stoeger condor complaint

I just wanted to let the other members know about my bad experiance with Stoeger. I should have realized what I was getting for the price. It fails to strike the primer about 1 in 4 tries. I sent it back to the factory, it was returned with a note that it was checked and test-fired. I took it to the trap range the next day and have the same problem only now it may fire on the second or third pull of the trigger. I have tried dissabling the safety to no effect.
It is very dissapointing, it looks nice and handles well, but is useless if it will not go bang when I squeeze the trigger.
I will send it back for another weapon and hope for the best. It looks like my model 12 will be breaking the clays untill I can buy a reliable shotgun.

"It looks like my model 12 will be breaking the clays untill I can buy a reliable shotgun."

Pardon me for saying this, but if you have a M12 that is not worn out, and due to some of them being older than many of us here, and the fact they were field guns, used in working environments, worn out ones are not all that un common, but if its not "shot out", you have one of the most reliable shotguns ever made.

In fact, I am kind of looking for a beater finish one now, for a house gun. I have had several in the past, and had brain fart attacks, and sold them.

At least the price on them has been coming down the past few years. which I guess is good if buying, bad if needing to sell.

The mod 12 Winchester is arguably the best pump action shotgun ever made. At one time I had 16 Mod 12 and Mod 42 shotguns. I never owned a 16 or 20 gauge but I owned field grades with Simmons ribs, heavy duck guns (3" chambers), skeet guns with two barrel sets and several trap guns. I sold or traded all of them and now have none. The prices on mod 12's are beginning to become reasonable again but unless you can find a heavy duck mod 12 with a modified choke, I wouldn't shoot steel shot. You can have the choke opened up and it should preform well in the duck blind. As for shooting clay birds, depends on sporting, trap or skeet. Finding a good skeet mod 12, especially the two barrel sets, might still be hard and expensive but getting a good sporting clays gun is as simple as picking a tight one up and sending it to Simmons and then finding a stock that you like.

I went from Mod 12's for trap shooting to a Remington 3200 and then to a Perazzi MX4 and back to the 3200.

If you don't want to go to the trouble of making a field grade Mod 12 into a great looking clay bird games gun, I would suggest a Browning BT99 or Browning O/U

As for the Stoeger, I see lots of them in the field goose and duck hunting. I see that they sometimes have problems. I guess that it is true to a certain extent that you get what you pay for.

I worked for Simmons for a short time way back, It was a much larger shop then, I guess they just have very few working there now, as I understand.

While the 12 is a heck of a gun design, I think it was a numbers thing, some of the top guns were shooting them, thus everyone copied that, thus a lot of them were used for trap shooting.

But as far as a "target gun" used for shooting thousands of rounds, I believe the 3200 especially was a much more reliable gun. Of course the 3200 didnt really come out until the 12 was fading.

One of my late mentors did not care for the 12 all that much. He called them a "mouse trap", which in some aspects, they are.

About the main competition for the 12 was the Rem 31, which I believe too, is a bit better design, a few less parts, but thats still considering tens of thousands of rounds being fired being the test.

I suspect a lot of them old boys, just shot what ever gun the factorys would give them. Seems those top trap shooters, can run straights with pretty much any gun they have in hand.

I mean to think that Rudy Etchen, could not have used a 12, with the same success as his 31, is probably a stretch.

We take choice of shotgun for granted now, back in the day, the simply did not have all that many choices.

Update on the Condor, I really did not want to pay to ship the gun back to the factory again since they do not seem to know what they are doing. I spoke to the customer service rep again and she told me that commercial primers are harder than they used to be. I asked her if this means that Stoeger is telling me that I cannot use factory ammunition in their product? are they recommending that I use reloads? She just went on about trying different manufacturers- which I have.
To make a long story longer, I stripped the reciever, stoned the hammer/sear, swapped the firing pins, and disabled the auto safety.
Result- the bottom barrel works fine and the top now fails to function about every 5th try. I can live with this, but what a headache!!
Also, I have noticed that since they returned the gun the recoil pad does not sit flush with the heel.

If the main springs seem similar in strength, and you switched the FPs and the problem reversed, it points to the overall length of the FP it self.

Many O U have a FP spring in the bottom barrel, and the top no spring. The spring retracts the FP after firing to allow the gun to open. The top can get away with no spring due to overall angle of the dangle.

Take the barrels off, use some kind of block of wood to allow the FP to impact, and see how much protrusion exists. You cant simply compare them out of the gun, as the holes in the action may be different depths.

Sadly, low priced shotguns are low priced for a reason. Af far as I can recall, Stoeger imports were never ever well made guns. Sako was way back of course brought in by Stoeger, but generally, they brought in spanish and italian made economy guns, more fraught with small problems than not.