A friend of mine recently purchased a RIA 12 gauge semi-auto shotgun (yeah yeah, I know RIA is cheap, but it was the best he could get his hands on). The manufacturer stated that you need to run “2-3/4”, 1250fps, #7.5 1-1/8oz” rounds for a break-in period. Makes sense. Where we are confused is their definition of “light load” vs “heavy load”. The shotgun comes with interchangeable pistons, one for light load and one for heavy load. My friend emailed the manufacturer, who said that the light load configuration was for 2-3/4” rounds and heavy load configuration was for 3” rounds (and yes, the shotgun can handle both sizes). That didn’t make sense to us. The reading I had done said you can have both light and heavy loads for both size rounds, that the load size is determined by shot size.
Can anyone provide some clarification? My friend and I are new to shotguns, apologies for the ignorance.
Not a gun science major but have shot enough rounds of ammo to have permanent brain damage from the recoil. High brass is usually hotter than low brass. Really though just firing the gun a hundred or so times is all you need to do, you may need to cycle the weapon manually a few of those times at the start but once the springs are broken in it should be fine.
A lot of the semi auto shotguns will need a bit of tinkering with to get functionality at 100% taking down the gun, completely cleaning it and lube it appropriately will help out a lot. They tend to send out guns soaked in oil which tends to capture debris and carbon and really gunks up the works.