445r51's Profile
So, I bought our R51s (2) from Gander Mountain the week of March 17th. Hers is in 2k range (I misstated 3k in different post) and mine in mid 5s. Hers is generally much smoother in all respects – not that I’d noticed ANY of the reports (which I’d considered exaggerated by detractors) of “grittiness,” “stickiness,” “hard to rack,” etc. with our guns when checking them out prior to purchase.
Fast forward to this past Friday evening (3 weeks after I’d purchased ours) and I was browsing at Gander and they’d gotten a new R51 in, so I took a look at it. Completely different experience – and not in a good way.
First, and I’m not sure who did this (Gander employees or Para) but the gun was literally dripping with lubricant so badly it was oozing out of every orifice. The salesperson who’d handed me the gun had pulled the slide back what looked to be halfway to check for clear. As is my habit, I attempted to recheck the gun for clear by cycling the slide as soon as it was handed to me – only I couldn’t. 3 attempts to rack the slide failed at about a third of the overall travel – the gun literally felt locked up. I told myself I’d give it one more try and that since it wasn’t mine I’d really force it to see what would happen – and on the 4th attempt it completed its travel all of the way to the rear – but I really, really had to pound it to achieve this. Now keep in mind my household owns two R51s and I’ve racked their slides hundreds of times across the two, along with having performed numerous disassembles of both. I'd say I've got a pretty decent idea as to what force should be necessary to function a R51 and the force required for this one was WAY beyond reasonable for any firearm that wasn’t broken.
Anyhow, after getting the slide to the rear once, it sort of “broke loose” and would begrudgingly cycle from then on – whether the hammer was down or not. This led to the next observation, that despite all of the lube, the gun felt like someone had dump a handful of powdery abrasive into it. I don’t know how else to describe the feeling, it was less a sense of “grittiness” and more along the lines of what you might feel if lapping compound had somehow gotten into the gun. Regardless - it was NOT what anyone might suggest to be a good, appropriate, or healthy feeling when functioning ANYTHING mechanical, but especially the slide on a firearm.
I also noted during my examination that the left side grip panel was loose and one of the grip screws was so loose it could actually be tightened by pressing my thumb onto it and turning.
Finally, this gun showed less careful assembly than ours – there was dings in the finish around each of the pin holes where an improperly sized punch looked to have been used. Now, to be clear, I noticed what I’d considered at the time to be inappropriate assembly marks on the finish of our guns, but I didn’t want to get wrapped around the axle on it. With ours, on the trigger pin, there is a little starburst mark around the trigger pin on each. Personally, ANY removal of finish from a brand new firearm is not acceptable, but ours aren’t really bad at all when compared to the one Friday evening - it was horrible! Rings of finish removal from a punch on more than one pin and at least one that looked like the frame was actually dented by the punch.
All I can say is I’m aghast. The serial on the gun was just under 6k. My concern is that it appears that after a couple of weeks of regular reports of these issues and things might just be GETTING WORSE, instead of better
In my opinion, that the gun has shipped with the number of problems it has is incompetence of the highest order. If Remington is failing to learn quickly from their mistakes and still putting flawed guns out it might even rise to the level of malfeasance. I'm not buying this might have gotten out "with the first batch." In todays world of "just in time" restocking and shipping I'm concerned this gun is not part of the first way and may indicate that the issues have not been addressed.
