Well I received the bantam the other day, very nice looking gun. I hate to say it but I'm having nothing but problems with it so far. The slide tube and or forearm are binding when the action is pulled back fully and it's not so easy to free up once in this position. I took the gun completly apart and cleaned and lubed it and reassembled it, same problem. When the barrel is removed the gun cycles fine, but when the barrel is mounted the forearm binds up. Now this gun has the very short slide tube since it is the bantam model, I've never seen one this short but it should still function fine. I tried another barrel and the same thing, binding up. So I took it to the range and figured maybe it would function better if I ran a box or two of ammo throught it. It's getting better but no where near where it should be, some material needs to be removed somewhere between the barrel and slide tube. And to top it off it's dropping shells out of the magazine tube during cycling, this very well could be because the slide isn't being cycled correctly due to binding. I'm not returning the gun to mossberg, I'm going to fix it myself if I can. I'm debating on trying to remove some material with a dremel if I could find out where it's rubbing, problem is there are no visable marks. I have a spare 7 5/8 tube and forearm, I'm going to try and mount that and see if it functions fine and give mossberg a call and ask for some new parts.
