I believe the QC at Remington has went way down hill in the last 5-6yrs. Ever since I was a little kid and began shooting, my favorite brands of centerfires were Remington and Savage, with Rem #1 and Savage #2. They both always shot good for both me and my father, and since the Rems looked better and felt better, I preferred them. In the last few years, that has changed drastically, with Savage now being #1 and Rem #2 IMO, and Rem is going to go to the bottom of the list if things don't get better soon.
Just as an example of what I've dealt with and seen many others deal with from Rem... the last new Rem I bought was about 3yrs ago and it was a 700 LSS. Well, the rear scope base holes were drilled off center (the fronts were centered though :roll: ), the bottom metal wouldn't fit correctly, the barrel wasn't centered in the stock and it didn't want to return to a consistent spot on the pressure point from shot to shot, the bore was rough enough to make my Savages seem smooth, and it took a lot of effort to finally get it to shoot 1.25 MOA with handloads, which was an interesting task considering it was somewhere around a half-mile to the lands :roll:. On the bright side, the rifle was pretty and the bedding was pretty good for an out-of-the-box rifle.
Although it wasn't a real cure, to get around the rear scope base holes being drilled in an offset formation :roll:, I had to use a 2pc base with windage adjustable rear ring. A one piece base wouldn't work, as you had to literally force it into place to get all the screws in. The windage adjustment allowed me to get the rear ring over to the side enough to get the scope in line with the bore and front ring. Fixing the bottom metal fit was a real pain, as I ended up having to use a file and Dremel on both the stock and metal to get a decent fit that still wasn't as good as it should have been. To cure the various barrel and stock issues, I just free-floated it. I lapped the living crap out of the bore with JB on a tight patch, but that still didn't help the rough bore much, but at least it no longer fouled worse than my Savages. I played with a variety of handloads, with most shooting in the 1.5-2MOA range at 100yds and factory loads being in the 2-2.5" range. I finally found a load that stayed around 1.25 MOA, so I used it in the rifle and hunted with it for one year.
I'd had a few minor complaints about others Rems before, but nothing that was a serious deal breaker. But after that last one, I've sworn off getting a new Rem until they do better, and going by the trouble I see other shooters having, that could be a while. All my new rifles will be something else, probably Savages. The only Rems I'll buy now are used ones made before the mid-90s. It's kinda sad when this sort of thing happens to a gun manufacturer that you know has the capability of producing quality guns, but the only way I know of to get them to do better is to quit buying their rifles until they see enough of their market share slip away that they invest more time in QC.
