Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Remington 878

Anyone own one or shot/hunted with them?

I saw one a few days ago at an old friend's house. He said his dad got it about 1958.

It was the first one I've seen, and I'm old.

The old gnome that I used to hang around with before he passed on had one. I imagine one of his boys has it now.

If I remember correctly what I've read, they had reliability issues and were quickly replaced. Remington had several models of autoloaders in the late 50s, culminating with the 1100 in the early 60s that solved most of the problems of tbe earlier gas autoloaders

They were produced from 1958 to 1962 and were the replacement for the model 58. The 1100 replaced the 878.
Never shot one, but they look a lot like an 1100 more so than the 58.

I helped a young guy get his grandfather's 878 operating reliably a month ago at the shotgun range A squirt of Breakfree CLP in the action got him through a few rounds of skeet. We then took it partially apart on my tailgate and cleaned it further. Was a bit harder to disassemble than my Beretta 391 and 400s are for sure. Had to call my brother who owns an 878 to get to fully stripped down, then reassembled after we cleaned what we could.

His was a beautiful plain field gun that was not shot much nor abused in the field. Looked brand new except it was pretty dirty inside. It would have been a low shooting gun with too much drop in the stock for me, but if you like how an old an old 870 fits, the 878 felt identical. Good luck with yours!

Here's an old article on them - from the several comments I've read, the only real constraint is not to use heavy loads in them, especially not "short magnums".

http://guntotingvigilante.blogspot.com/2011/05/gun-review-remington-878-automaster.html