Well, the title kind of gives it away. The Charles Daly 601 DPS died. Actually, it killed itself, to be precise. I’ll dive into the details of how in a bit, but first, some housekeeping.
What is the Charles Daly 601 DPS
The Charles Daly is a Turkish made “copy” of the Benelli M4 shotgun. I say “copy” and not copy, as there are some pretty big quality differences. However, this is to be expected when the emulator costs nearly 3 times less than the original.
I have my full “first impressions” of the 601 DPS, along with an article about modding furniture to work on it. The former would be a good primer to this article, as it covers a lot of the information about the 601 DPS, and how it was to shoot when it was fresh out of the box. I’ll talk about the timeline that led to the death of my 601 DPS, and some remedies I attempted.
The Charles Daly 601 DPS Timeline to Death
I purchased my 601 DPS in November of 2020, and uploaded the original article on it in December. From there, I shot it more, and continued to have similar reliability, of between 85-90% reliable function. Around January of 2021, I modified the Mesa Tactical Urbino stock to work on the 601 DPS, and also installed their MLOK forend. Shotgun reliability was not impaired at this point. By May of 2021, I had installed the Dave’s Metal Works replacement magazine tube onto the 601 DPS. A total sidenote, this tube is the one that I would recommend if you want to enhance the M4 or copies to 7 round capacity.
From May 2021 to October of 2021, I began to run into much worse reliability with the 601 DPS. This led to the shotgun being pronounced dead in October. How did it die?
The Death of the 601 DPS
The 601 DPS died due to two major issues:
- Parts that were the wrong size
- Soft metallurgy
The part that was incorrectly sized was the left-most gas piston. With the operating system of the 601 DPS being a copy of the Benelli M4, the pistons impact the bolt carrier group to cycle the gun. Well, the left gas piston was too long. This beat the piston up a bit, and bonked the BCG too.
The piston was peened out, a compounded issue from the soft metal, and oversized length. That is a bad enough issue on its own, but it gets worse.
The piston beat the crap out of the BCG. The BCG was very peened out from the piston impacting with much more force due to the lopsided nature of it. This killed reliability, as chunks of metal preventing the BCG to move smoothly is a bit of an issue. Speaking of that…
The BCG track in the 601’s receiver got borked up by the peening on the BCG. The receiver is aluminum, but even the soft metal of the BCG was enough to cut into the track.
A giant chunk was cut into the track near the back of the receiver. This was so severe that the BCG sticks there when cycled. The shotgun cannot cycle as of now. I did try to remedy the issues however, with no avail.
The 601 DPS “Fix” Attempt
I attempt removing some of the peening from the piston, BCG, and receiver. I cut the left piston down to match the right side, and filed the peening marks out of the BCG and receiver. This allowed the shotgun to function, but only for 40 rounds where the issues came back again. Yeah, I’m not able to fix this.
Funeral For the 601 DPS
Well, after I failed at correcting the issues, the 601 DPS was pronounced dead. I’m not going to bother putting any more time or money into this shotgun, as it failed in some ways that cannot be fixed. While I am unhappy with these series of events, but I am happy that it happened to me, and not any of you. The total round count through the 601 DPS was in the 925-950 round ballpark. That is unacceptable.
Obviously, I will not be recommending you to buy this 601 DPS. If you did buy one, if your shotgun had any of the issues that mine did, please leave a comment below!
I just picked one up firing pin not striking primer and I can’t get bolt handle out
Don’t they have something like a 5 year warranty?
I’d sent it back, but I agree that this company is lacking quality control department
definitely will keep an eye on this as i just got one before reading your article. Done smithing for about 42 years, so maybe ill get a little more use by eyeballing the wear cycle, but you probably saved me from spending a fortune on it-Thank you!
I recently got the Norwegian ($150) M1014 stock on mine with some work….quick question was it already past the point of no return when you found the incorrect gas tube length issue? Do you think if you had replaced the piston with a benelli one early it would have prevented the destruction?
Vincent,
The gun was past the point of fixing once I noticed the issue.
It’s hard to say if replacing the pistons early would have corrected the issue before it started. It would have prevented the uneven wear on the BCG, but the BCG was still made from soft metal, so I think that issues would have arisen eventually.
Paul
Did you have any issues with the 601DPS failing to feed after firing? I am experiencing this with mine. I have went through numerous different types of shells. Sometimes it will fail to feed 2 or 3 of the 5 shells that are loaded. I sent it back to Charles Daily and they inspected it and claimed that there was no issue with the gun.
Informative read and sorry for your loss. With the $605 cost listed in your first article plus the Mesa Tactical stock & other upgrades, guesstimate on the total $ put into the Charles Daly 601 before it croaked? Round count?
With the huge variety shotguns being imported into the U.S. in the last 2-to-3 years, it’s nice to read a longer-term update/review on one of them. Most shotgun reviews are initial impressions and maybe a box of shells ran through it. There’s never really any follow-up. So this ‘Consumer Reports’ long-term update is greatly appreciated!
Thanks for your thanks! I agree, it can be hard to find content where the item has actually received a longer term review.
For the ending round count, I “ballparked” it at between 925-950 rounds. I was keeping a hard count up to the point that I had the death rumblings of the shotgun, but stopped paying attention once the serious issues occurred. I have this round count listed near the end of the article.
For the total cost, I was in it for:
$605 for the 601DPS itself
$215 combined for the Mesa Tactical stock and forend
$105 for the Dave’s Metal Works magazine tube
So a total of $925 for components specific to this shotgun and base gun price. I won’t include the cost of accessories such as optic and sling, as I already owned them.
Now I will say that I have another shotgun project coming in the future, with a shotgun that is already performing much better. Stay tuned!
Thanks for the reply. Obviously I’m lack in my reading skills for missing the round-count being listed. I’ll go set in the corner and do extra homework for failing that quiz.