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In an earlier thread, I mentioned that I was having problems with my new IAC Cowboy Model 97 failing to go into battery and locking up. Yes, I am well aware that the action needs to be manipulated strongly and I tried a variety of different ammo, none of which made any difference. At home I used some dummy shells to try to identify where the actual problem was occurring. It never locked up when the shell was fed from the magazine, only when the shell was loaded into the ejection port so that the extractor had to ride over the rim of the shell base. Aha! I was getting somewhere! I finally figured out that there were actually two interrelated problems. First of all, the right extractor was binding when trying to ride over the shell rim. This caused the bolt to fail to move forward far enough so that the locking lug on the riser could mate with the locking lug on the bolt. This was aggravated by the simple fact that the leading edge of both locking lugs was quite sharp and, with the very tight tolerance there, the lugs would not clear. The result was a nasty jam that was quite hard to clear. What to do? With a fine file, I slightly rounded off the leading (sharp) edges of both the bolt and riser locking lugs to give them a bit more leading edge tolerance. However, I still got jams. It had to be something to do with the right extractor! I found that the leading edge of the right extractor was rather rough and there were some small burrs on one side. Careful use of a fine file was used to smooth the leading edge of the extractor and remove the burrs from its sides. I then oiled and exercised the extractor spring. Running some dummy rounds through the ejection port was successful. No jams! Then I carefully did the same thing with some different makes of live ammo. (Yeah, I was nervous doing that but took great pains to make sure that the gun could not accidently fire.) That, too, worked! The next step was to go to the range and do some live firing. Today, I ran 25 rounds through the gun by loading into the ejection port and a friend also sent 25 rounds through the gun the same way. It worked smoothly and beautifully! No problems of any kind even though the weather was barely above freezing. I do believe that I shall declare success! [in case the thought should occur to any of you, I do plan to repeat the test in warm weather, too, but that will have to wait a while.] Has anyone else had this particular problem? If so, what did you do and what were the results? Warhorse