Trijicon shotgun sights for 870, weak rear sight?

I ordered some Trijicon sights for my 870, and when they arrived I assumed the rear sight had died, or wasn't ever lit up, so to speak. The front sight was nice and bright, but the rear was taken into a fully darkened room, and I could barely see a glimmer, and I wasn't sure about that. I e-mailed Trijicon after I sent the original ones back and got the replacements, with the same weak rear sight. Trijicon replied quickly and said that the rear sight was considerably smaller light sources and that the yellow was not as bright as the green, (I'd gotten the green front/yellow rear). So, I took the rear sight to bed last night, and sure enough, when I awoke in the middle of the night, and looked over on the nightstand, the little yellow bits were glowing, and noticeably so. So, I guess they're just not like pistol sights, and considering that your eye is a lot closer to the rear sight of a shotty than a pistol, that may be a good thing.

So, I put the rear sight on the 870 receiver today. And that is another story. I found some online instructions, as Trijicon doesn't send any with the sights, other than "These sights should be installed by an authorized gunsmith" or some such. Right. Anyway, the instructions say to use a #33 drill bit, no problem, I've got plenty of those. Then it says to use a 6-40 tap...good luck with that. After searching up and down the Front Range of the Rockies today, I realized that it wasn't going to happen. So I decided to re-read the instructions...still said 6-40 tap. So I looked at the screws that Trijicon had supplied with the sights. There was one 6-32 and one 6-40! Glad I didn't already find a 6-40 tap. So, I tapped both for 6-32 and found a nice stainless 6-32 capscrew in my collection and installed the rear sight. As an aside, stainless won't accept blueing. I can live with that. I've got a magic marker!

Just be aware, that's all I'm sayin'

I then cleaned the blueing off the area where the front sight sits astride the existing front sight base (bead removed) cleaned the inside of the front sight, mixed the supplied epoxy, and installed and front sight. I drilled the sight and existing front sight base for a pin, as per advice of someone that has done this before! These bad boys are on to STAY!

Should have put it on the board, i have a 6-40 and some other misc oddball taps. Making them a uniform common thread does simplify things, in the long run.

Well, the point has become mute, as I've had too many failures with the 870 in 3-gun, so I've got a new VersaMax now, and the trophy wife has nice Trijicons on her bedside shotgun. And a mag extension. And recoil reducing stock. And now it will ONLY hold factory ammo. (Some of the failures were due to less than full-length resized reloads, my bad).