Neighbor has a Browning gold series 12ga shotgun that wont work, pull the trigger and nothing happens, hammer wont release. He asked me to take a look, I took a look and found fragments of the polyurethane buffer busted up and laying in the hammer and disconnect. I cleaned out the trigger group and took out the broken buffer. I tried find a buffer for the 3" only shotgun but its out of stock everywhere but 3.5" buffers are available on other vender's. My question is, are 3.5" and 3" buffers the same? Will a 3.5" buffer work will 3" gold series? Any input will be helpful.

Tell him to call Browning, that POS Gold had a recall and they sent me a cash refund for my Browning Gold 12Ga.

The anodized aluminum receiver was chipping tiny pieces off in the ejection port area(look closely) and locking the gun up.
It was a weak area and the 10Ga was the worst but alot of the 12's had the same problems.

When I called Browning the rep on the phone said "oh no, not the 12 gauge too"
I asked what he meant and he described the troubles everyone has been having with the 10 gauge chipping tiny pieces of aluminum in the ejection port and just asked me to send them my gun and a couple of weeks later just sent me the full cash refund.