88 for ducks, she loves it!
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88 is hands down the best shotgun ever made for under $500. It was my daughters first shotgun and when she picked it up the guy at the gun counter tried to do a “little lady” on her then she assembled it in front of him and then proceeded to tell him the upgrades she would be doing with it. Seriously one of the finest dad moments I have ever had in my life.
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She told me” the ducks don’t die any different modifying your shotgun” 
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But you might have more fun doing it.
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What is it?
Won’t get into all the gory details like triggers etc. when I was shooting competition back in the 80’s & 90’s the most significant modification I made to my gun was the compensator. Bottom line, it’s was built on a Wilson barrel, designed for One bullet and One load so the bullet provided a gas check that gave optimal performance. Change the bullet or the powder and load and it would not work properly. Powder type was crucial to provide enough gas burning at the right speed to make the comp perform as desired. With the proper bullet recoil and muzzle flip became negligible. I’m only saying this because so many people overlook this and do many things and spend countless dollars and wonder why they’re not getting their moneys worth. Pros: amazing results. Con: you will not use factory ammunition. You will reload to keep consistent performance. Your recoil spring is also tuned for this setup, change ammo and you may experience reliability issues. I put well over 100K rounds through over a 12 yr. Period and never had an issue. It won many matches.
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I’ve started reloading, but I’m still very new to it. I also have a micro compensator that I keep on the gun outside of competitions, but using it in competitions will push me into the open division and I’m not good enough to compete there yet.
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I’m not a competitive shooter, so please pardon my ignorance…
What is the function of the gas pedal?
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Recoil control by additional leverage with the support hand thumb.
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Taurus G3, heavily modified.
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10-4. Good to know.
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I would honestly love to pick your brain about this sometime.
Right now I’ve been loading 147 grain blue bullets with 3 gr of titegroup. I haven’t had a chance to Chrono it yet, but should be doing around 875 fps. I’m trying to hang as close to the minimum power factor as I can without dropping below.
I don’t really know anything about different powders, but rates, etc. and how that affects everything else.
The advice I got when I started reloading was to stick to known recipes until I know what I’m doing, which I think is good advice.
I can say that there was a noticeable difference in recoil at my last range trip between mag tech 115 and my own reloads. I kinda don’t even want to shoot factory ammo anymore.
Thanks, I meant what was the last modification? Was it the grip or the thumb thing or something else?
Two things were upgraded at the same time. The magwell funnel was one, and the “gas pedal” (the thumb rest by the takedown lever) was the second.
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Oh. I didn’t know that was called a gas pedal. I couldn’t see the funnel. Learn something new every day.
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When I was reloading we used lead only. The reason was we shot a lot of steel and it avoided ricochet. Lead is also cheaper. Now, think of your compensator as a garden hose. Turn on the water at low pressure and it sits there. Turn it up and it starts to move, and on full is acting like a jet moving in the opposite direction of the flow with considerable force. That’s all your comp is doing. Comps are usually very inefficient with light loads. You’ll be surprised at how much better it may work with a heavier bullet with a hotter load. The heavier bullet will travel slower, giving the gasses more time in the comp to work. The hotter load will will create more pressure your comp needs to work efficiently. Usually this is accomplished by using a slower burning powder. You’ll also find you’ll be reducing the recoil spring a few twists to get a reliable feed. Go slow on reducing the spring until reliability is 100%. At this point the benefits should be very noticeable.
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Thanks. That’s helpful. Blue bullets are just polymer coated lead, so the principle there should be the same.
I honestly have no idea how to tune my recoil spring, but I’ve put about 100 rounds of my reloaded ammo through the gun so far and reliability has not been an issue. I guess we’ll see if that hold true after more extended use.
In fact, the only malfunction I’ve ever had with this gun was caused by loading 17 rounds into the OEM 17 round magazine when the spring was too tight. Worked fine if I only loaded to 16.
I’m also still mulling over whether I even want to use the compensator for competitions though, because that will throw me into the Open division where power factor matters and everyone is running race guns. I’m about 95% sure I could stay in limited optics with both the magwell and gas pedal, but a compensator would disqualify me from LO.