First post, be gentle.
Like I always do, when I decide to buy something expensive I obsess and over-research the heck out of it. Long story short, I've settled on getting a Remington 700-series... something. The driving goal is to find the most accurate production barrel of the 700s.
After tons of reading, the only indication that the barrels are any different (i.e. made on different machines) is anecdotal posts of how the Police/military barrels are made on different machines, and/or they're more highly inspected. The implication is that the Police/LTR rifle barrels are the most accurate, but like everything on the Interwebz, it's hard to know what's real.
The post that I keep coming back to is one that I read here, how in the author's opinion, buying a commercial Rem rifle will get you a super accurate one (due to production tolerances) about one time in 10. He then added that when buying a Police/LTR rifle, it's just the opposite, that you'll get a super accurate one about 9 times out of 10 due to tighter tolerances....
So, is that really true? I do see a lot of Remington 700 variations up for sale, many of them with less than 100 rounds through them. It makes me wonder if people are buying three rifles, testing them, then selling the "rejects." OTOH I don't see too many Police/LTR rifles for sale. Coincidence? I don't know, but it does make me wary of buying a used 700...
Out of all the 700s, I really like the feature set of the XCR Compact Tactical because: It's not black, has a stainless barrel, a good stock, and a great trigger right out of the box. OTOH, "if" the XCR barrel has this wide accuracy variation, I don't care how pretty it is. If the LTR is know to be consistantly more accurate in comparison, I'll go that route and swap part out.
So I guess I'm hoping that someone has factual info (or experience with handling a lot of 700-series rifles) on whether the LTR barrels really are consistantly more accurate in comparison.
Sorry for all the blathering, but it gets frustrating reading how person X gets a great-accuracy rifle, person Y gets a poor one (of the same model), person Z gets a so-so accurate one, and so on. Then of course there's human nature, how people complain much faster than posting happy thoughts, there's ammunition variations, wind, range, "fish stories" and so on, but if even one person knows, that's all it would take to clear this up! Help me out and I'll be joining the Rem 700 team soon!
Like I always do, when I decide to buy something expensive I obsess and over-research the heck out of it. Long story short, I've settled on getting a Remington 700-series... something. The driving goal is to find the most accurate production barrel of the 700s.
After tons of reading, the only indication that the barrels are any different (i.e. made on different machines) is anecdotal posts of how the Police/military barrels are made on different machines, and/or they're more highly inspected. The implication is that the Police/LTR rifle barrels are the most accurate, but like everything on the Interwebz, it's hard to know what's real.
The post that I keep coming back to is one that I read here, how in the author's opinion, buying a commercial Rem rifle will get you a super accurate one (due to production tolerances) about one time in 10. He then added that when buying a Police/LTR rifle, it's just the opposite, that you'll get a super accurate one about 9 times out of 10 due to tighter tolerances....
So, is that really true? I do see a lot of Remington 700 variations up for sale, many of them with less than 100 rounds through them. It makes me wonder if people are buying three rifles, testing them, then selling the "rejects." OTOH I don't see too many Police/LTR rifles for sale. Coincidence? I don't know, but it does make me wary of buying a used 700...
Out of all the 700s, I really like the feature set of the XCR Compact Tactical because: It's not black, has a stainless barrel, a good stock, and a great trigger right out of the box. OTOH, "if" the XCR barrel has this wide accuracy variation, I don't care how pretty it is. If the LTR is know to be consistantly more accurate in comparison, I'll go that route and swap part out.
So I guess I'm hoping that someone has factual info (or experience with handling a lot of 700-series rifles) on whether the LTR barrels really are consistantly more accurate in comparison.
Sorry for all the blathering, but it gets frustrating reading how person X gets a great-accuracy rifle, person Y gets a poor one (of the same model), person Z gets a so-so accurate one, and so on. Then of course there's human nature, how people complain much faster than posting happy thoughts, there's ammunition variations, wind, range, "fish stories" and so on, but if even one person knows, that's all it would take to clear this up! Help me out and I'll be joining the Rem 700 team soon!