Fifteen months into owning a left-handed Winchester Classic Safari Express rifle in 375 H&H caliber, I am finally able to shoot the thing. Actually, I had about 30 rounds through it before a gunsmith boogered it about 4 months ago.

Glass bedding changed point of impact (down and to the left). Not surprising, since the barrel was touching one side of the channel when I originally got the rifle. It shot a nice 1.25" group at 50 yards with its open sights. I don't think I can see any better than that in dim light (it was late in the day). It also shot a somewhat larger group offhand. Offhand was more pleasant than at the bench, however.

Recoil is near the top end of my fun range, but still in there.

The sights are better than those on my Remington 870 slug barrel. With the 870, I cannot see well enough to take a shot at a deer beyond 80 yards. The M70's sight picture looked pretty good on the side and neck of a big doe that wandered onto the range ten or so yards past the 100 yard target backers.

The rifle is still a work in progress. The new trigger Winchester sent doesn't look like the one that came with the rifle. The old one is wide all the way up the bow to where it bends backward, and the top part (where the notch for the sear and pin hole are) is of uniform thicknes for the most part. The new one is wide for only an inch of the bow, and then it get thin. The top area of the new trigger has deep depressions in the sides that, if they went all the way through, would make it a skeletonized trigger.

I was going to ask Winchester what's up with the difference, but these are the bozos who shipped two grossly defective rifles and then sent me two extractors in a row when I had asked them for an ejector (I was pretty clear the second time, I'm sure of that). I don't guess they are going to give me any information I can use.

Anyway, when I put both triggers on the same pin, the notches where the sear engages lined up, and the trigger functions in the rifle (3 3/4 lb., crisp).

I'm going to ask Winchester to send the right trigger and let me keep the current one so the rifle is shootable. I don't want to wait another 3 months to shoot it.

H. C.

Henry470C... I am assuming you are left handed correct? Did you buy this rifle new? Was the smith who screwed it up, one in Winchester? What did he screw up?

[ 07-07-2003, 08:34: Message edited by: smallfry ]

Yes, I'm left handed.

The first rifle was screwed up at the factory. It was sent back and replaced with the second rifle (different serial number). The second rifle, from the factory, had 14 identified defects. Most of these, like those on the first rifle, could be attributed to incompetent assembly. They included vise marks on the front swivel barrel band and damage to every screw on the gun (and the surrounding wood and metal in some cases; the most eggregious being a gouged trigger guard and loose herringbone pattern of scratches on the stock where an electric screwdriver had jumped out of the slot and danced over the wood). The rifle also would not eject empty cases.

Winchester's Product Service department talked me into having this rifle repaired rather than replaced. They said every single part on the rifle would be replaced, if necessary. I took them up on the offer, and they sent me back a rifle (same serial number as the second) that looked pretty good and functioned pretty well. The only big problems were that the barrel did not run visibly parallel to its channel (touched on one side, big gap on the other), and that empty cases got dented by whacking the outside of the receiver. Neither of these was a big problem, since I was going to have the rifle pillar bedded, and I figured the gunsmith who did that could fix the ejection problem at the same time.

Everything else was done by a non-Winchester gunsmith.

I sent this rifle to the gunsmith to have it pillar bedded and to see if he could fix the ejection problem. I also asked him to do a trigger job.

The gunsmith could not fix the ejection problem, and I haven't been able to either. Betwee the two of us we have reshaped and shortened three ejectors, and any ejector that reliably ejects empty cases also dents the case mouths half shut (like a "D") if the bolt is worked rapidly.

The glass and pillar bedding job was somewhat sloppy. The rifle did not function when I came to pick it up because the bedding job interfered with the operation of the bolt stop. Contact looks good, and the rifle sits straight in its stock, but I've spent two or three hours cleaning modeling clay out of holes and scraping epoxy off the outside of the stock.

The gunsmith also did a "trigger job" on the rifle. I have since been told that all you ever do on a M70 trigger is mess with those three nuts and tiny screw. The tiny screw adjusts overtravel, and one of the nuts locks it in place. The other two nuts pre-compress a spring behind the trigger to adjust pull weight. Up on the top of the trigger is a notch, and the plateau in front of this notch is the part of the trigger that holds the sear until the trigger is pulled. This gunsmith tried to adjust the amount of sear engagement by grinding down that front plateau. Next time the rifle is out of the stock, I'll measure the amount of engagement, but the ground-down trigger easily has less than 1/4 the engagement of the new trigger.

The big problem with this trigger job is that when the bolt is worked with any speed, the striker falls as the bolt handle is being lowered . I figure that a bystander could get killed by such a setup, and I don't think it would be very good for the shooter or the rifle to be firing with the bolt lugs partially engaged. An intermediately bad scenario would be to get to Africa and discover I can't hunt withthis rifle adn have to borrow a right-handed one from my PH. I called up the gunsmith. He says he will make things right. My current idea of "right" is paying me for the new trigger parts I ordered and refunding me the price of the trigger job. Winchester stipulates that any aftermarket trigger they sell by installed by a qualified gunsmith. This guy has disqualified himself.

Winchester took three months to send the trigger parts, and as I mentioned, the new trigger looks different from what came out of the rifle.

I'm now 40 rounds into breaking in the barrel, and I'd like to finish the process without having to wait until after deer season for the correct parts.

H. C.

Welcome to the wonderful reality of the new Winchester company! I had a left hand 338, and my father has 3 model 70's, and the problems are countless. On mine, the bedding was incorrect, but it wasn't really an issue, because I replaced the stock with a Mcmillan stock. The trigger came from the factory at a measured 6.6 pounds, but that was an easy fix. That is one nice thing about the model 70, the trigger is simple to adjust. Mine fed decent, and was OK for accuracy for what I needed. The only reason I bought the rifle is because I needed a stainless 338 in left hand, and the model 70 was the best available. I sold it to buy a Ruger #1 in stainless 45-70 when they came out, and I am glad I did.
You should remove the trigger that was screwed with by the "gunsmith", and smash it with a hammer. If you don't, someone will probably get killed. I don't know what he was thinking (he probably wasn't) but he made a simple 5 minute trigger job into a headache for you. He should be sued for gunsmithing malpractice and negligence. Winchester may have made changes to their triggers for some reason. I guess you could try that one, and see if it will work. When you do the trigger adjustment, only adjust the pull weight adjustments, and leave the overtravel adjustment alone. You should be able to adjust it to a decent pull weight.
As far as the feeding is concerned, I don't think it is an ejector problem, but it sounds like the brass just hits the front action ring on ejecting. What happens when you eject loaded rounds with bullets? I wouldn't really worry about dented brass. The mouth can easily be reshaped with your sizing die when you reload it.
Is the barrel now free floated? In my 338, it wouldn't shoot good at all until I free floated the whole barrel. If that doesn't work, you can use shims at the front of the stock for slight upward pressure.
You might run into another notorious model 70 problem if you try to install a scope on it. The problem is: The action rings (where the scope mount holes are drilled) sometimes do not line up with the barrel. If you use rings and bases that are not windage adjustable, you may not have enough windage adjustment in your scope to compensate for this. I know of one where the rear Leupold ring had to be adjusted 1/2" off center with the windage screws on the rear base in order to even bore sight the scope. I have even heard of a few where the heights of the front and rear action rings were not aligned.
I thought Winchester was doing us left-handers a favor by bringing out the model 70 in LH, but now I don't know. I don't know what happened with that company over the past 10 years that caused their quality to drop way off, but their parent company (same as Browning's) could be part of the blame.

rails are too wide... wont hurt anything.

sounds like you finally got it where you want to start shooting

jeffe