The tweaking done to 700s is far from mandatory and to suggest the average 700 does not shoot adequately, or any worse on average, than an A or X is laughable... and you CAN work on the Brownings, but no one wants to.
As to reliability, as I already stated I have personally witnessed more failures with A-Bolts than all other makes and models combined with far less time near A-Bolts.
Again, YMMV.
My experience with a 700 wasnt just sub par shooting, its workmanship and design issues where the safety had to be reworked to make it workable and the thing vertically strung shots 8 inches due to stock issues. I bought it new off a dealer off the internet so I was forced to go to a remington warranty center. Twice.
Your comment about gunsmiths not working on brownings maybe the warranty center issue. They may not have the network that remington has and or the volume of defective product remington has so gunsmiths dont do the work. Browning may be selective in who it sets up to do warranty work & parts center work like Remington who needs every gunsmith on deck to contain the crap they put out there. I shoot trap league and wouldnt own any remington pump, auto, or OU after seeing the number of problems they have....
Sometimes it how you look at it and twist the comments to favor your brand. I dont think remington is as good as it once was and my collection is shifting over to Brownings as I uprgrade.
Wow! One whole Remington lemon and you are positive the Whole World is looking at you!
There are far fewer A- and X-Borts out there than there are 700s... orders of magnitude differences in count. Why be surprised when they find a bad one.
But then you bad-mouth Remington pumps?!?! You do realize the 870 is the most used shotgun don't you? The militaries of a lot of countries, cops everywhere, and lots of farm boys use those nasty old 870s and they get the job done.
Have you ever heard of any real tweaking on an 870? Why divert the focus to a firearm that sets well above average in every category?
Oh yeah, that would be to get away from the argument you have no chance of winning.
Have you ever owned a browning gun? You cant even speak from actual product expereince I bet.
I've owned rem 788's, 600's, two 700,s 760s, 7600, Nylon 66, and 2 870s. They are not perfect guns.
Warranty recalls on the 600
The 788 had bolt handle issues.
One 700 was great (old ADL) and new 700 mtn lss SS required work. Add the current xmark trigger and safety issues in there...
760s and 7600s had magazine finicky issues and parts that break
Nylon 66 had a defective magazine tube from the factory that wouldn't even let it latch close.
And the 870s were not bad, but watching the stuff in the last 10 years with magazine tube issues, walking out action pins, rusting finish on the expresses...
The remington autoloaders are under constant redesign because of flaws in the the 11-87s being jamomatics and the vesamax hasn't done much better.
Big greens value engineering has really hurt them. Dont even start with what they did to the marlin lever action..
So yea.. My last Remington bolt with its warranty issues has convinced me not to buy anymore. Sure they sell a lot of 700s in price point plastic.. The stainless steel barrels rust from finger prints in the stores from handling.. X-mark triggers. Just because they make a lot doesnt allow for such high volumes of failures and poor product quality.
You read how everyone loves their 700's on this forum, but they tweak the heck out of them. I had to do it on remingtons warranty dime.
So far I am damn happy with my x-bolt and would recommend it far above a Remington. You may spend a little more, but you wont be paying for fixes like your Remington.
Yea.. Big green quality ins't what it used to be. Im am very happy with my browning rifle and shotguns after several episodes of sub par Remington performance going across shotgun, rimfire, and centerfire rifle products.
I still have my one 700 and the 600 so they are decent enough products once you get them tweaked. I cant believe I was dealing with a recall on the 600 on its trigger.. that was a 40 year old design... how long have they been doing sub-par product design?
