Bill460
Member
Sorry for the long post. I'll start at the beginning. I have a Remington 7400 in .30-06 that I purchased new back in 1985. I scoped it with a nice Leupold Vari-X III 3.5 X 10X and went to the range with a couple of boxes of Winchester Silver Tip 180 Gr. Ammo.
I was loading and shooting the rifle single shot. After about 15 rounds the bolt was having trouble locking up. I'll admit to not cleaning or lubricating the gun before I went to the range. That was almost 35 years ago, and I was younger, and a lot dumber. I stopped shooting, went home and cleaned the rifle. Everything seemed normal.
Not long after that we moved out to Arizona, (Phoenix area), and I lost interest in the gun, and it's been languishing in the back of my safe ever since. Last year I purchased a new 200th Anniversary Edition Remington 7600 Pump in .30-06, and my interest has been renewed in these rifles.
Fast forward to last Fall..... I dragged the 7400 out of the safe, cleaned it up real good, and gave it a good lube job, greasing the bolt lugs up, along with cleaning both the chamber and barrel with the bronze brush, and giving it a light coat of oil. The action was running nice and slick.
I then ordered and received 2 new magazines from Midwest Gun Works. One is a original Remington 4 round. (Newer 2-piece design), and the other is a 10 round from Triple-K.
Disaster! Neither one even fits into the rifle! Not only that, but the inconsistency of the dimensions between the new 2- piece Remington magazine, and the original 1 - piece that my rifle shipped with are unbelievable. The original magazine that came with the rifle, (and doesn't feed properly, which is what started this whole fiasco), measures .550" across the front of the feed lips. The replacement Remington OEM magazine measures .650" across the same. A full .100" difference in the same make and model magazine. And like I said, it won't even fit in the gun.
So I called Remington and talked to a guy in Customer Service. I asked if they had ANY older 1 - piece magazines for the Remington 7400. He said they are no longer being produced, and they had none in stock. Remington only sells the newer 2 - piece magazines. He said my best bet would be to find one from either Numrich Arms or E-Bay. He said Remington 7400 rifles in general were very magazine sensitive.
I have a feeling when Remington went to the new tooling for the newer style 2 piece magazines, some dimensional stability was lost. Building multi operation, progressive stamping dies is a tricky business. And unless everything is absolutely perfect, the end product will not function as intended.
So after all this I pretty much lost interest in this gun. It just seemed too much of a PITA to locate a suitable magazine for it. And most gunsmiths don't want to screw with these rifles, because they're too, "hit or miss". So it was returned to my safe..... Again.
Fast forward to last week....... I was having my morning coffee, searching the Internet looking for an old style 1- piece magazine, and low and behold I came across this little mom and pop operation in Galesburg, Illinois, (Simpson Limited). And they had 3 brand new old style, one piece magazines for sale, that were still in the original Remington packaging! The price wasn't bad for $110.00 for all three. ($124.00 shipped to my door). That's only $41.00 each. I paid that much for the new style that didn't fit.
They came the other day. I now have a bit of confidence that this thing may finally run right. You can see from the picture, all 3 magazines have the oval DuPont company logo printed on them. DuPont purchased Remington in 1980, and sold it in 1993. So that means these magazines were manufactured in that time span. My rifle was purchased new in 1985, right in the middle.
One other thing I noticed is that the older magazines are stamped .30-06 only. The newer model I bought was stamped .25-06, .270, .280, .30-06, .35 Whelen. That could very well have been creating problems as well. "One size fits all", might work for some things, but not so well for rifle magazines.
I'm hoping to get to the range next week some time. And hopefully enjoy a bit more success. (The weather here has been wet and windy). Since all of this started, we have moved from the Phoenix area to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, and they have a really nice gun club here. So we'll see how everything goes. These are the magazines. I'm really hoping they'll do the trick, and get this rifle running correctly. Has anyone else had these type of magazine issues with a Remington 4 / 7400 / 742 long action rifle?
I was loading and shooting the rifle single shot. After about 15 rounds the bolt was having trouble locking up. I'll admit to not cleaning or lubricating the gun before I went to the range. That was almost 35 years ago, and I was younger, and a lot dumber. I stopped shooting, went home and cleaned the rifle. Everything seemed normal.
Not long after that we moved out to Arizona, (Phoenix area), and I lost interest in the gun, and it's been languishing in the back of my safe ever since. Last year I purchased a new 200th Anniversary Edition Remington 7600 Pump in .30-06, and my interest has been renewed in these rifles.
Fast forward to last Fall..... I dragged the 7400 out of the safe, cleaned it up real good, and gave it a good lube job, greasing the bolt lugs up, along with cleaning both the chamber and barrel with the bronze brush, and giving it a light coat of oil. The action was running nice and slick.
I then ordered and received 2 new magazines from Midwest Gun Works. One is a original Remington 4 round. (Newer 2-piece design), and the other is a 10 round from Triple-K.
Disaster! Neither one even fits into the rifle! Not only that, but the inconsistency of the dimensions between the new 2- piece Remington magazine, and the original 1 - piece that my rifle shipped with are unbelievable. The original magazine that came with the rifle, (and doesn't feed properly, which is what started this whole fiasco), measures .550" across the front of the feed lips. The replacement Remington OEM magazine measures .650" across the same. A full .100" difference in the same make and model magazine. And like I said, it won't even fit in the gun.
So I called Remington and talked to a guy in Customer Service. I asked if they had ANY older 1 - piece magazines for the Remington 7400. He said they are no longer being produced, and they had none in stock. Remington only sells the newer 2 - piece magazines. He said my best bet would be to find one from either Numrich Arms or E-Bay. He said Remington 7400 rifles in general were very magazine sensitive.
I have a feeling when Remington went to the new tooling for the newer style 2 piece magazines, some dimensional stability was lost. Building multi operation, progressive stamping dies is a tricky business. And unless everything is absolutely perfect, the end product will not function as intended.
So after all this I pretty much lost interest in this gun. It just seemed too much of a PITA to locate a suitable magazine for it. And most gunsmiths don't want to screw with these rifles, because they're too, "hit or miss". So it was returned to my safe..... Again.
Fast forward to last week....... I was having my morning coffee, searching the Internet looking for an old style 1- piece magazine, and low and behold I came across this little mom and pop operation in Galesburg, Illinois, (Simpson Limited). And they had 3 brand new old style, one piece magazines for sale, that were still in the original Remington packaging! The price wasn't bad for $110.00 for all three. ($124.00 shipped to my door). That's only $41.00 each. I paid that much for the new style that didn't fit.
They came the other day. I now have a bit of confidence that this thing may finally run right. You can see from the picture, all 3 magazines have the oval DuPont company logo printed on them. DuPont purchased Remington in 1980, and sold it in 1993. So that means these magazines were manufactured in that time span. My rifle was purchased new in 1985, right in the middle.
One other thing I noticed is that the older magazines are stamped .30-06 only. The newer model I bought was stamped .25-06, .270, .280, .30-06, .35 Whelen. That could very well have been creating problems as well. "One size fits all", might work for some things, but not so well for rifle magazines.
I'm hoping to get to the range next week some time. And hopefully enjoy a bit more success. (The weather here has been wet and windy). Since all of this started, we have moved from the Phoenix area to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, and they have a really nice gun club here. So we'll see how everything goes. These are the magazines. I'm really hoping they'll do the trick, and get this rifle running correctly. Has anyone else had these type of magazine issues with a Remington 4 / 7400 / 742 long action rifle?