Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires Nylon 66... Why?

Isn't it made anymore? And when was production of it discontinued?

I owned one for a year or so in high school but only ever plinked with it. A buddy had one with a Weaver 7/8" rimfire scope on it and it was a great shooting rifle.

Lots of summer evenings there'd be a half dozen guys at an abandoned quarry plinking around with .22s. The nylon 66s were frequent fliers there.

Most that I see for sale these days are on the rough side. I find a decent one I'll likely try to buy it...

Anybody here got one that they use to hunt?

I "heard" that the molds were close to being worn out, so they sold the machinery to CBC in Brazil and CBC, in turn, exported them to the U.S. as the FIE Model GR-8 "Great".

I have 2 of them, but can't remember the last time that I shot one of them.

One of my all time favorite.22 rifles! I think they discontinued them in the mid 1980’s.

Grew up on a Nylon 66 shooting all kinds of rabbits. My dad still has it, but it will be mine when passes.
Haven't ever found one for sale around here.

Used to be a guy that set up at the big Tulsa Gun Show every year with 4 or 5 tables of nothing but NIB Nylon 66’s And it’s variances.
3 years ago, he had a NIB Apache Black Model.
That’s the all chrome version with the black stock and the white diamond inlay. He had $650 on it. I layed 5 - $100 dollar bills on his table as an offer. He laughed and turned it down. Went back a few hours later and it was gone.

Owned one briefly, before they became a cult object. Truly a remarkable design, but not very satisfying for me, so I sold it after a bit. I suspect the 10/22 and to some extent the Marlin 60 did it in, maybe because they look less like toys. A modern version with maybe an integral rail mount might sell well now.

Might buy another one if I stumble on a nice one at a resonable price. Hard to beat one in reliability, or handiness.

I had one briefly, like, 50+ years ago. Jammed all the time, produced accuracy on the order of gallon paint cans at 50 feet, traded it for something else and gloated about how I came out ahead on the deal. Never messed with one since. It was probably a lemon, sure, but it soured me on that whole genre of .22's.

Since the "receiver" was just a sheet-metal "cover" and the barrel was almost floating in the synthetic chassis/frame, they could never achieve cutting edge accuracy, so it has long been a wonder to me how Tom Frye shot all of those hand tossed wooden blocks with Nylon 66s.

My first rifle was a Nylon 66 and I still have it. It arrived under the Christmas Tree with a Weaver V22 and a carton of 500 rounds of Remington High Speed .22 Long Rifle Golden Bullets over 50 years ago.

My Father thought that they were crap and tried to force a\ used Winchester 77 on me, but I successfully resisted. 20/20 hindsight being what it is, the Winchester 77 had more accuracy potential despite the crappy triggers.

Why they quit making them was likely reduced sales. Millions were sold, possibly the market was saturated or it went elsewhere. Although, some times a product gets discontinued due to ignorance to down right stupidity of folks in charge of such decisions. Who knows in this case.

I have 2 & they both perform alike, fantastic reliability & acceptable accuracy. The Glock of semiauto 22 rifles?

I am a lefty and the one I owned did not last long before I got rid of it. No rimfire has powder burned my face as bad as the Nylon 66 did. I developed a flinch from expecting to get hot powder in the face. Good riddance.

I bought a used one in 1965, for $25. Killed a lot of stuff with it, and it was very accurate using iron sights. Never put a scope on it. I carried it all of the time while working on 2 different fish farms, and shot a ton of snakes, turtles, and frogs. Also ducks and seagulls, but not as many of those. Never jammed despite being carried in an open jeep, that I fed out of. Lots of dust and fish feed flying about, left out in the rain, using the barrel to rake frogs into reach an other abuse. I even left it leaning against a tree in my front yard all winter one time as a test. Again never jammed, only thing was an occasional bad cartridge. Those had a good dent in them, but sometime one would not fire. I still have it and shoot a squirrel in the yard every once in a while using it. After Remington quit making them, there was a factory in Jacksonville, Arkansas that made them. Did not last long though. miles

My son paid one of his buds $35 for one a few years ago. It lacked a front sight; I found him one.

I've had one for many years, great rifle. Shot rats at the city dump back in the '70's when no one seemed to mind. Try that now....

Once, I took it apart to clean. Had to borrow one from a bud to see how to put it back together. My gunsmith was impressed that I could put one back together. He said on more than one occasion, he'd gotten a bag of 66 parts to reassemble...

So, if you have one, don't take it apart...

DF

I had two of them. They rode behind the seat of my pickup for years. Used them primarily as coon hunting guns. They were good for that and not much else. They were tough as nails but ugly as hell so you didn't care about beating them around which made them perfect coon guns. A crappier design for accuracy could not be imagined. The whole gun is flexible, the barrel is attached to the flexible stock by a sort of U clamp but not really attached to the receiver cover at all and the receiver cover is attached to the flexible stock with screws that pass through slightly oversize holes so it can move around a bit too. Consequently scoping one is pretty much a waste of time as it won't stay zero'd for shyt so you are limited to the iron sights. In reality the whole damn gun is plastic junk but by god it's tough junk and can take a beating. Neither one of mine or the one my buddy owned was even close to as accurate as any of the Marlin semi auto's I've had but then the Marlins aren't flexible and have their barrels securely attached to the receiver. In fact, I don't ever remember owning any .22 rifle of any action type or make that was less accurate than those Nylons and I've owned a truck load of .22's.

i got a couple of these nylon stock 22`s even a real nice nylon black stock with silver chromed metal rifle 22. all my 22 L.R. work well and shoot decent.

Remington has spent gazillions designing pistols (R51) and shotguns (887) that nobody wants, but when you ask them about reintroducing the Nylon 66 (which now sell for $250 and up, used), they tell you it’s “too cost prohibitive”.....

Honestly, they never really did much that a 10/22 or Marlin 60 wouldn’t do, for about the same price. They DID look cool, though...

They never were worth a darn for mounting a scope on....

If Remington could re-introduce one (and have a better set-up for mounting optics), they’d have little trouble getting $200-$225 for them (assuming Remington could build one that works, these days)....

What someone OUGHT to do, is simply design a mannlicher stock that looks EXACTLY like the Nylon 66 stock, and can be fitted to a Ruger 10/22....

I had a brown one. felt like a cheap plastic daisy bb gun and was about as accurate.
sold it.

Heck of a gun for rats at the dump with head lights at night.

We’d turn off the lights to reload, give the rays a minute to regroup. Hit the lights and the carnage resumed.

A brick of ammo goes pretty fast like that. Rat body count, extremely high.

Those were the days.

DF

Yeah, when I lived in Nevada and shot tons of jackrabbits, we would always grab our Ruger 10-22's or marlin/glenfield 60's. The old Nylon 66, just sat in the corner. It never got used. None of us liked it. It was cheap and undesirable. Now they have a following for some reason..

Damn, now I know where my buddies dad got his...

As a kid I wanted one, I think mostly because of the ads. When Ruger brought out their 10-22, I bought one for $49. Never had the desire for a Nylon 66 again.

I had one in 1969, sold it in 2007 for $165, new price was $59.00.

Must of shot it >10 000 rounds.

It came through the mail in a wooden crate with a block with a hole in it.

Accuracy was as good or better than similar 22 autos at the time.

Slow to load the 14 rounds through the butt stock.

No reliability issues at all.

I still shoot my 10-22’s. The 66 stays in its rack.

My brother has my old Marlin 60. It’s so old it has a real walnut stock. I did some rosewood inlays and checkered it. It’s more accurate than the 66, more accurate than a std out of the box 10-22. My aftermarket equipped 10-22’s will take them all on at the range.

I had a T/C Classic which was accurate, but the design didn’t seem to protect the fire control parts from powder residue. The 10-22 is designed so that the fire control unit is somewhat isolated from powder and residue blowback. The T/C went down the road, although I liked the stock, trigger and accuracy.

DF

I had one of the lever action ones for a while. It shared all of the flimsiness and poor accuracy characteristics of the autoloaders. I think I gave $25 for it in a grocery bag, someone had disassembled it and couldn’t get it back together. I put it together and shot it a little bit then got $500 worth of trade value on it in a package deal I was working for an old S&W.

Ditto, also a lefty shooter, main reason I got rid of mine.

>> i miss those old days shoot`n rats at the dump with my Remington nylon 66, if we cleand up the yard good dad would take us down shootin rats. then when i got my driver`s license i went to the dump with friends and that sure was fun ! seems like we never ran out of rats to shoot only ran out of ammo, but my uncle worked at Federal Cartridge so on all fridays i got more ammo from my uncle lots of 22 L.R. seconds in a big white box.

Those in good shape can bring a premium.

I’ve never seen or handled one. Seems they are pretty rare.

DF

Several years back I knew a guy who bought a used 66 and took it completely apart and lost the sheet metal receiver. He tried to find a replacement and had a heck of time, he said the heck with it and bought another 66 in better condition. After looking at the one he took apart I decided that they werent meant to be taken apart.

I took my my 66's completely apart for deep cleaning more than once. Didn't find them terribly difficult to reassemble.

I always liked the 77 better (66 but with a clip instead of loading through the butt-tube). I have owned at least a half-dozen of em through the years and always found them accurate enough for gopher shooting. The key to accuracy seemed to be no more difficult than keeping the receiver cover screws snug.
For me the biggest appeal was that every one I owned was totally reliable and they were at least easily as accurate as any 10/22 I have owned and better handling. To my sorrow I do not own one now having sold my last one a few years ago and won't pay the price they are selling for now.

drover

I got mine back in 1973, still have it, mines killed a pickup truck full of small game! I shoot lefty too but its always had a scope on it and it never bothered me shooting it! I always thought it to be Accurate, its a tube fed thru the Butt stock. showing some wear after all these years! but still shoots great!

We have 2. Both of them I had nothing to do with their acquisition. Both of them sit in the safe. I cannot get rid of either one.

#1 is the classic 66. My first wife, Satan's, father bought it when she was a kid. He died shortly thereafter. It is now the rightful property of son #2, but I have not seen him shoot it much.

#2 is the variant with the removable mag. It came to me from KYHillChick's adopted father who died of cancer in '06. It now belongs to son #3.


Two quick Nylon 66 anecdotes.

1) The last chick I dated was a neurotic Jewish librarian. She decided she wanted to try shooting and wanted to own her own. Our mutual friend, Jerry, found her a Nylon 66. After a few trips to the range, the thing started jamming. She blamed me, she blamed Jerry. Jerry offered to buy it back. I offered to drive her to the gunsmith. No, she just wanted something to whine about. It wasn't long after this that I dropped her. She contacted me a few years ago. Surprisingly, she still had the rifle, and was still shooting it.

2) I used to belong to the big local gun club, Fairfield Sportsmens Association. Fairfield has a plinking range. I was out one Sunday, and a family showed up with a bunch of kids and stack of Nylon 66 rifles. This looked like a regular thing for this family. They pretty well took over the plinking range-- Dads and Grandads, and a slew of rugrats. Someone had this figured out right. I was mightily impressed.

As a kid, Sundays were spent at my grandparents and there was usually a lot of shooting from the back door of the garage, and usually with a Nylon 66 that belonged to my uncle.
We all took turns with it for hours (there was a waiting line) and burned a lot of ammo.
That one was accurate enough for empty shotgun shells at 35 yards (open sights), and never jammed or misfed.
We all had a LOT of fun with that rifle. Thats why people overpay for them - they remember all the fun they had with theirs.

The only thing I did'nt like about them was the butt feed. I had a bad habit of putting the muzzle on the tip of my sneaker while I loaded it. Sure, I scrunched up my toes but it was dumb and I haven't done it since I was a kid. Somewhere out there is a guy with 9 toes who did the same thing I did but paid for it.

I had one when I was 14 and thought it was a great rifle. Back then - the early-mid 60's - it was still pretty revolutionary, an all plastic firearm that was billed as nigh indestructible as well as reliable with those ads showing the stack of 100,000 blocks of wood shot by one.

Mine was entirely adequate for what I needed, a tin can and rabbit shooter, which is what most everybody did with .22 rifles - plink and hunt small game. Folks (meaning like 98% of shooters, not the tiny percentage of nascent benchresters) didn't bench rest everything under the sun and didn't obsess over tenths of an inch differences in groups, particularly for rimfire rifles. A rifle like this was sighted in over the hood of a car or truck and then you shot stuff with it. Even if someone did mount a scope, .22 scopes then were mostly 7/8" tubes and a lot of them didn't even have centered crosshairs.

So, a relatively inexpensive rifle of innovative design that was light, handy, supposedly didn't need any lubrication, and was perfectly adequate for its use. What's not to like?

Now a few decades later, all of us old guys remember the firearms of our youth and if we can't be young again at least we can use something to help remind us of those days

My first experience with the rifle was in 1963. I had reported for duty @ Walker Air Force Base (Roswell, NM) in April 1963. The first few days was spent in a Transient Barracks getting processed in. A couple of Jokers there wanted to know if I wanted to go hunt Jack Rabbits that night. I said "I guess so", so they told me to go to a store near the exit to the base & buy a brick of Remington .22 ammo. I did & that night we got into a 1050 Chevy coupe & went a half mile or so off base & started driving in the dessert. Turns out this was a "high cycle" for jacks & they were plentiful !! One guy drove (never me) & two of us rode on the front fenders & shot at Jacks as we jumped them. One Nylon 66 ran without fault, & the other was troublesome!! WE would have been better served with Hollowpoints, but we did OK. Fron time to time we'd have a flat & like a Nascar "pit crew", a wheel would be replaced from a trunk full of mounted spares. We kept count & when we reached 38 killed jacks TROUBLE ARRIVED. !!!! Turns out we were shooting very close to the B-52 ALERT AREA. I was new to the area & had no idea we were still close to the base. We were chased by Blue Air Force pickups for a few minutes but we made our get away !!!! I never tried night hunting jacks again. I never see a Nylon 66, or 77, or the other Models without remembering that night...

Dad gave me and my brother nylons when kmart sold them out at $50 after remington dropped the model.
Mine was defective magaine lach so eventually I sold it and got a marlin 39A

A few yeard back of found a rattly apache black on the used rack in scheels for $100 and took a chance.
No issues, but I sold it when the cult buying prices demanded $250 and I sold mine for $350. I got the impulse to thin the collection and figured the plastic gun may disintegrate someday.

In hindsight, I wish I kept it. It was a good pinker that gave me more satisfaction than my 1022's.

If we could still shoot rats at the dump, the world would be a happier place.

No doubt.

Those were good times.

DF

Got one for Christmas when I was like 14. Had it up until 2001 and lost it in a divorce. I agree with who ever said never take it apart. I tried to take it apart and the barrel went flying across the room. It took me all day to get it back together and I had a shim that fit under the barrel left over. I didn't have the heart to take it back apart. It never was a bench rest gun but after that it was even less accurate. The good thing about it was the weather didn't hurt it much. But though it was cool it was never accurate.

I went to work with a gunsmith my first couple years in college, and he wouldn't work on them...only way he would take them in was if I worked on them. First one I ever touched came in disassembled with most of the parts in a shoe box, took me the better part of a couple hours. I remember it required some specialized tools the smith had fabricated, and was an absolute PITA. I ended up working on several, but never took another one apart after I left the gunsmith.

I still have a couple of the CBC/FIE copies.

Although it is rough I have a gallery model, shorts only with a cable mount on the underside of the fore end. It is a lot of fun but shorts cost too much per box these days. Be Well, Rustyzipper.

I had one of the box magazine version, the Nylon 77 Apache. Worst gun I've ever owned. Terrible trigger, terrible accuracy and terrible functioning. Hated it and it hit the road quickly.

Only rifle I ever had that would not hold zero with a scope between shooting it and taking home and taking if out again. The way the receiver cover screws onto to plastic receiver let the zero move. The scope mounts to sheet metal receiver cover and cover has two screws to hold it in place but no way to lock it into one position. The receiver and cover needed dimples to securely locate receiver cover to receiver so it wouldn't shift around once screws were tightened.

A '66 was my first rifle. That gun has had A LOT of bullets through it and is still going strong 35+ years later. My kids are using it now and love it too. It may not be bench rest accurate but was always more than accurate enough. I can remember some unbelievable shots with it and incredible tales of adventures!

I might have added a scope for a brief stint but it was and still is irons only. The rifle points great and still cycles smoothly. It definitely has a fondness for full power loads. I have other. 22s but for plinking the '66 is hard to beat.

interesting article about the Brazilian Nylon 66's.

http://www.nylonrifles.com/wp/2007/06/159/

From the article:
"In 1962 with dies and molds supplied by Remington, CBC began production of their Nylon 66 just three years after Remington began the 66 in the states. This equipment was new and not worn out castoffs."

Bruce

I have a bolt action I think it’s a model 11 that shots great I bought from a coworker for 10 $ in 1968 what a deal

I found that out the hard way when I was 14, didnt find out the reason until the internet. Worked great with open sights tho.

The nylon 66 was not really designed to be a super-accurate rifle and the dovetails for the scope mounts were likely were there just because by the time it was introduced most all rimfire rifles were being dovetailed. I doubt that the designers were very concerned with its accuracy with a scope mounted. It was, and still is, a great plinker rifle with open sights, it points very naturally, and operates near flawlessly with little to no maintenance. I have seen some that appear to never have had a speck of maintenance from the day were made but they still operate just fine.
I have owned quite a few over the years and I always scoped them with something like a Weaver K-4 and they performed well enough that they kept the local gopher population under control. As long as the receiver cover screws were tight the ones I owned would shoot as well as any other semi-automatic of the era.

IMO Remington is making a mistake by not re-introducing them - I honestly believe that there would still be a huge market for them.

drover









i

apache

Mohawk


Nylon 66
I have 3 different kinds of Nylon 66 rifles, but cannot remember ever shooting one.

Without doubt the best all-around .22 ever produced. Made when Remington focused on making a good product instead of a good profit. The newly arrived Beancounters killed the design over mould replacement and introduced the dreadful Viper.
Its difficult now to find ones in good condition,. Nylon 66's, like the VW Beatle of the same era were not marketed to a casual crowd. Both tended to be used hard with little attention.The Nylon variants like the 77, 12, 76 and such did not do especially well. The 66 however firmly instilled itself in the hearts of genuine outdoorsmen. There is some disagreement as to whether the 66 gallery special or the 76 Apache black is more scarce. Without doubt, the White Nylon 66 is the most rare of them all, with only one known example

Those are 77's.

All Nylon 66s, the Brazilian copies of the Nylon 66, and the Nylon 76 had the Spencer-like tubular magazine in the butt.

All Nylon 77s and 10Cs had detachable "clip" magazines.

All Nylon 10s were single shot, all Nylon 11s had detachable "clip" magazines, and all Nylon 12s had under-the-barrel tubular magazines.

IIRC.

This is pretty funny and naieve. The nylon 66 was Remingtons most profitable .22 ever and was designed specifically with maximum profit in mind. The most expensive part of the nylon 66 was the barrel. Other than the barrel and breech bolt, the rest was mostly moulded plastic, cheap stampings and springs. I saw a complete breakdown of all the parts and what they cost Remington to produce when the gun was first introduced and the profit margin would have made Daisy and Crosman green with envy.

Which brings up the question of why do they not re-introduce it? The financial shape Remington is in right now they could use a high-profit 22.

drover

Still had lots of fun with the Nylon 66s that I owned. Sold the standard model but still have the abused looking Gallery Model. Actually in this case neglected is the word. I should just shoot a brick of ammo through the gallery for old times. Wasn't there a bolt model somewhere or am I just thinking of the 77 in a twisted way? Be Well, Rustyzipper.

bolt AND lever....

Did that "complete breakdown" happen to mention what the original cost of the molds for the stock was?
I have heard it stated that at the time they were the most advanced molds of the type ever made.
Do you have any insight on the cost to share?

Friend has a 66 that is a utility/farm gun and works well for the purpose. It has a lot of nighttime raccoons to it's credit, treed by his dog when they raid his sweet corn. When I was in high school a classmate had a 76 that was darn sure minute of pop can....we shot it a lot.

With so many reports of both good and bad accuracy, I'm starting to wonder if the good came from iron sights and the bad from scoped guns (the Nylon didnt have a good base to mount to IIRC).

We shot the one I grew up with the open sights, and it was accurate. At 25 yards or so, my uncles would knock down pretty much every empty 12ga hull they set up, with a steady pop-pop-pop-pop.....
Even I went 50/50 once I learned where to aim, and I was just a little kid who didn't shoot more than a BB gun when I wasn't with them.

My buddies and I all had nylon 66’s in 1965.
They shot great for our needs. (Rabbits, squirrels, grouse, crows, tin-cans, etc.)

In later years we mostly navigated to 10-22’s, as that was the new fad.
The 10-22’s didn’t shoot any better or worse, for our purposes, but we felt better because we were following the trend.

Loved that old 66....

They are indeed, I bought a Mohawk Brown 77 in '71 or '72, tried hard to wear it out for several years, then traded it to a friend, it has taught a bunch of kids to shoot in the last 50 years. It was a bit finicky about ammunition, but if you stayed with CCI's it ran like a top.

The trick to keeping them reliable is to never use oil on the metal/nylon gliding surfaces. Lubricate with graphite.
You do have to clean out the carbon after a couple thousand rounds.
Put some electrical tape where the stock and barrel contact so the barrel doesn't rattle around.

My brother bought one in 1964 and used it the rest of his life. I take it out once in a while for old time's sake, still chases squirrels around.

Thank you...

Ive got a 66 in great condition, and as others have said, if you feed it CCI it runs like a clock...

Had a pristine Model 76 but they brought stupid insane prices, so mine went to someone who wanted it more.

My brother and I got one when Remington discontinued them and Kmart dumped them for $50 each.. about 1984.
Sold mine because it was defective and didn't know to do warranty repair. Stupid.

Years later.. found the chrome white diamond black one used that had an extra rattle for $150. No cost fix and it was good.

The prces got so hi and I wondered if the plastic would decay so I sold it. I didn't get much response on armslist and sold it for $350.

I kick myself.
Only a little.
There are better guns out there, but they were a pioneering gun.

Wouldn't glock be so accepted if the nylon 66 wasn't out there first?

The gun shop downtown has one for $500. It’s in really good condition, clip feed but $500.

The one I had was a total POS. The barrel isn't screwed into the receiver. It just slides in and is held in place by a shim. The problem is that the shim is held in place by the nylon stock. Mine was slightly worn and allowed the shim to move which in turn allowed the barrel to move. Every 8 or 10 shots the barrel would move and throw it off at least 10 MOA...and that's not an exaggeration. The only fix was a new stock and the gun wasn't worth it.

I was told by a Remington factory rep, every nylon 66 was assembled by the same guy. His average time was somewhere around two minutes. I must have had a dozen come in to the shop with a coffee can full of parts. It took me a lot longer than two minutes to put them back together! GD

I bought a used Nylon 66 at a pawn shop several years ago. When I took it to the range it jammed like mad, and I was left quite disappointed. Then I took it apart to see what was wrong, and I found numerous internal parts were being held in place with masking tape. The previous owner had taken it completely apart and couldn't figure out how to get it back together again. I managed to properly reassemble it, and it's been fine ever since. I'm just lucky he didn't lose any parts in the process.

Unfortunately I don't think Remington (or anyone else) will ever bring this rifle back. It was a neat little gun for its time, but the market has since moved on. Remington discontinued them because sales had been declining by the 1980s and the molds were wearing out, and future sales forecasts didn't justify the investment in new molds. The molds for the detachable-mag Nylon 77 were younger and in better condition, so that model remained in production for a few more years after the Nylon 66 had been dropped.