Remington 105 CTi Review

Overall Rating

The 105 CTi looks nice, swings easily and has a fairly modest recoil (although it does not seem to live up to its "48% less recoil" promise).

Doesn't cycle

I had read many glowing review of the Remington 105 CTi and was in the market for a shotgun so I decided to get myself one for Christmas (well, technically, get my wife to get me one...). It is well known that there are manufacturing delays for the 105 CTi so I wasn't surprised that I had to wait a bit longer than anticipated. When it finally came in, I was very happy to get what I thought was the "cutting edge" in semi-auto shotguns. The marketing for the gun and, in particular, the reviews claimed that it cycled just about everything ("everything we threw at it" was the term used in several reviews).

The first time I took it to the range, I brought along some trap/skeet loads. I immediately had some issues with the gun cycling shells (it failed 6-10 times out of a box of 25 shells). This occurred with loads that, by Remington's *marketing* specs, should have cycled fine despite being on the lower end of their scale. So I tried again on a warmer day but had even worse luck (more than half didn't cycle).

I still really wanted to like the gun but I was getting a bit concerned. So I went and bought a few boxes of game load with quite a bit more "oomph" to them and took them out to the range. Now, in fairness, it was a bit cold - about 34 degrees. But still, I had ONE successful cycle out of a box of 25. In every other case, the pressure from the shell would push the action back far enough to spit out the used shell but the action would snap back shut immediately. It should remain open if there are no more shells in the magazine or it should load the next shell otherwise - it did neither.

Looking through the troubleshooting area of the Remington site I recently came upon an item that says that the gun works with MAGNUM loads. Well, where the hell was that when I was looking through the marketing materials??

So, beware. If you are shooting Turkey or buckshot this might be an Ok gun. It may be that I got a bum gun. But the real bottom line is that you'd better be sure what you are getting into before you take a chance on this gun! At this point, I'm going to run it through the Remington repair/replace program and see what happens. If it turns out that they are serious about magnum loads only then it is going on the consignment rack at the local store.