A friend just bought a used Gold Sporting. It will not reliably cycle even 1 1/8-oz 1250 fps shells of several different makes. It's clean and lightly lubed, but that is the extent of my experience with Brownings. Thoughts on potential fixes? Looks like their is a spring around the magazine tube, could that need replacing?

Many thanks! This gun has a highly sentimental value (one of our shooting crew that died in a car wreck), so we would really like to get it running good again. Has a gorgeous custom Dan Suggs parallel comb stock.

I don't own a Browning Gold, but do own two Winchester Super X2s which are pretty much the same internally.

The spring around the magazine tube is the sleeve bar return spring, part #65A in this schematic:

https://www.browning.com/content/dam/br ... -12-20.pdf

Unless it's been damaged somehow, it's doubtful that is the problem.

The Gold Sporting is a target gun and has probably been shot a pretty fair amount. More likely, the action spring and the action spring tube in the stock are dirty. If your friend hasn't already done so, I'd remove the stock and clean/lube these parts thoroughly.

Make sure the trigger group is clean. Remove it from the receiver and spray it with some aerosol gun scrubber. Then give it a light coating of CLP or Rem-Oil and shake off the excess.

If not done already, clean and lightly oil the inside of the magazine tube, the magazine spring and the follower.

After that, I'd be looking at the gas piston. There is a spring inside which has been known to break and cause problems. Also, make sure that the correct gas piston for 1-1/8 oz. loads is installed. The Sporting guns came with two, one for 1-1/8 oz. and lighter loads, and another for 1-1/4 oz. and heavier loads. The gun won't cycle target loads with the heavy piston installed.

What kind of malfunctions is your friend getting, failure to feed, failure to eject or what?

Failure to eject. The action spring makes a lot of sense, this gun was shot a lot by the previous owner.

Thoroughly clean the action spring and the tube first, and that may solve the issue.

I presume that the correct gas piston for 1-1/8 oz. loads is installed?

Dunno. Not even sure how you would tell. Going to break it down at the range tomorrow evening to get a real close look, will report back.

It's marked on the side.

You got good advise from lossking. Clean and lube your gun as described in this link and see how things go from there. https://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=78152

An update: My friend took the gun completely apart and thoroughly cleaned the trigger group and the action spring tube. Trigger was completely gunked up with unburnt power, powder residue etc. Gun cycled reliably last night, but he has ordered a new action spring etc. as well, no telling how many rounds the old spring has on it.

Thanks all!

Harm Williams from Browning told me that if the action spring is not broken, leave it alone.

When I shot a Gold competitively with AA 1350 FPS Supersports, I replaced the action spring with a 3 1/2 inch action spring and it sure slowed the bolt speed down and made the gun more reliable. But the 3 1/2 inch spring will make it harder to shoot light loads in many of the Golds.
You can get a Hunting gas valve or a 3 1/2 inch gas valve, either of which will help with real heavy hunting or Sporting loads.

The early Golds had bad metallurgy in the firing pins and they broke very often and that really hurt the reputation of the gun. Browning later fixed the problem, but not till they got a bad reputation for not being reliable.

My Gold was the softest shooting gas gun i ever shot.

I believe that Golds won more NSCA Championships than any other gas gun.