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Remington 700 fired while bolt closing and on safe

scatsob

scatsob

Sergeant
Full Member
Minuteman
Oct 28, 2005
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Jacksonville, NC
Saw this over on M4Carbine and figured I would post it here. Pretty scary. I have red about this happening but never read a first hand account on a forum before. I tend to check my guns for this phenomenon before each range trip but have never experienced it. My only two R700's have M24 triggers so maybe I am in the clear. Anyways, stay safe out there everyone.

Remington 700 fired, on safe, while bolt being closed
 
Somebody was playing with the trigger adj screws and didn't know what they were doing.
 
B.S. I have had a Remington 788, Weatherby Vanguard, and Winchester model 70 for years, and my dad is a model 700 guy. No such failures in any gun, period. I would have agree with the posts above. The gun was tampered with. You have to try pretty hard to get a good bolt gun to malfunction.
 
What I remember about the above video, nobody would bring an unmodified 700 in that showed such problem.

This may be the first, but I am skeptical.

Edit: Also, this video was before the recent change with the X trigger and, apparently, a locking bolt.
 
Hummm, well I thought I know how Remington actions worked but maybe I don't. When you raise the bolt handle you cock the firing pin by the sear riding up the cocking ramp until it catches in the detent at the rear. When you close the bolt the cocking cam rotates up out of the way. If the bolt handle was only 25% down then the sear released then the cocking ramp would catch the firing pin about 25% up along it. The only way the pin could fire the primer is if it snapped the bolt handle all the way down into full battery before the firing pin would go all the way forward. No way the bolt could fly out of the back of the action if it was rotated into full battery, and probably not if it was 25% down unless it sheared off about 25% of the lugs.
The only way I know a Remington action can fire out of battery is if the firing pin body breaks in half in the middle and the firing pin spring drives just the front of the pin forward in the split second when the bolt is all the way forward but just before the bolt is rotated down into battery. Has nothing to do with the trigger. Anybody have any thoughts on this?? I know there are many smarter people than me on this forum.
 
Wyfox said:
Somebody was playing with the trigger adj screws and didn't know what they were doing.
Click to expand...

Does this go for the xmark-pro style trigger? I've played with my adjustment screw and have the gun around a 3lbs trigger pull and I like it. Could me simply unscrewing the supplied adjustment screw cause a malfunction? Heck, I've even heard of people completely removing the adjustment screw and the trigger working fine.


Andrew
 
I know of a person that did a trigger adjustment to a Remmy ADL 700 ( 7mm mag) that converted it into a fires when bolt closed rifle.
Quite impressive.

With every gun manufactured and shipped you know a percentage of them get molested by people with good intentions and hand tools.
 
I've actually witnessed something similar happen on an M-24. My shooter racks and boom. Next thing I know he's rolled on his side (he was halfway between my legs, and I his) staring at the gun. Scarred shitless, we start evaluating, trying to get the gun up and running. The brass failed to extract, and we noticed the expended primer was pushed back into the bolt face, free of the brass.

We had to keep the gun running, so we treated every round after that like a fail-to-fire on an open bolt and Charlie Mike. We did not have another issue, other than shaken confidence.

It was later determined to be an in-breach premature detonation, caused by multiple factors.
 
jbell said:
That sounds like: we really can't determine what happened but have to say something.
Click to expand...

I'm sure that if we had been able to immediately "freeze" the gun they would have been able to better determine the cause.

However, we ran another couple of boxes through it after that. We cycled it much more deliberately after the incident, and had no further incidents.
 
I was just kidding. From your post it sounded like you were shooing in the Army and I was just shitting on some of their SOP's by having to put an actual determination on something even when it is all but impossible to make one. I meant nothing personal...
 
^ No offense was taken.

I did have a similar situation with a sidearm that I was able to "freeze". That one was really scary, because it discharged near a buddy's head.

We had depleted our 9mm and had gone "on the economy" to hold us over until resupply.

DO NOT go "on the economy" in the 3rd world, even if it is a reputable brand.
 
Or, other than being molested by a previous owner, the trigger could have been oiled by a previous owner having a bunch of caramelized oil/dirt/funk buildup preventing things from working as intended.
 
It was reportedly a design issue. But improper maintenance didn't help with other aspects of trigger function.
 
Improper adjustment on the sear engagement screw. When adjusting the older model 700 triggers, there's a certain sequence that you that you adjust the three screws. You can actually see how much sear engagement you have through a small sight hole in the trigger body. Most of these triggers can only be taken down to 3-3 1/2 lbs without causing an unsafe condition. I experimented with mine awhile back and under 3 lbs it would drop the firing pin just taking it off safe.

If anyone reading this has goofed with their 700 trigger, there are three tests that need to be done. The first is just quickly flipping the safety off. The second is forcefully slamming the bolt home. The last test is bumping the butt of the rifle against the ground with enough force to simulated it being dropped. All of these done unloaded of course (I would hope that would be obvious, but you never know). Any one of these makes the firing pin drop its back to the drawing board.
 
Years ago I had a 700 go off when I closed the bolt. I bought the rifle from a buddy and gave him a call as soon as I could. He admitted to messing with the trigger, and told me how to adjust it back close to specs. I didn't know shit from shinola back then, I always had wondered why that rifle had such a light trigger pull.
 
I bought a Jewel trigger to install in my Rem 700 Varmint. When I put the new trigger in, the bolt wouldn't stay cocked. I called Jewel and the gentleman there asked me if the trigger had a tight fit into the receiver. I told him it was a bit snug. He told me to open the hole up a touch in the receiver, so there was no pressure on the side plates of the trigger. When the trigger was squeezed into the hole in the receiver, the pressure on the side plates was keeping the top of the trigger from raising up and engaging the bolt.

So, using a small file, I removed the burrs and high spots on the sides of the trigger slot in the receiver. Once the trigger had enough room, it worked fine.
 
Remington 700 fired while bolt closing and on safe

One can make the firing pin drop, should the rifle be moved or jolted, when the trigger has been improperly adjusted to have insufficient sear engagement. That's not what this thread is about.
 
scatsob said:
Saw this over on M4Carbine and figured I would post it here. Pretty scary. I have red about this happening but never read a first hand account on a forum before. I tend to check my guns for this phenomenon before each range trip but have never experienced it. My only two R700's have M24 triggers so maybe I am in the clear. Anyways, stay safe out there everyone.

Remington 700 fired, on safe, while bolt being closed
Click to expand...
Say it's not so.
The shooter must've been using a Savage, was screwing with the trigger or looked at it wrong, cause he's on a guaranteed fast track to hell if he's going to bad mouth the Almighty + infallible Rem 700 rifle here !!
Dam anyone to hell for mentioning that you actually have to maintain a Rem 700 rifle.
I should be banned for writing Hell and Rem 700 in the same sentence !
That's Blasphemy, pure Blasphemy !!
To be safe, Anyone who reads this should flush their eyes out with Rem oil.
 
I am kind of hoping/assuming that is what happened and in most cases it seems the issue. On of the 12's here was telling me when he was deployed with a unit they would put nail polish on the front two set screws so they knew if the sniper was dicking with the weapon. Sure enough, when ever someone had a problem on or both of the screws was tampered with.

Graham said:
One can make the firing pin drop, should the rifle be moved or jolted, when the trigger has been improperly adjusted to have insufficient sear engagement. That's not what this thread is about.
Click to expand...
 
Dick D said:
Hummm, well I thought I know how Remington actions worked but maybe I don't. When you raise the bolt handle you cock the firing pin by the sear riding up the cocking ramp until it catches in the detent at the rear. When you close the bolt the cocking cam rotates up out of the way. If the bolt handle was only 25% down then the sear released then the cocking ramp would catch the firing pin about 25% up along it. The only way the pin could fire the primer is if it snapped the bolt handle all the way down into full battery before the firing pin would go all the way forward. No way the bolt could fly out of the back of the action if it was rotated into full battery, and probably not if it was 25% down unless it sheared off about 25% of the lugs.
The only way I know a Remington action can fire out of battery is if the firing pin body breaks in half in the middle and the firing pin spring drives just the front of the pin forward in the split second when the bolt is all the way forward but just before the bolt is rotated down into battery. Has nothing to do with the trigger. Anybody have any thoughts on this?? I know there are many smarter people than me on this forum.
Click to expand...

I'm right there with you, Dick. After reading all of the OP's posts on the other sight, I'm having a very hard time understanding how this could have happened. If the firing pin assembly somehow slipped off the sear when the bolt was only 25% of the way through its downward (locking) rotation, the cocking ramp would have prevented it from moving forward to contact the cartridge's primer. I'm wondering if this could somehow have been a defective round of ammunition, but that too seems like a very remote possibility.

HRF
 
I've worked about a 1/2 dozen cases where the "injured" party posted his story on the internet with improperly stated descriptions of what occurred that physical evidence later proved. Taking a person at his word is admirable, but only when his word matches the physical evidence do I consider it to be accurate.
 
I'm the kinda guy that likes to "tamper" with triggers, especially 700 triggers, even after adjusting some of my rifles down to 19oz they work perfectly fine and I have tested them thoroughly and never had a misfire. But, some of my other 700s I've got Jewells installed. These 2 rifles have their Remington triggers down to 19 & 20oz.
CI0v6df.jpg
 
JGorski said:
I'm the kinda guy that likes to "tamper" with triggers, especially 700 triggers, even after adjusting some of my rifles down to 19oz they work perfectly fine and I have tested them thoroughly and never had a misfire. But, some of my other 700s I've got Jewells installed. These 2 rifles have their Remington triggers down to 19 & 20oz.
Click to expand...

I hear ya. I have adjusted more old style 700 triggers than I care to admit (at least 50 if not more). Some I have completely disassembled the triggers and stoned the contact surfaces to remove some inconsistencies. When you know how these triggers work, which is not complicated, then you can get them under 2 pounds with ease and they will be as safe as any trigger out there. Again you have to know what you are doing and how to verify they will function properly, but its not brain surgery.
 
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