Petzal: CNBC’s Remington 700 Trigger Coverage A Clean Miss

[RagingBullPa]

iown a 721 circa 1947and several 700 rems never had a problem withany of them of courseanyone who listens to cnbc withe their liberal views, i got some bridges in manhattan for sale cheap

[PJgunner]

I've owned several Remington 700s,a 600, 660 and almost an XP100. The only reason i mention the others is at one time, every one of those guns along with the 721, 722 and 725 were recalled. They showed a test you could do to test the trigger/safety set up to see if it could be a problem. This was in the late 1970's as I recall but could have been the early 80's just as easily. IIRC, you were supposed to ease the safety slightly forward, but not enough to take it completely off and pull the trigger. Then, pull the safety back to whee it should be and then slide it off. If the gun fired, you had to send it back. At that time I only owned a Remington 660 that had been restocked with a nice piece of walnut in the full stocked Mannlicher style. It had one of the "bad" triggers. I caller Remington and they had me send it to one of their local repair stations. After about three months I got the gun back and the nice pull was gone, replaced by a gritty 8 pound pull. Not only that, but the new trigger had a larger housing and when they opened up the stock, they did not seal the hole. The stock swelled up after a hunt in some heavy raid and split internally, just bad enough that repairs were not feasable. Now the gun sits in an early style H&S Precision fiberthane stock that was made for a short action M700 that I had to alter and glass bed to make it work. That little .308 is hell on the deer population.
I also have three M700s, aBDL in 30-06 and two Classis, a 30-06 and a .35 Whelen.
While working for a gun smith, I was asked to see if I could make an early
M700 in .270 fire when taking the safety off the safe position. Try as I may, I never could make it fire under any circumstances other than when it was supposed to shoot. I think the fellow that had the AD/ND had his finger on the trigger when he took it off safety and the gun fired, the bullet hitting his wife in both knees shattering them. She lost both legs. As the guy was a friend and neighbor, I felt kind of bad that I could not find fault with the gun but I'm not going to lie in any court of law. he wasn't too happy about that.
Still and all, there has been much ado about this issue and long ago, I decided that if I were using one of my Remingtons on a hunt, the magazine would be full but the chamber empty. I've been doing that for a long time now with all my rifles, not just the Remingtons.
Last year was the very first time in over 50 years of hunting that I paid a guide to do a hunt. After 31 years, 32 now of not drawing for antelope here in Arizona, I went the "play for pay" route. When we exited the truck and the guide said to load my rifle, I loaded the mag, closed the bolt and snapped of the the gun on the empty chamber. I can still see the look of approval on his face when he said, "Good man." After the hunt, he did have a few horror stories of poor gun handling by his clients. For the record, I did get my "goat" after about a half mile stalk. The shot was at 75 yards. The head now hangs on my wall in our TV room. Guess I's best find something else to hang there as he looks lonely.
Paul B.

[Rapier]

The major problem with the subject Remington trigger is as stated, anyone with a small screwdriver can adjust it and most of the adjustment instructions floating around fail in one major regard........ Never reset a Remington trigger without using Locktite on all of the adjustment screws. Do not get Locktite inside the trigger and Locktite outside does not help anything. So start the screw then put a drop in the middle of the screw, as you set the screws, then allow the locktite to dry once a safe setting is achieved. Test the safety and slam the bolt home at least a dozen times.

The rub is that once the seal - glue as used by the factory is broken, the adjustment screws have a tendancy to "walk" with use, especially with heavy use, like on a match gun, unless the screws are set. If you are lucky the firing pin will only follow the bolt when out of adjustment. But sometimes the firing pin hangs for a moment and will fire just as the bolt closes, which is not good at all and is very dangersous.

I have seen Remingtons do this many, many times over the years and every single time it was due to a faulty adjustment job or no sealant was used on the adjustment screws.

I have served as the gun inspector at several world championship shooting events. My test for a Remington was to slam the bolt home, if it did not fire, I then rapped the butt on a mouse pad, on the table. If it still did not fire, it passed inspection. The Remington always got two tests, not because they were unsafe, but because they could be made unsafe by folks that had no idea of how a Remington could go from good to bad so quickly if improperly set up.

As a match director I have also had to order Remington shooters off the firing line when their gun started malfunctioning during a match. Again, every single instance was due to the trigger not being properly adjusted by an individual.

Remington designed the triggers at a time when everyone was expected to know something about the gun they owned and most people could maintain their guns in a proper way. Today 99% of the gun owners can't even clean a gun right.

I have no idea of how many custom Remingtons I have built over the years, but it is a good number. I use the factory triggers for hunting guns to this day, reset to 3 to 3.25 pounds with Locktite.
Ed