Remington Arms Quality: What the Hell is Going On?

Have several older guns that have been great.Bought a 11-87 turkey gun a few years that wouldn`t function worth a damn,sent it back and haven`t had a problem since,now it`s my favorite turkey gun.And there are plenty of old Marlin,Savage, and Winchester lever.The new stuff from Remington has gone downhill since Freedom group got them.I`d say spend a few bucks and get a Kimber handgun or rifle.Rugers are damn good too,and they stand behind their products.You want a good auto shotgun get a Browning,love my maxus.

a reply to: BlueJacketYeah,love my .270wsm Kimber,they know how to build nice,accurate rifles.And their 1911`s are first class too.

a reply to: CharlesT I`d just buy a Timney trigger,doesn`t get much better than one of those and it`s easy to swap out without having to ship your gun.

a reply to: ridgerunner

Yes sir. I carry a stainless 2 full frame often enough ...can drop a dime with 3-6at 25 m.

a reply to: ridgerunner

Not gonna spend $150 on a trigger assembly for a rifle that only cost me $300.

a reply to: projectvxn

Adjust your sensitivty... for a cheap knock around pistol.. high point is just fine. Alternative pick up a rock.... rock wont do.... i need a s3mi auto 9mm in a hurry .. hi-point.

Remington has always made bang em up, cheap huntk guns... they are not high end, they never were. Affordable for most. Get the job done witg a common cartridge... again, they do just fine

a reply to: iTruthSeeker

They are. Which is truly sad. An iconic brand brought down, as with Remington, because the bottom line is more important than quality...

I won't buy either ever again.

a reply to: Aeshma

Remington has always made bang em up, cheap huntk guns... they are not high end, they never were.

A model 700 from the custom shop was nothing to sneeze at. They've made some great firearms. Nylon 66 gets my vote for best autoloading 22 ever. I'd take it over a 10/22. 7600 pump was a great action, in 6 mm it was good for coyotes.

originally posted by: D8Tee
a reply to: smurfy

But when Remington purchased Marlin in 2007, problems quickly surfaced with Marlin’s manufacturing model. While Marlin prided itself on its family history and hand-made quality, many of the 20th and 21st century metalworking innovations had gone unnoticed by Marlin’s previous owners.

calibremag.ca...

Marlin was still doing their magic on the 336 in 2007..... I have a 07 336W and a 08 XLR both made by Marlin, both smooth working beauties. They put plenty of venison on my plate.

I've read that the poor quality started around 2009 when most of the machinery being moved around, I think around 2010 - 2011 gun forums where calling them Remlins and still having qc problems.

I never owned a Remington, after watching the OP vid I don't I will ever own one lol.

After a lifetime of futzing with hand-me-down shotguns, inc an Ithaca Featherlight, I decided to buy a new shotgun.

Without a ton of research, I bought an 870 with synthetic stock, since I really do not care about "looks" or maintenance or nostalgia.

Although I haven't fired it a ton, I'm pretty happy with it. In no way a firearms expert since I was a kid, lol, I'm pretty certain if there were any obvious defects or issues, I would know. I did compare it to others, using my trusty test of "feeling out" the various ones in the store.

I'd definitely recommend it.

I've got a 1911 and an 870.
They seem to work just fine.
Never had a jam or fail to eject.

a reply to: projectvxn

I am watching the video right now.

Now, as you no doubt are aware, I am not familiar with weapon handling. But I am familiar with engineering, and many of the parts I deal with as a locksmith, although their purpose is obviously different, have certain things in common with the parts you will find in guns. They, like parts for any mechanism, have to be able to move perfectly together, in order to produce effective and efficient operation of the mechanism. They also rely heavily on spring pressures, and good design, in order that they can pass where they need to pass, engage where they need to engage, and that the materials will only wear down at as slow of a pace as possible.

Too much tolerance, where gaps between parts are concerned, will create problems, too little will also create issues, too much resistance in one material means that another may wear too fast, get gouged up. Burs on parts from bad machining will result in failures, no matter what manner of object is involved. And then you have the design itself. The fact that the slide release was only effective on one side of the pistol, and the frankly idiotic construction of the release mechanism itself, indicates that not only is the design of the pistol stupid, but the execution of that design has no merit to it either. Put simply, the tensile strength of it is not enough to produce the desired effect. Of course, even if it was, you can see in the video that the slide release on the right side of the gun engages with elements which are not present on the left hand side. Why should that be?

Further to that, the fact that the thing jammed up so often indicates that there is too much tolerance, too much travel under recoil, combined probably with an unwise choice of spring tension in the magazine. In short, even a non-gun guy like myself (steel before lead is my preference) can see that as a piece of engineering, the thing falls flat on its arse. This should have been perfectly obvious to anyone involved in the manufacturing of this gun. Now, when a lock fails because of a design or engineering flaw, it is aggravating, but rarely involves an immediate, potentially deadly or maiming threat to the user, in fact I would go as far as to say that for such a thing to pose such a threat, would be nearly unheard of, for obvious reasons. But when the task is to create an object which launches lumps of metal at supersonic speed, by way of detonating a small explosion behind it, in what amounts to a pressure vessel of some sort, there are obvious risks associated.

It simply cannot be the case, that a company as well known as Remington (even by non-gun guys like me), fail to understand the risk they are presenting to their customer base.

a reply to: projectvxn

I have about 3-4 hundred rounds through my R-51 so far. It didn't like Colt solid copper hollow points, but no other ammo sensitivity problems. I like the MAC channel and watched his review before buying mine, and am happy he didn't dissuade me.

a reply to: botay

You're a very rare case as Remington recalled every single first run R51 pistols due to unsafe conditions that could cause catastrophic failures and injuries among other issues. The second iteration of the R51 was not much better with continued reliability problems.

a reply to: projectvxn

I have the second generation, and am very happy. the gun does have some quirks though, takes some getting use to, especially tear down.

a reply to: CharlesT Don`t blame you if that's all you have in it,they really are good but not cheap

a reply to: TrueBrit

That is what it boils down to for me. A company who stopped caring about both quality and customer safety.

Safety is the number one rule of gun ownership. Without that commitment to safety there can be no trust. If there can be no trust then the only conclusion we can make is that they continue to make these mistakes in the hopes that they can capitalize on the "sucker born every minute" rather than the "discerning customer".

a reply to: projectvxn

This is one of the things I have never understood about this particular type of capitalism. The theory which holds that as long as you can sell it, you should sell it, simply does not hold water.

Doing good work, for a reasonable price is a much better long term strategy for ANY engineering firm. Maintaining quality at a high ebb may cost more in the short term, but it prolongs the life of a business immeasurably, when compared to just cranking out machinery which is essentially an over expensive paperweight. Doing the latter simply means that over a very short space of time indeed, the customer base will abandon products from that company or family of companies, handing over their money instead to other firms, firms prepared to create products that customers can rely on. That is true of near enough any kind of engineering, but with firearms, I would have thought that such a migration away from bad gear is fairly immediate, given the risks associated with carrying what amounts to a dud.

Even if the damned thing does not explode, if a pistol like this were deployed in a self defence situation, the user could not be in the least bit certain of being able to actually utilise the thing as anything more than a bludgeon!

Another thing springs to mind when thinking about these matters...

I have seen video on the net before, of people reviewing guns fresh out of the box. Sometimes they do follow ups, where things they do not particularly like, trigger weights, action, and so on, are modified by a local gunsmith, so that the item not only functions adequately, but is customised to the users specifications. Sometimes with new parts entirely, trigger groups and so on, or with minor, but effective tweaks to existing parts, which improve or alter the performance of the weapon. Would I be right in saying, that the pistol featured in the video, is largely speaking beyond that kind of help? Because it seems to me that between the feed issues, and the flimsy design of the slide release, not to mention the fact that the item has not been out that long, that smiths and parts manufacturers might not have had time to provide after market, corrective gear for it.

a reply to: TrueBrit

Generally there's a limit to what a gunsmith can do to correct these issues. If it's a design flaw like the ones seen in the video there just isn't anything a gunsmith can do short of significant alterations to the slide and machining your own parts to replace the substandard pieces. That's just not worth the cost.

These are issues that should have never been allowed to exist outside the factory.

a reply to: projectvxn

I see. The problems are too extensive to be worth the effort and expenditure.

Another question, if I may...

In Britain, there used to be many car manufacturers. We used to churn out cars by the boatload here, good ones too. Things changed, and designs, material quality and engineering standards all suffered. As a result, many British manufacturers were either sold to foreign interests, or simply shut down entirely. And yet, there is still, amongst British Petrolheads (or gearheads as they are apparently known in the States), a deep love for the old cars from the heyday of British motor production.

Some people are particularly attached to motor cars from particular manufacturers, like Rover for example. Some of them will even buy the poorly constructed cars from the period near to the end of their production cycle, and make modifications, corrections, spend tens of thousands of pounds putting them right, replacing badly designed parts with new, effective ones, solving rust problems. They near enough re-build the car, saving as much as possible of its old material, but getting rid of or solving the issues, and are left with a functional, unique car, with the classic styling or spirit that they craved from back in the day.

Do you suppose that there is the same brand loyalty surrounding guns, and if so, do you think there are any mental cases out there, that will, in time, purchase these terrible guns, and spend the time basically re-engineering them to actually function? Or does that brand loyalty tend to evaporate with failure?