Gentlemen,



We've heard so many arguments against the Remington extractor, but, so far at least, we have never had one fail to extract.



On our hunting rifles, we normally replace them with the Sako type extractor.



I got a Remington 700 BDL in 243 Winchester in part exchange many years ago. I took the barrel off, and put another one I chambered for the 308 Winchester, as we wanted a rifle in that caliber for visitors here to shoot.



We can always get cheap military ammo for it.



It is an extremely accurate rifle, that will shoot 1/4" groups with the Sierra 168 MK bullet.



A couple of weeks ago, it stopped ejecting one case in about 30-40 rounds fired.



Then is started doing it every 10 or so rounds.



Yesterday, it just refused to eject any empty case at all.



I took the extractor off, and installed a Sako extractor in its place.



So far, I would guess this rifle must have had at least 40,000 rounds through it, before the extractor failed.



Not bad for that little dinky claw.

Though I love to needle the OnlyRemIsAccurateCrowd Rem700 extractors are very reliable.

40,000 ain't too bad...

While were talking about 700 issues, have you had any 700 bolt handles come unsoldered? How about ejector problems? Just curious...

I pulled the bolt handle off a 700 VSS when I tried to pull a stuck case out. Replaced it with Billingsley & Brownell handle that the gunsmith (Mark at Tac-Ord) welded on. Part of the handle stayed attached to the bolt, so it was a double failure, solder and bolt metal. The exposed grain structure looked like undercooked porridge.
JCN

Saeed,
Not very reliable is it, they sure don't make them like they used to.

Very interesting. I have a Remington 660 that had the extractor fail after about 5,000 rounds. Mine did seem to fail more rapidly though in as much as it started failing to pull cases out almost immediately. I just had it replaced with another Reminton extracot and it's good to go.
FWIW, my rifle is also a .308.
Paul B.

You get a case stuck by overloading it or whatever the case may be and then beat the handle off the bolt body? I am confused as to how that is a fault attributable to Remington in any way. Regardless of how the case got stuck if you apply enough force when it is stuck hard and fast something has got to give somewhere. What were the circumstances? Jim

I had my one and only extractor failure on a remington 700 after only about 30 rounds fired through a new rifle.The extractor never broke but it stopped extracting cases.Since then all of my big game hunting rifles have sako extractors installed.I don't bother on my varmint rifles.

Never an extractor, but I have had a Remington ejector fail. That little plunger just wouldn't come back out of its hole. I guess fifteen years of use had stymied the spring, somehow.

RSY

Jim,
Tight chamber, fully sized case, but there was some spring back (evidently) in the case. I was shooting some practice. I always "run the bolt" fast and vigorously, as I was taught in school. The round chambered (camming action), but I didn't like the feel, so I decided to unload. It didn't want to open so I cradled the rifle on its left side with the barrel down range (down canyon actually). I smacked the bolt handle with the palm of my right hand (what my kids call a "bitch slap" [the things they learned at public school, sigh..]), again as I was taught in school.
Most of the bolt handle went flying about five feet. I could see where there had only been about 30% coverage with the solder under the missing part. The exposed grain structure looked pretty "mealy", for want of a better description.
I pulled all the bullets from that batch of ammo, recovered the powder, poisoned the primers, and pitched the brass.
My load for that rifle hasn't varied from the original work-up: FGM primer, 45.2 grains Varget, 168 grain HPBT, LC NM brass.
I have now, or have had ten other Rem 700's. All those have been in CM, and have been trouble free.
My eldest god son (a captain in the US Army) nicknamed the rifle in question "Scary Mary" because it is so consistent. After the new handle was welded on, and the Palma throat opened up a little bit, he announced that the rifle was now his. They are bonding quite nicely.
Interestingly the original chamber on that rifle was quite a bit off center. The bore was very smooth after I had lapped it though, so I asked my gunsmith to set it back and rechamber. It was a lucky gamble. I ran 97 rounds through it one day and it cleaned up with one round of Sweets!
The original trigger was very good, and hasn't varied an ounce since the adjustment screws were lock-tited in place.
I am going to have a similar rifle built in the next year. I will go right to the Billingsley & Brownell bolt handle because it fits my hand better, and sticks out a touch more.
If my gunsmith hasn't thrown away the original handle I will send you a picture of the exposed metal.
I think I like CM receivers with SS barrels; the best of both worlds.
Regards,
JCN

PS, I am fit, but no weight lifter or arm wrestler type. I was the most surprised person in the world when the handle broke off. I very intelligently commented: "What the f***?"

Charlie,
My response would probably have been something along those lines also. It must have been attached late on a Friday afternoon. Jim

What a relief!!!!! I have been waiting for mine in
my 722 (I bought used in 1953) to fail.
Was a 257 Roberts now a 243 AI. I have
had a spare extractor in an envelope taped
to the inside of my safe door for
over twenty years.
Lyle

Not long after Henry Ford had every one driving Model T's he sent people out to all the automobile junk/salvage yards that had started to spring up. They reported back that one part, I'm not sure if it was an axle or crankshaft, had not been found broken on any of the cars they had surveyed. Henry said that part was obviously over-engineered and he instructed his engineers to redesign it to a less robust (and less expensive) configuration.......

Well, a little problem sprang up on this rifle, and I wonder if anyone has had this sort of thing happen to him before.

Since I have replaced the extractor, they have fired over 800 rounds through this rifle!??

The boys use it to practice off hand shooting, at bullseye targets that are around 6.5 inches in diameter, with concentric scoring circles.

I noticed that almost all the hits on the targets are on the left hand side of the target, so I checked the zero of the rifle. And sure enough, it was shooting over an inch to the left!!

I wonder what is causing this?

Any ideas would be much appreciated it.

Similiar WWII story: Early on, engineers would examine shot up B17's returning from Europe. They'd add a bit of armor protection-where the holes WEREN'T!

One of the reasons (not the only one) I no longer own or buy Remingtons is due to the extractor problems I had with my last 700. It would reliably extract cases only about 75% of the time.

I saw a Rem. 721 extractor fail after about 20 years, but not many cartridges. It was on my father's .270 and I KNOW he hasnt put 2000 rounds through it. He is the type to maybe check the sight in before going hunting.

Isnt the 721 the same as a Model 700?

Gents,

Oh those lousy RemChesters. Can you imagine a gun only getting 40,000 rounds through it and breaking an extractor. Don't make em like they use to.

Roger QSL

What I have noticed in the new Remington 700 is lack of quality control.

We get quite a few of them here. Some are in extremely good condition out of the box, and require very little work to make them shoot and operate well.

Others look like they made it past the reject bin into production, and no matter what one does to them, you never manage to get them in a state of a decent rifle.

We usually, take these apart, and use the actions for a custom rifle.

LE270,
What would you call "primitive" on a 721 or 722? I would call them superior to the 700s that are produced today but thats just my opinion. Jim

Saeed, i have about a doen or so Remingtons with this design of ejector/extractor. I've had one extractor fail due to age and metal fatigue (I'm guessing really, but it was a 40 year old rifle, with I don't know how many rounds thru' it), and I had one fail due ot a reloading "miscalculation. That one caused the ectractor to spring out from the bolt, and the ejector to push into the bolt and fuse there with brass from the cartridge. Then the bolt handle came off when I was beating it to open the action (which I fully expected, but went ahead anyway, sometimes my curiousity gets the best of me). So that's two failures in 30 years, and one of them was caused by me. It's just machinery boys, sooner or later, it all breaks. - Dan

Quote:

"But I'm wondering, if nothing else could've changed, if that extractor claw's now putting tension on one side of the case rim, tilting the cartridge to one side in the chamber. A factory chamber's going to have some clearance all around. The upside to this is, if it's preloaded to one side, the cartridge position in the chamber is likely to be more consistent from shot to shot. So you might see smaller groups while seeing a change in POI. "


You're kidding...right?

"Smaller groups" do to the location of the extractor on the bolt face????

You're gonna need to explain the physics or interior ballistics of that one to me. Of all of the arguments against Remington extractors that I have heard over the years that one was has never been mentioned.

Rick

I have owned several Remington bolt guns over the years, I now have one M721 (my first centerfire rifle) and one M700. The M721 has not had an ejector or extractor problem, but the spring that resets the bolt release had to be replaced.

I have had the ejector on one of the M700s break, that was a new .416 Rem Mag from the Custom Shop that failed on shot #3 (with factory Remington ammo).

I have observed that the extractors on magnum bolt face M700s like to shave little pieces of brass from the cartridge case, and the brass shavings like to migrate over to the extractor and cause it to hang up. Both Remington rifles I have now are .30-'06 case derivatives (.280 Rem and 6.5-'06). I have also changed the factory triggers on these rifles: one has a Canjar and the other has a Neil Jones modified Rem trigger.

jim

Not kidding at all, Rick. The theory's quite simple. You've got a cartridge that fits in the chamber with a certain amount of "slop" around it. It's going to have to tilt one way or another. If the new extractor is holding a bit of tension against the rim at one point, it's always going to tilt the same way, instead of usually tilting down (to a variable degree) from the force of gravity, with freedom to get randomly tilted around in other directions. If you have a more uniform position of the cartridge in the chamber at ignition, you should get more repeatable results.

I've never experienced a failure of the Remington extractor. I have experienced chewed up rims on fireformed wildcat cartridges that I loaded a little too warm. The extractor is small, but it does get a good bite.

I have experienced a failure of a Sako extractor! I was working up a new load with my 7-08AI (Sako 591) and discovered that 52.0gr of R19 with 140gr Noslers was more than my particular rifle appreciated. It was the 3rd shot at that charge that did me in. When I finally got the bolt open, I was surprised to find no extractor. I'm sure it was somewhere, but I couldn't find it.

Hey Swede, Probably a whole lot.

Why didn't you just back the Hornady Dies out a bit and "Fire Form" those Cases? Too mad to mess with them?