I have a Benelli Super Black Eagle that is about 20 years old and has been shot a lot. Lately I have been having issues with the mag tube retaining the shells as it should. Sometimes one shell will drop unexpectedly into the carrier, sometimes a shell will drop into the carrier as it should however the 3rd releases from the mag tube while the carrier latch is up dropping the shell on the ground, and others two shells will drop at the same time causing the carrier latch to jam on reload.

I am wondering if its a worn carrier latch or possibly worn magazine bushing that is causing my issue retaining the shells but don't want to just start throwing parts at it if I don't have to. Has anyone dealt with his before?

Clean all those parts really well, then try replacing the springs.

You should be able to see what’s going on visually.  Insert a shell and see how much purchase the shell stop has on the shell rim itself. If it’s barely hanging on, you could have problems with the spring or the latch itself if it’s worn out or had been modified in the past to make it easier to load. Be sure the spring is seated as far to the rear as possible. Pressing on the latch should give you an idea of its range of motion. I’d probably swap magazine springs while I was at it and clean out the magazine tube well. No oil should be in there at all.

Insert a shell into the magazine tube then wiggle it side to side to see if you can get the shell to bypass the shell latch and move into the receiver. The shell latch may be damaged or just worn/bent from years of use. Also the retaining pin may be broken. Inspect these parts to make sure the shell latch is properly retained in the side of the receiver.

If the shell latch has bent from loading many, many times you can often bend it back into shape and get a lot more use out of it (or you can replace it with a new part). To easily bend the latch remove the trigger group and pull the back end of the latch out into the center of the the receiver about 3/8” to 1/2” to cause the front part of the latch to slightly bend in and engage more of the shell rim in the mag tube. You may have to tug the rear section more than once to increase the tension. (Picture below is an M2 but the idea is the same on your SBE)

I did some tweaking on the carrier latch and it looks like it may have done the trick. It used to drop a shell into the carrier if i bumped the stock but I cant get it to do that any more.

Thanks all!