Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Kimber Montana vs custom 700

If you had your choice.... would you do a plain vanilla Kimber Montana in 223 or a full custom 700 in a Mpi stock with a custom barrel? I have said Montana and enjoy it but can't resist wanting to build a custom with a 7 twist barrel and a mpi stock....both of which I have never had..… how would I end up weight wise vs. the Montana ? Thx

7 twist on that Montana seems the obvious compromise. As a campfire brother I’ll say the expected “Why not both”.

What do you want it to weigh? Id do a 1-7 on a Defiance

This is what I'd do.

Montana with a rebarrel to quick twist and that's not even close. If the Montana's available, I'd do that 10/10

My Montana .223 wears an 8” Hawk Hill and it’s my favorite rifle, and gets shot the most by far.

I had one Kimber Montana in 270 WSM. It was very poor in the accuracy area, before and after I sent it back to Kimber. I have custom Rem 700s in 17 Rem, 20 vt, 204 R, 222, 223, 22ppc, 22/250, 220s, 240 wby and 7 mag. All of them would easily outshoot the Kimber.

I'd rebarrel the kimber with a 7 twist contour dupe.

It would be difficult to build a custom as light and well balanced as the kimber

I love me a Montana, but I'd go the custom 700 route. That way you can run whatever magazine/trigger guard set up you want. Obviously with the Kimber you're stuck to the blind mag and stuck with very limited stock options. The 700 offers you more choices to really hone in on what you want. End use also plays into consideration. Is this going to be a bench toy, walking varminter, etc.

I think if you're going to use longer bullets in the Montana you'll need to do some mag box, bolt stop, and possibly action opening work. I'm a big fan of the Montana blueprint but those issues would need to be considered.

Like GG mentioned, the 700/700 clone gives you a lot more options. I've done them bdl, adl, and M5 with a lot of different stocks and barrel contours. If there was a flush fit aics mag for the .223 I'd probably have all of them converted to M5.

I'm more or less just interested in the MPI ultralight stock.... never had one. I've done builds with McMillan edge and Bansner but really interested how it would turn out? The Montana shoots good.... not really interested in rebarreling that one..... just wondering how the 2 would compare weight wise. Thx

There's a lot of work involved in finishing out a MPI ultralight blank if you aren't aware. I'd suggest Rick Steinhour at Extreme Rifle Works if you wanted someone to install it. He is a MPI wizard and does most of their stock work for them. He recently did one for me and it came out fantastic.

What’s the goal here? Light weight, fast twist, throat length? I have had both options, kimber and cust. The way to go I believe is Howa barrelled action from Brownell’s with threaded barrel, 8 twist, Stocky carbon fiber stock - under 5lbs and @ $800 dollars.

There’s a 223 AI, 1-7” twist, in the classifieds with an MPI mountain rifle stock. The action has been lightened by Kampfeld as well.

I was having this very debate with myself yesterday, after putting an ultralight SA Rem 700 on my kitchen scale and feeling like an idjit.

Worth pointing out that MPI stocks take longer than they promise and often weigh more than they claim and the light ones are very flexible in the fore-end. I just had one built. It took forever and I had to hog the bejesus out of the barrel channel to get the barrel to float if I squeezed the foreend. Am I happy with it? Sure.

But the Kimber will still be lighter by 1/4 to 1/2 pound.

A Rem 700 short action in a Manners UCS stock (which are stiff and genuinely weigh 18 ounces)... with a 30 ounce barrel (about as light as a barrel gets)...resulted in a 5 lb 8 ounce rifle. That's with a fluted bolt...etc. No place left to save weight.

If you want to spend the money I'd buy another Kimber. Even with an 18 ounce stock you can't beat the weight using a 700 action. The Kimber stocks are many times stiffer than any of the light MPIs.