I can tell you that the 464 will never be my favorite carbine. But I will always love it because it’s got my handprints all over it now. And it works.
I worked on mine quite a bit before I got to know it, and understand why it was miss behaving, when it did.
But expected a lot because it was a Mossberg and I love my other old Mossberg, and so, well, I was a bit disappointed that this beautiful gun was not as slick as Ben Cartwright’s old Winchester.
When I started to really appreciate the 464 is the first time I ever played with a 50-year-old Winchester lever gun, And also shot against one.
I have handled a few since, but I had never handled one before buying the Mossberg.
At that point, my expectations for the 464 changed a bit. I thought the Winchesters would be so much better, but after mine was fixed and broken in it was not even close.
The Winchester did not operate as easily or shoot as straight.
Took a bit of thought and work to get mine to rack reliably, and know what I did wrong when it wasn’t.
And it is always me.
If you stand there with a 464 and you rack the action back and forth like Arnold Schwarzenegger, you will knock the grease off the hammer and bolt.
As soon as you do that, it wants to catch on the Ejection stroke. If you try to rack it softly, it will still work fine, but if you keep trying to rack it hard it will catch.
And you might bend something.
I reshaped my bolt and my hammer a little bit so that they make a nice contact, because oem they did not. This was a huge deal in reliability.
I also increased, very slightly, the tension of the main spring, because they are kind of loose from the factory. It’s easy to go too tight, and then the gun won’t fire reliably either.
There is a sweet spot where the adjustment must be, and you get it by bending a little steel stamped link that cost Mossberg about three cents apiece to produce.
This would be a good place to improve the Mossberg 464.
I bought the silver “Marinecoat” version, and I almost wish I had bought the blue version. Most of my problems resolved when I removed excess coating from the inside of the receiver. This was not done before The gun was assembled, causing it to be a bit stiff right from the get-go.
As that wore down it increased the contact area and the gun got stiffer, instead of breaking in and getting looser.
I think this is the thing everybody noticed right away about the silver 464. Instead of breaking in it got stiffer.
This was a big mystery until I figured out about the excess coating and removed it with gun brushes & oil.
There were several other bits of the gun that I had to smooth out for reliable operation including the under grip safety, and the key slot in the trap door. (I forget what Mossberg calls that part that drops down out of the receiver.)
As I recall there were rough edges on the loading gate as well. So, until I smoothed them out I was able to pinch my finger with this thing.
In the end, the things that I did to make the 464 work were not very difficult nor expensive, nor out of the capability of even an amateur gunsmith like me.
I think that for what I spent on this gun, which was under $700 as I recall, it is worth twice that much now.
I remember when I was in high school that there was a guy with a Ford and he could never get it to run right. Probably had a worn out distributor. But anyhow he bought a Chevrolet that ran, and after that he thought Chevys were the only good car ever made.
I have a friend who bought a semi auto Mossberg shotgun and it didn’t work out for him. It probably had some similar flaws to my gun, and so he sold it, and now he hates Mossberg.
When he saw that I was out-shooting his Winchester .30-30, he was so upset that he sold the gun. And unfortunately he didn’t sell it to me because I would’ve liked to own it too.
My theory is that it would have been too painful for him to see me taking his Winchester to the range where we go, after I out shot him with the hated Mossberg. Lol
Also he owns a Remington .30-06 and I think he was just disappointed in the .30-30.
well you can’t compare apples and oranges. It is what it is. And in this case what it is is a gun with a lot of potential that needs a little effort to realize.
My only real complaint about this carbine now is that I have never successfully made more accurate ammunition for it then I could buy right off the shelf.
And that’s actually a criticism of my own abilities rather than Mossberg’s.
