Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Winchester 70 Ranger same barrel countour as Featherweight/Lightweight?

I may be picking up a 1980s pushfeed Winchester 70 Ranger 30-06. It is the one with the hardwood stock, floor plate and factory sights. Does anyone know if this model has the same barrel contour as the Featherweight and Lightweight models?

They made Rangers both ways. It depends on when it was made. I've seen some with FWT barrels, some with standard contour.

My 270 Win has a standard contour.

T B B -

It appears that Win produced the 'Rangers' in a multiple of variations.

Your's has a 'hardwood' stock. I remember back in the 80s, some had WinCam stocks. Others have Walnut stocks.

Also they came with standard contour & others FWT contour barrels.

I'm not sure how many other variations they made.

Jerry

Two of the rifles I let get away that I wish I had back were 2 of the Rangers. One in 30-06 with FWT barrel contour and factory irons. The other was a youth gun in 308 with a 20" barrel. I bought them cheap and should have just put a better stock on them.

I was watching one on GB recently. It was chambered for 30-06, and I wanted it for re-boring to 9.3x62. But the photos of the rifle made me think that it was a featherweight contour and I was worried that it might not have the meat left in the barrel after a re-bore.

I guess it is possible that they made them both ways...

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I promise they made them both ways. I've seen them and had them.

Jerry

I have a .243 with Fthwt barrel, matter of fact it is in a Fthwt stock.

Mike

I had a 1990's vintage push-feed Winchester/USRA 70 Ranger in 6.5x55 that had open sights and the same barrel contour as a 70 Fwt from the same production period.

They made Featherweights in 358 without a problem so I don't see a problem with boring one out to 9.3.

Well, I have it on order. It looks to have a featherweight contour from the pics, but we will see. Thanks for all the replies.

The floorplate models with hardwood stocks had a FWT contour with screw-on sights.

The bling mag models with barrel-dovetailed sights had standard contour in long action chamberings.

As near as I've found, all the short action chamberings had FWT contours in any model.

You got a point there.

Well it does have the featherweight contour barrel and the same rich, deep bluing as the XTR Featherweights of the same era. The birch or beech stock is even pretty nice and fits me well. I may just keep the factory stock on it and forgo buying a nicer piece of walnut.

Can't seem the like the pushfeed action compared to my CRF 7mm-08, but that is just personal preference.

I had one in .223, it had the Featherweight contoured barrel, with irons. Nice little rifle, and the mag capacity was 6+1. Load it up, take it groundhog hunting, and not have to carry any spare ammo. Nice little rifle, but I decided that I needed a heavy barrel gun. It really liked the 50 gr. Sierra Blitz bullets (this was before the plastic-tipped bullets were commonplace, it was about the time Hornady's V-Maxes were introduced, Ballistic Tips were around).