Repair — Faults, the Trigger Record, Extractors and Bedding

This volume covers what goes wrong with a Remington 700 and, by extension, with any M40-pattern rifle built on one. It has three parts: a fault-by-symptom guide, built on the maker’s manual and the Marine Corps’s sniping manual; the trigger record, told from the federal court order and Remington’s own recall notice rather than from the television coverage that made it famous; and the gunsmith’s side — extractors, bolt handles, bedding and the crown — where the owner of a well-equipped shop and the owner of a bare bench part company.

It cannot be a complete repair manual. Remington does not publish one for owners, the Marine Corps’s M40 technical manuals are not public, and the Army’s M24 operator’s manual carries a restrictive distribution statement (Volume 5). Where the sources say nothing, this volume says so rather than filling the gap.

6.1 The Owner’s Line, Restated

Both manuals send the rifle to someone qualified the moment it fails one of their checks. Remington: if the trigger does not return fully, or the sear does not return “without hesitation”, or the firing pin does not stay cocked when the bolt is closed smartly, the rifle “must NOT be used” and goes to a service centre.¹ The Marine Corps: “IF ANYTHING MALFUNCTIONS ON THE RIFLE, NEVER TRY TO REPAIR IT YOURSELF. ALWAYS TRY TO LOCATE A RIFLE TEAM EQUIPMENT REPAIRMAN.”²

That is the right rule for anyone without the training, and it is the rule the M40’s own users worked under. The owner of the rifle in Volume 8 has a gunsmith’s shop and a gunsmith’s knowledge, so the sections below say plainly which work is owner-level (in the manuals), which is gunsmith-level (outside them), and — for the trigger — which is factory-level by the maker’s instruction.

6.2 Diagnosis by Symptom

Table 1 — Diagnosis by Symptom

Symptom	First checks (owner)	Likely causes	Who fixes it
Rifle fires when the bolt is closed, or when the safety is moved	Stop. Unload. Do not use the rifle.	Trigger/sear engagement; debris or residue in the fire control; an altered trigger; on 2006–2014 X-Mark Pro rifles, the recall’s “excess bonding agent”	Factory or service centre (see “The Trigger Record” below)
Firing pin does not stay cocked in the ten-times test	Unload; repeat the test; clean the trigger per the manual	As above	Factory or service centre, per the manual
Trigger does not return fully; sear hesitates	Clean and oil at the four points, retest	Fouling, congealed lubricant, wear	Service centre if cleaning does not cure it (manual)
Safety stops between S and F	Clean and retest per the manual (steps 8 to 16 of its procedure)	Fouling; weak detent spring	Service centre if not cured (manual)
Light strikes, misfires	Strip and clean the firing-pin assembly (as a unit); check for congealed oil in cold	Fouling or congealed lubricant in the bolt; weak mainspring; damaged or short firing pin	Owner cleans; firing-pin assembly replacement is a parts swap; spring change is gunsmith-level
Bolt hard to lift after firing; sticky extraction	Stop firing that ammunition	Pressure — see The Reloading Bench; a rough or dirty chamber	Owner (ammunition); gunsmith (chamber polish)
Case left in the chamber	Knock it out from the muzzle with a rod, carefully	Extractor broken or lost tension; stuck case from pressure	Gunsmith (extractor)
Weak or no ejection	Clean the bolt face (FMFM 1-3B)	Fouled ejector plunger; weak or broken ejector spring	Owner cleans; spring and plunger replacement is gunsmith-level
Bolt drags or binds	Check for a screw too long for its hole (scope base or guard screw into the bolt raceway)	Screw length; burrs; dirt	Owner (screw); gunsmith (burrs)
Zero wanders; groups open; flyers	Check guard-screw torque; check the scope mounts; check barrel float	Bedding failure; loose action screws; fluid under the action; scope or mount fault; crown damage	Owner checks; gunsmith re-beds or recrowns
First shot from a clean bore goes elsewhere	Dry the bore before firing (FMFM 1-3B)	Oil in the bore	Owner

The last row is from the Corps’s manual and is the cheapest fix on the list: “Oil in the bore and chamber of even a clean rifle will cause pressures to vary and first-round accuracy will be lost.”²

The “screw too long” check follows from the construction in Volume 4: the rear scope-base screws and the rear guard screw both enter the receiver close to the bolt’s path. A replacement base, a replacement bottom metal or a set of new screws — all normal parts of an M40 clone build — can bring a screw tip into the bolt raceway. It is worth checking whenever any of them changes, and it is recorded here as a consequence of the design, not from a published source.

6.3 The Trigger Record

The Model 700’s trigger is the subject of a long legal and media history, and the popular version of it conflates two different events. Told from the primary documents, it is this.

6.3.1 One: the Walker fire control and the class action

In January 2013 a putative class action was filed in the Western District of Missouri against Remington Arms Company, LLC, Sporting Goods Properties, Inc., and E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. The court’s summary of the complaint: it “alleges certain rifles manufactured by Defendants since 1948 would fire unexpectedly without a trigger pull”, in connection with “the Walker Fire Control”. As amended, it sought relief for “all Model 700, 721, 722, 725, Seven, Sportsman 78, 600, 660, 673, XP-100, 710, 715 and 720 firearms manufactured by Defendants that contain trigger mechanisms utilizing a trigger connector, including the patented Walker Fire Control”, and for “all Model 700 and Seven bolt-action rifles containing X-Mark Pro trigger mechanisms that are subject to an April 2014 voluntary recall”. The parties put the number of such rifles sold in the United States at “approximately 7,500,000”.³

Remington denied the defect, and the court recorded its position in terms: “Remington maintains the firearms are not defective, and Remington’s experts have been unable to duplicate an accidental firing without a trigger pull on a rifle in proper working conditions.” The notices to class members stated both positions, and the court held that no admission was required.³

On 14 March 2017 Senior Judge Ortrie D. Smith granted final approval of the settlement, Pollard v. Remington Arms Co., 320 F.R.D. 198. Its terms, from the order:³

• “Owners of firearms that are readily capable of a retrofit with a connector-less trigger mechanism are entitled to that repair, at no cost to them.”
• Owners of “decades-old firearms that cannot be readily retrofitted are entitled to a transferable voucher code”.
• Owners of rifles in the April 2014 X-Mark Pro recall “may also seek a retrofit or may participate in the recall”.
• Every class member was to receive an educational video on safe handling.

The court’s valuation shows the scale: 1,194,237 Model 700s and Sevens with the X-Mark Pro and 5,123,619 Model 700s, Sevens, Sportsman 78s and 673s with connector triggers, each valued at a $69.08 retrofit.³ The court was openly critical of the response — an initial claims rate it called “appalling”, which it ordered improved by a supplemental notice plan, reaching 22,000 claims by February 2017.³

On aftermarket triggers, the court was explicit that the settlement did not cover them: “An aftermarket trigger may not be appropriate or safe for a Remington firearm, and it would be unrealistic (and likely costly) for the parties to have to test and approve all potential aftermarket triggers.”³ Plaintiffs’ own expert, by contrast, “opined the X-Mark Pro trigger mechanism is a safe alternative to the Walker trigger mechanism”.³

Two further points of the record are secondary and are attributed accordingly. The reference literature reports a CNBC investigation broadcast on 20 October 2010, in which Walker, then 98, is said to have told the network that he proposed a safer design in 1948 that was rejected over a cost of 5.5 cents a rifle; and it reports critics of that programme arguing that the deaths it featured involved rifles pointed at people.⁴ Neither the broadcast nor its transcript was consulted here.

6.3.2 Two: the X-Mark Pro recall of April 2014

The second event is a manufacturing recall of the replacement trigger, not a design finding. Remington’s notice:⁵

Remington Arms Company, LLC (“Remington”) is voluntarily recalling Remington Model 700™ and Model Seven™ rifles which were manufactured from May 1, 2006 through April 9, 2014 and which have an X-Mark Pro® (“XMP®”) trigger. Rifles manufactured after April 9, 2014 are not subject to recall.

The problem it named was assembly, not geometry: owners were to stop using the rifle “until Remington can inspect it to determine if the XMP trigger has excess bonding agent used in the assembly process, which could cause an unintentional discharge and, if so, replace the trigger mechanism.” And: “DO NOT attempt to diagnose or repair your rifle yourself.” Remington paid shipping, inspection, replacement and return. Rifles were identified by serial number, which the notice located “where the barrel meets the receiver”, on the left side of a right-handed rifle.⁵

6.3.3 What this means for an owner, and for a clone donor

The X-Mark Pro is both the settlement’s remedy for the Walker trigger and the subject of its own recall. Those are compatible facts: the design replaced the connector; some units made over eight years were assembled with too much adhesive.

For any Model 700 used as an M40 donor, three questions follow — and all three bear on the SPS Varmint of Volume 8, whose legacy production shipped with the “X-Mark Pro® externally adjustable trigger”:⁶

1. When was the rifle made? A 700 or Seven with an X-Mark Pro made between 1 May 2006 and 9 April 2014 is in the recall population.
2. Has the trigger been inspected, replaced, or swapped? A rifle that went through the recall, or was retrofitted under the settlement, or has had an aftermarket trigger fitted, is a different case from one that has not.
3. Does it pass the manual’s checks — the four-point trigger inspection and the ten-times bolt test? Whatever its history, a rifle that fails them is not used.

Whether Remington’s serial-number lookup and recall service still operate under the present manufacturer could not be confirmed during this work. The Model 700 is now made by RemArms, LLC, whose manual directs owners with a suspected defect to “contact RemArms Consumer Services” and not to ship a rifle without a service request number.¹

The Marine rifles sat outside all of this: governmental purchasers were excluded from every settlement class,³ and M40 triggers were tuned and maintained by the Corps’s own repairmen (Volume 2).

6.4 The Extractor

The 700’s extractor is the small spring clip in the rim of the bolt face (Volume 4). It is listed in Remington’s parts list as an ordinary part — not restricted.¹ The sources consulted for this dive do not quantify how often it fails, and no failure rate is offered here. What its design implies, and what its replacement involves, can be stated:

• It must snap over the rim of every round at the end of the bolt’s forward stroke, and it holds the rim with a narrow hook. A clip that has lost its spring, or whose hook has chipped, will close over a round but not draw the case out — the classic symptom is a fired case left in the chamber while the bolt comes back empty.
• A stuck case loads the extractor hardest. Pressure signs and extraction difficulty come first; a failed extractor is often the last symptom of an ammunition problem rather than the first sign of a worn part. The Reloading Bench’s account of a brass-brand change that produced a stuck case on a Model 700 is the illustration (Vol 21).
• Replacing the clip is gunsmith-level. It is fitted into its groove in the bolt nose and retained there; it is not part of either manual’s owner procedure.¹² Aftermarket conversions that replace the clip with a larger sliding extractor exist and require machining the bolt nose; their products are not evaluated here and none is named, because no maker’s specification was consulted.

For an M40-pattern clone the practical point is simple: the Marine Corps kept the Remington extractor in every M40 through the A5 — its 2009 notice lists “extractors” among the 89 Remington brand-name parts the rifle was certified with.⁷ Fidelity to the pattern means the factory clip, kept clean and inspected.

6.5 The Bolt Handle

The 700’s bolt handle is a separate piece joined to the bolt body (Volume 4); the reference literature describes the bolt as three parts brazed together.⁴ A handle that shears or separates is the result of force it was not meant to carry — a stuck case forced open, a rifle dropped on its handle. The Reloading Bench records a sheared bolt handle on a Remington 700 as the end of a stuck-case incident caused by a brass-brand change alone (Vol 21). Where exactly such handles part — at the joint or through the handle — was not established from a source here.

Re-attaching or replacing a bolt handle, and the heat treatment and alignment it requires, is gunsmith-level. A clamp-on oversize knob, such as the Kinetic Research Group Bolt Lift fitted to the rifle in Volume 8, does not alter the handle: its maker describes it as clamping over the factory knob with “a stainless steel screw … and some reinforcing pins”, installed by the owner, optionally with epoxy.⁸ It adds leverage at the knob, which is worth remembering the next time a stuck case tempts anyone to use it.

6.6 Bedding and Accurizing

Most M40 “repairs” that are not trigger repairs are bedding repairs.

Why it matters on this action. The 700’s round receiver and separate recoil-lug plate rely on the stock to hold them consistently (Volume 4). The M40A1 answered that by epoxy-bedding every action (“each stock is epoxy bedded for accuracy and all weapons must shoot less than one minute of angle”),⁹ and — per McMillan’s replica built on Quantico’s procedures — by bedding 1½ in of the barrel ahead of the lug, floating the rest.¹⁰ The A3 used a McMillan A-4 with aluminium pillars and glass bedding and a free-floated barrel, per the reference summary.¹¹

How bedding fails. The Corps’s manual names the commonest owner-caused failure: fluid between receiver and stock, after which “the receiver will actually ‘slide’ on the glass bedding every time the rifle recoils, thereby decreasing accuracy and increasing wear and tear on the receiver and glass bedding.”² The others follow from the mechanics: guard screws torqued inconsistently; bedding cracked around the lug or the tang; a barrel that has begun to touch the stock where it should float; a stock compressed under the screws where no pillars were fitted.

Owner checks. Guard screws to the same torque in the same order every time (the A1’s figure was 65 in-lb; Volume 5); a strip of paper drawn between barrel and fore-end from muzzle to lug to prove the float; a look at the bedding each time the stock comes off, for cracks, voids and shine where metal has been moving.

Gunsmith work. Re-bedding, pillar installation and stock inletting are gunsmith-level and are the subject of Volume 7, because on an M40 clone they are build steps before they are repairs.

6.7 The Crown

The Precision Weapons Section’s view: “The worst thing you can do with this gun, to affect its accuracy, is mess up the crown by running it into something like a rock. … If the gasses come out one side more than the other, it causes the projectile to be off axis just as it leaves the bore. If there is a weak link, that’s it.” The recessed crown is there so “the crown is less prone to getting hit”, and “It takes about 90 seconds for a precision weapons technician to cut a new crown.”¹²

Ninety seconds is for a technician with the lathe set up and the barrel already indicated. Recrowning is gunsmith-level; indicating a barrel off its bore rather than its outside is the step that decides whether it works, and it is the same step that decides whether a muzzle thread is concentric — a point the How Suppressors Work dive covers for threads.

6.8 Headspace, Throat and the Barrel

A 700 barrel is changed by unscrewing it from the receiver with the recoil lug clamped between; headspace is set by the barrel’s shoulder against the lug and the receiver face. Measuring headspace, reading brass for the signs of a problem, and the corrective work — set-back, re-barrelling, bolt work — are all covered in the Headspace dive, especially its volumes on the bolt-face chain and on corrective work. They are not repeated here.

6.9 The Scope Is Part of the Rifle

A rifle that “will not hold zero” is as often a scope or a mount as it is the rifle. The Marine Corps’s instruction was to check the mounting screws before every operation.² Diagnosing a scope that does not track, and the box and tall-target tests that separate a scope fault from a rifle fault, are in the Types of Scopes dive.

6.10 Parts Availability

• Remington factory parts are sold by the current maker, RemArms, LLC, through its parts service; the manual warns “USE ONLY REMINGTON PARTS IN REMINGTON FIREARMS” and notes that some parts are restricted.¹
• Restricted parts — the trigger assembly, the sear pin, the bolt stop and its pin and spring — are marked as such in the manual’s parts list.¹
• Aftermarket parts for the 700 — triggers, bottom metal, rails, bolt knobs, stocks, barrels — exist in larger numbers than for any other bolt action, which is what makes an M40 clone buildable at all (Volume 7). Their safety is the maker’s responsibility and, for triggers, is outside the settlement (see “The Trigger Record” above).

6.11 What Could Not Be Verified

• Failure rates for the extractor, bolt handle, firing pin or springs. None was found.
• The mechanism of the alleged Walker-trigger failure. The court order records the allegation and Remington’s denial; it does not adjudicate the mechanism, and this volume does not describe one.
• The CNBC account of Walker’s 1948 proposal, which is known here only through the reference literature.
• Whether the X-Mark Pro recall lookup and service remain available under RemArms in 2026.
• The Army M24 manual’s troubleshooting table, which exists but carries Distribution Statement C and is not reproduced.

6.12 Bibliography

Footnotes

1. RemArms, LLC, Model 700, Seven & 673 Bolt Action Centerfire Rifles owner’s manual, 2021, revised May 2026 — the trigger, sear and safety checks and their warnings; the ten-times bolt-closing test; the parts list with restricted parts; parts ordering; repair services and the service request number. https://www.remarms.com/sites/default/files/2026%20Revised%20OMs/700%20Manual%20RD7055%20Final%20F3509%20(REV%200526).pdf (retrieved 2026-09-19). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

2. Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, FMFM 1-3B, Sniping, 28 January 1981, reissued as MCWP 3-15.3 (2004) — repair authority; oil in the bore and first-round accuracy; fluid between receiver and stock; scope-mount checks. Internet Archive item mcwp-3-15.3-sniping-2004. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

3. Pollard v. Remington Arms Co., 320 F.R.D. 198 (W.D. Mo. 2017), Case No. 4:13-CV-00086-ODS, Order and Opinion of Senior Judge Ortrie D. Smith, 14 March 2017, granting final settlement approval — the complaint and its amendment; approximately 7,500,000 rifles; Remington’s position; the relief; the valuation figures; the claims rate; aftermarket triggers; the plaintiffs’ expert on the X-Mark Pro; the settlement classes and their exclusion of governmental purchasers. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/8793105/pollard-v-remington-arms-co/ (consulted 2026-09-19; the text is an OCR of the scanned opinion). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

4. “Remington Model 700”, English Wikipedia, wikitext consulted 2026-09-19 — the three-piece brazed bolt (cited there to de Haas); the CNBC programme of 20 October 2010 and the account of Walker’s 1948 proposal (cited there to CNBC); the criticism of the programme (cited there to David E. Petzal). ↩ ↩²

5. Remington Arms Company, LLC, “Product Safety Warning and Recall Notice”, xmprecall.remington.com (page dated 2015), archived — https://web.archive.org/web/2014id_/http://xmprecall.remington.com/ (consulted 2026-09-19). ↩ ↩²

6. Remington Arms, product page “Model 700 SPS Varmint”, archived 20 January 2016 — “X-Mark Pro® externally adjustable trigger”. https://web.archive.org/web/20160120193845/http://www.remington.com:80/rifles/bolt-action/model-700/model-700-sps-varmint ↩

7. Scott R. Gourley, “Marine Corps Seeks M40A5 Sniper Rifle Support”, Defense Media Network, 21 July 2009 — the 89 Remington brand-name parts, including extractors. https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/marine-corps-seeks-m40a5-sniper-rifle-support/ ↩

8. Kinetic Research Group, product page “Bolt Lift”, consulted 2026-09-19. https://kineticresearchgroup.com/product/bolt-lift/ ↩

9. Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Fact File, “M40A1 Sniper Rifle”, last modified 15 December 1995. Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20070225004953/http://www.hqmc.usmc.mil/factfile.nsf/7e931335d515626a8525628100676e0c/03ae5c82962bc0f48525627b006d3126?OpenDocument ↩

10. McMillan, press release, 5 November 2010, M40A1 Commemorative rifle — “The action is hand bedded along with the 1 1/2” of barrel cylinder forward of the recoil lug.” Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/2015id_/http://mcmillanusa.com/documents/Final%20McMillan%20M40A1%20Release.pdf ↩

11. “M40 rifle”, English Wikipedia, wikitext consulted 2026-09-19 — the A3’s McMillan A-4 with aluminium pillars and glass bedding. ↩

12. Leatherneck, April 2009, p. 36 — the Precision Weapons Section tester on the crown. Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20110713194328/http://www.leatherneckmagazine-digital.com/leatherneckmagazine/200904/?pg=36 ↩