[Worc]

Once long long ago in a far off land I looked down on a couple occasions and saw a live shell at my feet. Not that you are doing this but I simply was not pushing the shell in far enough.

The Gold is unlike most other auto loaders where this is not possible in this case. The Golds have two cartridge stops with the primary one on the front of the bolt. When the bolt is all the way foward the first round is only held in place by the cartridge stop on the bolt. As the bolt moves backwards so does the first round in the magazine. The other rounds are then held in by the secondary cartridge stop. It continues to hold those rounds until the bolt get around 3/4 of the way foward. The secondary stop releases the rounds and they are stoped be the primary stop at the front of the bolt.

I've seen this happen on a Charles Daly semi auto and two of my buddies 11-87's. I've never seen a Gold do it or even heard about one doing this.

It took me about ten minutes to make my Gold feed a live shell under the carrier while hand cycling it. I had to hold the carrier up and let the bolt go foward very slowly. I'll check it again tonight to look at the secondary cartidge stop.

 

[Worc]

The bolt latch and secondary cartridge stop should be fairly straight. Have you ever cleaned the trigger group?

 

[Worc]

Thanks for taking the time to look at your Gold- if you think of anything else let me know, I'll pick up my gun and fix it myself.

Sure thing. If you had your gun you could watch it again. The problem is even when letting the bolt go foward slowly by hand. The rest of the action is working quickly.

The trigger group controls the carrier. If you had yours you would see the carrier is a two piece. There is the longer main one and a shorter inner one towards the back. When both carrier parts are up. The inner one is against the bolt latch/secondary cartridge stop which holds the shell in the magazine tube when the bolt is not foward. When the carrier comes down. The inner part slides off the bolt latch which then pivots releasing a round from the magazine tube. That round pops out the the primary stop at the front of the bolt.

 

[Worc]

All six of the 12 gauge Golds that I have cleaned have tight fitting parts including the trigger groups. I wrap my right index finger aroung the trigger gaurd and give it a quick yank. I do it mostly straight up with just a slightly foward direction pull.

It could be the secondary carrier (small inside one) is dropping down two soon for some reason or the primary (long one) cound be comming down too slow. See if the GM smith can barrow a trigger groupp from another gold and they cycle the gun to see what happens. If it still does it with a different trigger group. It wold more than likely be the bolt latch/secondary cartridge stop.

 

[Worc]

Sometimes if you drop the bolt on a Gold with the barrel removed it will bend the shell stop that keeps the shells in the mag tube. It is a small thin piece of metal that is right in back of the mag tube and is vertical when the gun is held in firing position.

It's the primary cartridge stop that is mounted to the bottom front of the bolt that was spoken about in some of the above posts.