Around the early 60's(?) and up till about '72,,the feed throat in the 60 (was the Marlin Model 90,,the Glenfield equivelent was the Model 60) was a sintered metal casting, 2 halves rivited together. The ejector itself was cast right into it. Being the tiny projection on the top left hand corner, it just didn't do the job as the ejector a lot of the time. It couldn't stand up to the pounding it took.
It literaly wore off in a handfull of rounds many times and many rifles never made it out of the range at Marlin only to be carted back to the Repair Dept for a new feed throat.
Continuous problems with them.
Pallets full of rifles returned from BigBox stores that were sold and return on warrantee. Most said 'will not eject'.
The feed throats were a vendor purchased item and they used to come into the factory by the industrial size cardboard barrel full.
There were other minor problems with the rifle on and off that you could attribute to QC most of the time, but all in all it was a pretty good design for an inexpensive mass production rifle,,except for that feed throat.
A 99M1 Model box magazine feed M1Carbine look-a-like made at the same time and using the same action never had any problems. Feeding from a straightline detachable mag,,it avoided the tubefeed necessary feedthroat that gave so much trouble.
In '71 one of the long time Repair Dept employees came up with a simple design change. It used one of the ends of the torsion spring used to power the hammer as the ejector.
R&D stole his design, never gave Larry credit for it, never paid him for it even though he submitted the idea long before that on a factory employees idea form. He had made the prototype and it fired over 25k rounds w/o a FTE.
Every tube feed from about 72 or so on had that design change and saved Marlin big money and the rifle itself. It was their bread and butter gun. But rifles made when that sintered metal ejector was used were a curse to the company and users.
The nylon/plastic recoil buffer in the rear of the action frame cracks w/ age too. Even ones from the late80&90's assemblys I've seen are already cracked and fall into pieces when you take them apart.
..and not from use either. I recently fixed up an 1985 purchased rifle that had been shot once by it's original owner and put away.
It's recoil buffer was cracked and split. I fixed the 15# trigger pull (measured on a gauge) and the heavy sideways push of the forend on the bbl.
It shot real 1" groups at 100m for me w/a 3X9 cheapy scope set at 9 once fixed up. I was impressed.
Before that a range test resulted in me pulling on the trigger and wondering out loud if the safety was on.
The poor trigger pull was a sear that looked like it had been caught sideways in the Marlin-a-Matic Sear Making Machine and never discarded. Nicely bued, but with scared and heavily damaged edges,,it was used in the rifles assembly, the rifle went bang,, and out the door to another satisfied customer it went.
Just really poor QC,,and that's the downfall of most mfg'rg companys lately.
Make sure the recoil spring in the bolt is not kinked in any way. It will cause FTF/FTE. Re-assembly w/o using care usually results in putting a kink in the spring. It'll work manually and all seems OK,,but it can cause malfunctions as it slows down the action speed.
Just some thoughts...
I like single shots, pumps and bolt action 22s mostly. But a couple Winchester 63's are pretty nice shooters.
