Re: Remington\'s Quality Issues......Please inform me.
Well, just my personal experiences, and I'm not the guru that some of these guys are, so take it for what its worth.
The first Remington centerfire gun I had was a 788 in .223 I got in high school. Shooting cheap Ultramax 55gr SP ammo, it would shoot about 3/4" avg @100yds. Sometimes a little less, some times a bit more. Had more problems due to cheap scopage than anything else. Always regret getting rid of that gun. I remember thinking that if this is their el-cheapo gun, wow! This was about 1990 or so.
My second Remington Centerfire was a 700VS in .223 Rem, but it was part of a limited run made for a dealer, w/ a 20" barrel vs the standard 26" (pre-LTR days). Initial groups were occasionally below 1/2", but honest average was somewhere more around 0.7-0.8, even w/ handloads. Somewhere down the road, I tried going from a Leupold 1-piece base to a two piece Weaver style base. Found out that apparently some idgit couldn't drill 4 holes in a straight line, as I had to use all my windage in my scope to compensate for the offset btwn the front and rear bases. Back to the Leupold bases w/ rear-windage adjustable rings. The other lingering headache w/ this gun deals w/ ejection/extraction. It would routinely not eject the brass from the gun, as it would hit the inside wall of the chamber hard enough to a) dent the case mouth worse than my AR, and b) jar it loose from the extractor. A Holland ejector spring fixed most of the denting problem, but ejection is still unreliable on it. Not enthused about a Sako or AR type extractor, which is what has been suggested as a 'fix'. This gun was circa about 1998.
Next Remington was the gun I'd always wanted: a 40XB-KS in .220 Swift. I'd never been able to talk myself into sending off $1800+ to Remington, and then waiting for a long time for the gun to show up. So when I found one on a dealer's table in a gunshow in western Nebraska, I jumped on it. $1450 or so later (sold two good trap shotguns to raise the cash), I was the proud owner of my 'dream' gun. The test target showed about 0.45" groups. Not bad, but I figured w/ some good handloads, I should be able to smoke that easily. Turns out this was my first run in w/ Remingtons exceptionally long throats in some of their newer guns. Had to be selective about which bullets I loaded, or they would literally fall out of the case before reaching the lands. Also, the front recoil lug was solid-bedded, to the point you could take the action screws out, turn the gun upside down (over a bed or couch, lets not get stupid here) and shake. Hard. The only way to get the barreled action free was to wiggle the barrel until it dropped out. Eventually relieved a small amount of the kevlar stock material on the front and sides of the lug, which made disassembly considerably easier. As far as load development, I tried literally everything I could come up w/, over the period of about 800rds, and never did get a load to *consistently* average less than 0.5". Disappointing, to say the least, considering the premium price tag. I had some paint strip off the stock almost immediately after receiving it, and recently sent it back to McMillan to get refinished in anticipation of a future sale. This gun was purchased NIB about Y2K.
The most recent Remington centerfire I have is another Remington 700VS in .308 Winchester. Let me pre-stage this one a bit by saying that one of the local benchrest cranks talked me into getting my .223 700VS 'skim-bedded' since in his experience, the vaunted aluminum bedding blocks usually were mass produced to about the same tolerances as everything else. The .223 became an pretty regular 0.5" performer @ 100yds almost immediately. Still some disappointing groups further out, but that may be the shooter
So when I got the .308, it went straight from counter to the back room where the gunsmith did the same skim-bedding job. Afterwards he grumbled about how he should have charged full-price for bedding the stock, as it and the other both had pillar blocks so far off he had to use almost as much bedding material as if they weren't even there. The .308 was broken in, and upon subsequent load development, it was discovered that a 175gr Sierra MatchKing seated to 2.810", standard magazine length, had to jump over 155 thousandths, i.e. over 1/8", to reach the lands. Amazingly, it still shot well. In fact, it is the best shooting rifle I currently have. Sub half-moa groups are not uncommon w/ the gun, as long as I can hold that steady. I asked around, and was told that the reason for the long throat (from people who had already tried getting Remington to fix theirs), was more lawyer-proofing: so if some nitwit tried firing a 220gr round-nose in a heavy-barreled target gun, it would clear the rifling upon chambering. Maybe so, but it pretty much hoses shooting 125-155gr bullets, as they have ungodly leaps to the rifling. Pretty much a mixed bag on this gun; it is phenomenonally accurate for an out of the box gun, even w/ a bedding job, in my opinion, but it has some serious warts from my view point. One of these being an overly stout ejector that caused problems similar to the .223 gun, and was fixed the same way w/ a Holland ejector spring. This gun was purchased about March 2002.
In the end, all my Remington centerfire bolt guns would shoot sub MOA groups w/ good handloads, and minimal tinkering. Some were extremely disappointing investments, and most, except for the 788, had some lingering annoyance. Both the 788, and another 'old-style' 700 BDL in .243 that I load for, work flawlessly, w/o any of the issues listed above, for considerably less money.
I for one am starting to investigate using other actions as the basis for any new gun I purchase/build. Not saying that Remington is the only one w/ problems today, and for $8.50 (I'd heard $15 myself) they still make a reasonably good barrel for that much money
YMMV,
Monte
