Saiga Shotguns
Below is a long read. I'd summarize by saying they are great, but I don't think as reliable as rifles, usually because owners mess with them.
I don't think there's the same reliability as the rifles, granted I haven't shot my rifle nearly as much.
TYPICAL CAUSES OF FAILURE
Often times this is the result of gun plumbing. Converting to pistol grip requires installing new FCG (usually). These sometimes need significant polishing where hammer contacts bottom of bolt. Often folks shorten the bbls, and end up needing to open up the gas ports.
Sometimes it's aftermarket magazines. Early (gen1) AGP mags often had followers that drug, needing to polish the follower or sides of mag or both.
Sometimes it a bad day at the factory. Tony Rumore (Tromix) has worked on very many of these and has commented on the gas ports in partial occlusion and odd patterns.
MY HISTORY WITH SIAGA's
Getting into 3gunning, I borrowed a Saiga12 and loved it.
Purchased a Saiga20 on a whim at a gunshow, it was a good one! Took it out, stoked it full and it never skipped a beat for the first ~1000 rounds. Then I discovered you needed to clean them from the factory gunk that they ship in. That's right, I didn't have the common sense to clean off the factory goo (it really wasn't a grease
). After that i never cleaned it again and it always ran. But I was finding 3gun matches that prohibited 20ga so I sold it for a Saiga12.
It's been a good one!
I installed a buffer (to a gun that was running fine
).
Ran factory 5 rnd mags fine.
Converted it to pistol grip. Runs fine.
Ran Factory 8's fine.
A year or so later, started to choke on higher powered ammo, removed the (very thick) buffer and function returned.
Ran first generation AGP mags fine, except for one. Fixed that mag and all was good.
Somewhere in here I purchased 1K pmc field loads, turns out to not like them. ~10 % failure to feed.
Purchased a 20 round wraithmaker, but it wouldn't lock into my shotgun. Sent it to wraithmaker for fitting and they did a reliability tune up on it. (I was a very early customer and they offered for free.) Tested the shotgun/drum with the previously troublesome PMC, runs 100%.
Lately I get occasional ftf's which seem to happen when the gun gets a little dirty and I don't have it shouldered very well (happens in 3gun sometimes). I rack the shell home, firm up the shoulder and it picks back up. Odd because some of my initial testing was running it off shoulder (from the hip, over the shoulder, had a guy bump fire it too, all ran fine.)
Might be in need of new springs, I'd guess I have 8-10K rounds thru mine, but really haven't tracked it.
Early on I had a pretty cool experience. In a match, I dropped a mag in the mud, shells first. I picked it up and as I loaded the mag I saw a thumb sized drop of mud land in the shotgun (I load by holding the bolt back, so the mud got all the way into the action). Released the bolt and heard it grind to a stop! Bumped it forward and finished the stage without a hiccup. Moved to the next stage, a 30 round field stage. Buddy asked if I wanted to clean it, I said "heck, I've blown the match, let's see if she'll run". Well, it ran flawless. Went to clean it afterwards and couldn't see any dirt, it pretty much blew itself clean?
A fellow owner ran his shotgun so dirty it started to fail. He pulled the gas regulator off but had to beat the gas piston out of it, it was so fouled! I won't even venture a guess on how many rounds since it's previous cleaning!
Missed my Saiga20 so I purchased another barely used. It's a lemon. There's a common fix for this (replace spring with a 1911). But I don't shoot it that often and haven't bothered yet.
