Home Forums Birds & Dogs Shotguns Benelli loading problems M2 20ga

I have an M2 20ga Benelli that I swear to you is next to impossible to insert a shell into the magazine. The round will go in about 90% and stops and takes insane force and jiggling to get a shell into the mag. I googled this and got several answers having to do with the spring stiffness and the shell latch, supposedly the service dept recommended taking out the shell latch and flattening with a hammer. I wonder if this problem has been solved by any of you??
Thanks,
Don

I have a Montifeltro in 20 ga and never had an issue. Don't know if they use the same internal parts or not

I've never had this issue with a Benelli but did with a Retay (cheaper, Turkish copy of Benelli). Not sure how to fix it.

Id put 2 in the mag tube for a few days, see if that helps. Mine was pretty stiff when new but i dont even notice it a few hundred rounds later . It got easier

Sounds like you are one of the lucky guys that got a M2 with an improper fly cut for the lifter in the bottom of the bolt carrier. I have seen this on a couple of 12 ga. Guns. I'll try to tell you where the problem is. If you look at your lifter it has a tab that sticks up in the front on the right hand side (ejection port side). Now you will notice there is a very narrow slot that that tab rides in on the bolt carrier itself. You will notice that that slot is round and doesn't go all the way out the front of the carrier, it was made with a fly cutter. The front part of your lifter tab doesn't have enough room to fully depress into this slot which is causing your problem. You can fix this by using a Dremel cutoff wheel and grinding out the front of the slot a bit to give it more clearance. I actually cut the slot all the way out the front of the carrier on my M-2s, but it sounds like you just need a bit ground out of the front of the slot.

Thanks, that sounds reasonable. I’ll take a look at that

I modified the shell catch. I bent it just a bit to reduce the protrusion into the mag tube. This helped a lot.

Another thing that helped was learning to load with the magazine up using my thumb.