My .358 Win BLR is giving me fits. When I try and load a magazine, the mag latch occasionally does not catch, although I can feel it click....I cycle the lever, chamber a round, shoot and the magazine drops out of the rifle.

Other times, when I move the lever, I get two shells moving up from the mag and a nice jam...

It is a real pain in the butt. I love the rifle and it shoots very well (when I can get it loaded!!!)

I returned the original mag to Browning and they replaced it no charge..I purchased an additional mag, but it doesn't seem to matter. I either get a double feed or the mag drops out.

Anybody else ever have this problem? The rifle is the newer model 81 with takedown.

Any thoughts?

Might be the mag lips and top of the mag need to be squeezed inward/downward a bit.

When you insert the mag, the top round pushes against the bottom of the bolt and you have to compress that round a small amount to get the mag seated...you can see a larger gap between the rim around the bottom of the mag and the receiver frame when the mag isn't seated correctly...that gap should be almost nothing and even all the way around.

I give my 450 M mags a good slap with the heel of my hand to be sure it is locked in.

Alternately you can open the lever, insert the mag, slap it with the heel of you hand, then load and lock.

You can also give it to a good gunsmith to check over and adjust.

I never had a clip mag rifle that didn't require a bit of finess to seat the mag, or a clip mag that didn't need a bit of "adjusting"...EXCEPT my BLR...I have 3 mags that came with the rifle and I can't get ANY of them to jam, but with the lever closed there is a good 1/4" gap at the front when they aren't seated good.

Luck

Thanks Foobar...I will try squeezing the lips of the mag a little..there is no way I could slap the bottom of the mag with the action open and not have a cartridge pop out. I have to load with the action closed.

Cheers

Hummm...that's definitely not good.

You can make a tool for bending the lips out of a piece of brass about 3/8" - 1/2" wide 1/4" thick. just cut a slit slightly wider than the thickness of the metal about 1/4" deep more or less, parallel to the thin side and centered.

You can use steel also but unless you get all the burrs polished out you can scratch the mag. Takes a bit of work to get it right.

Filing/polishing the inside edge of one side to a nice small radius makes it work a bit better also.

Bend a littel and check it...DO it slow and check how it works often.

Roll the lips first then squeeze if needed. It never takes much.

On some mags I replaced or cut down the lifter spring, but again, slow and easy...you need enough pressure to lift the weight of all the cartridges, but too much pressure will cause an eruption of cases.

Usually happens more in 20-30 rnd mags or in cheap mags that are made of thin steel...the top of the mag spreads from the pressure on the top round and once that one slips they're usually all goneoffed in split second.

Usually not the case with BLR mags...they are STRONGLY built, but they still can get mechanically tweaked.

Just slip the tool over the edge of the lip and SLIGHTLY BEND the lips downward starting at the base end...do both sides as evenly as possible. YOu want the lip to roll over the round evenly from back to front, evenly and to follow the taper of the case.

The lips needs to hold the round down AND against the next round firmly and the lips need to be rolled over enough to match the curvature of the case. The round needs to point upwards at an angle slightly, so it will feed into the chamber but not jam against the top of the chamber and the front end of the lips as it slides into the chamber...the base of the case slides against the boltface slightly. AND the base of the round needs to be held in the mag even after the front of the round has cleard the lips for just a bit of time.

I have also mounted mags in a vise, with the bottom of the mag supported and used a flat piece of polished steel layed full length and width on top of the lips and tapped it with a 1.5# brass hammer. The lips get pushed down and in at the same time, but doesn't seem to spread them...again only a little bit.

Just takes a little time. If you go too far just bend them back out a little.

The mags are mass produced, go through many steps and can get tweaked anywhere along the line...thin metal "springs", mags get bounced around etc, etc, etc.

You might also check a few gunshops for BLR mags and try them(not in the gun!!!) then take a hard look and the config of the lips...bring along a caliper to measure the width, height, distance between the lips inside the mag, etc...and a camera for close-ups if possible. Gunsmithing is mostly common sense along with a bit of schooling...but a lot of looking and thinking about how things should work when they aren't.

There is a Browning schooled smith in the area and whenever I have problems(with anything I can't solve) I bang on his door.

I tried to get him to do a rechamber/rebarrel on my solid barrel 450 BLR. He looked at me like I just tried to steal his dog..."Go buy a take-down and do it yourself" was his rather curt response, and I got a big horse laugh from one of his other gunsmithing crony's that happened to be in the shop trading lies.

Then they commenced to "ejukate" me...playing "dumas" is always a good way to get those two to open up...and a nip of JD helps with the tongue lubrication. Hahahahahah

Luck