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A tip for cleaning the pistons. Soak them in Motorcraft carburetor cleaner. The liquid, not the spray. The carbon is dissolved in a few hours, wipes clean with a paper towel.

Yesterday after about two hours of fitting forearms my M4 was completed and finally brought to life. Or, brought back to life I should say! It's been a 10 month process with a lot of ups and downs. These downs ended up having me reassemble the entire M4 essential on my own. NP3 plated in and out and many aftermarket upgrades. I certainly learned a lot and know much more about this platform than I ever did. StrangerDanger and Vertcofiremarms were sounding boards throughout my journey and that was very much appreciated. I want to put out what an awesome individual Stranger Danger is. He took his valuable time on many occasions to answer my countless questions. Always responding with a will to help and a courteous attitude yet he owed me nothing. SD is a tremendous resource and a credit to this forum. I have never interacted with anyone with his level of firearm knowledge that didn't act like they were guarding the launch codes. Thank you for your help, advice and fantastic tutorials. Enough gushing. Now I have to find time to sight this day ruiner in!

Look up A&S Engineering trigger frames. They’re beautifully machined aluminum. The ejector is pretty easy. When the bolt travels rearward with the shell hooked on the extractor claw, the rim of the case makes contact with the ejector which directs it out the ejection port. Being spring loaded reduces wear and tear on the shotgun since it isn’t hitting an unmovable part. The ARGO system sounds more complex than it is. You saw the two ports from the barrel. Each port feeds the gas chamber of the ARGO system for each piston. The piston sits free floating in the system. With the bolt to the rear, you can hear them slide fore and aft as you tilt the shotgun. Inside the regulating portion of the ARGO system is a blast cup which is held in place by thick diameter springs. When the pressure exceeds the required amount of force set by the spring, the excess gas is able to vent out the front of the plug under the hand guards. The blast cup and pistons aren’t super tight fitting, so there is a lot of play to permit function once they get dirty. You’ll note the pistons have crud cutters and Chanel’s thru the middle section or each piston. These allow the gas to move freely forward against the piston to drive the bolt carrier rearward. It gives the crud a place to go too. Avoid oiling the pistons since they will burn it away quickly and turn the oil to carbon. It’s a pain to clean and does little to help function. The pistons are stainless so it isn’t likely that they’re going to rust on you. The system will function without pistons pretty reliably. I broke one piston and the shotgun kept running until the broken end of the piston jammed the action. Pulling back the bolt carrier and tilting the shotgun threw out the broken piece and it still functioned.

wolff spring is wolff spring....CC provided wolff spring is probably just precut for the length of their mag tube. If you bought a fresh spring, it's meant to be cut. Spring should be should be about 12-18" past the magazine. Cut the excess. I'd start out on the higher end (18") of that and trial and error cut till you can get the number of rounds in your magazine properly. If you cut too low, you won't get the spring strength and run into feed issue.

You can gauge how close you are when trying to insert the 7th round. Feel or look to see how close that round is to seating. If half the shell is sticking out, chances are you cannot safely trim the spring short enough to permit that much more of the shell to compress. A quarter inch is doable. If you trim too much spring, you can end up with a situation where the spring isn’t strong enough to reliably eject shells onto the elevator. Particularly the last round in the magazine tube. The last round will have the weakest spring tension of all the rounds. My favorite spring is the Carriercomp spec Wolff spring. I don’t think I have ever had to trim one. Just know that some shells are longer than the 2 3/4 inch size standard.

First post here. Wanted to thank all of you for sharing your knowledge on this great shotgun brand. In return, I will share that jays guns Florida has 2 Entry M4s. 850-682-4600, $2099

Gee thanks ! Now I'm waiting on my new IWC mount and Vickers sling to arrive also.

Nice job Shekkie and most grateful thanks to Benelliwerks and Strangerous Dave. A few things to add to your most excellent range/garage report: 1) A 13mm 8/1.0mm nut must not be the industry standard. I really wanted a nylon lock nut but neither Lowes or Home Depot had them. They did have plenty of 8/1.25mm stuff. I did manage to pick up a 4-pack of regular 8/1.0 mm nuts that worked just fine on reassembly....now what do I do with them? On another note, I didn't see a lot of inventory on their shelves; lots of empty holes...my first reality check that COVID has hit the manufacturing and logistics pipeline. The Chinka'nese hit our Lines Of Communications! 2) The Mutherland must have been saving money on blue Loctite as I was able to remove the stock bolt nut without heat or retard strength (per SD). There wasn't much Loctite to remove. Easy do. 3) Here is where stupid must be overcome by money and time. I inventoried my tools and found that much of my 3/8" socket tools had found other more needy homes (they grew legs). However, the 1/2" socket drives and extensions were plentiful with the exception of deep socket metric. Off to Lowes to get 1/2" drive deep socket metrics. That accomplished, taking the nut of the stock bolt (stock butt end) is pretty simple as far as reach and access goes. However, the tunnel in the forend of the stock is where you need the 10" extension. Using a 1/2" socket set, things were pretty tight and confined getting through the tunnel. Maybe a little petroleum jelly would have made life easier -- as it usually does in tight fitting situations....not that I'd know. I ended up accepting defeat on taking that hill. While in full retreat mode, managed to pull the 13mm socket off of the 10" extension. Shit the bed! I was able to reseat the extension in the socket and slowly twist and ease all lost tools out of the stock. Back to Lowes for 3/8" stuff. Money, time, gas, whatever. 4) With a 3/8" socket drive set-up, I used the actual stock bolt retaining nut as the salve nut to remove the stock retaining plate. As the tutorials described, tighten it down pretty good then apply heat to the retaining plate through the butt end of the stock and work it, until she likes it. Then, all is so good. 5) I used my Lowes 13mm bolt as the salve bolt on reassembly and all went according to plan and as described in the tutorials. After my cross-country travels to un-f#ck myself with the proper tools, I'd have to agree with Shekkie that half-hour to 45 mins is all it takes. 6) I found SD's tutorial to be excellent (read it 15 times before picking up a tool), but I also found Benelliwerks' Anatomy of the M4 Manual to be an outstanding cross reference to the task. If you are unaware of Benelliwerks' manual, give him a PM shout. He charges a few bucks for a PDF download version but it is excellent reading and a great pictorial-tutorial. You'll know your gun better after reading it!!! 7) OBTW, The Noveski Sling Plate is NOT a full swivel/rotational quick-disconnect receptacle. In other words, it is very much positioned and locked-in after insertion - it won't swivel once locked-in. Only training and experience will tell if that is a deal, or not. Birdog - OUT! Time to cook dinner..... P.S. rum-drunk

Argh enough twisting my arm already ! Just ordered my Noveske plate this morning

I’m really not a fam of the field stocks, I prefer the collapsible But, something about the NP3 finish just makes your M4 pop with the field stock, love it!

Oh no! Look what arrived via UPS this evening. Do I start drinking before or after the attempted swap-out? It's hard to tell from the photo, but it is a Noveski.

There is now 1 less in-stock at Optics Planet! I've seen SD's tutorial on replacing the sling plate before and I was confused. Reviewed it again this morning along with Benelliwerks' manual before I purchased. I think I'm now ready to tackle the job. Just need to pick-up a 13mm 8mm x 1.0mm pitch locking nut (slave nut) to get the job done.

WOW, Awesome!

Oh, and since you took the time to view this, here is me playing in my yard with the one I currently have. Maybe it will entertain you.

Thanks for spending $50 of my money this morning! I have been looking for a solution to my rear sling mount dilemma and can’t believe this was the first time I saw this option. Perfect!