We had similar problems with our 14" 11-87s purchased by our "lowest bid" HQ weanie at my state police agency. As one of the Firearms Instructors, I checked with my gunsmith on them. His reply "Good luck on making them shoot !" The 11-87 will only function reliably with full power ammunition, especially the shorter barrel models. We tried almost all the LE ammo on the market and none of the "reduced recoil" police loads cycled. And it was a bitch to clean the barrels! It took power tools to clean the crap out of the barrels. We found the Hornady 8 pellet OOBuck loads shot best in our guns, they aren't 3" shells, but worked well. Good luck.