Remington 700 BDL ss or Windchester M70 SS ?????????

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huntersmith

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Which is a better gun ? Remington BDL 700 SS or a Windchester M70 SS both are in 270 cal, I have a chance to buy one of these from a local gun shop for a great price. Just want your thoughts ??
 
Like asking which is better GM or Ford. I have always liked the Win. M-70's and the newer ones coming out of South Carolina are some of the best ever. Three postion safety, control round feed, very good trigger system, excellant workmanship, materials and reputation. The older Remington 700's had a good reputation, but in the last several years now have a reputation for very poor quality control.

They don't call the M-70 "The Riflemans Rifle" for nothing. Ultimately the choice is going to be a personel one from only your perspective.
 
Is the Remington a BDL SS or SPS SS? With those choices, I would go M-70. I do own both and both are perfectly serviceable hunting rifles. My M70 is a 1950 and my M700 is 1998 BDL SS DM. Lately I have been leaning to CRF ad 3 position safety.
 
Remington 700 BDL SS with a D.Mag and the other is a Windchester M70 Classic SS, both were ordered for a guy who didnt pick them up. New in boxs but are about 4-5 years old. Both in 270 cal
 
This just isn't fair to the Remington. The Remington 700 has a 3 piece, soldered together bolt (including the bolt handle, it's soldered to the bolt body versus pressed splines for the Winchester), the Remington has a questionable 2 position safety to the Winchester's 3 position (Fire, Safe but able to work bolt, Safe bolt locked), which is likely the best in the business and copied by $20,000 a rifle custom makers more than any other safety as well. You can get top makers to build you a $10,000 rifle on a Model 70, when nearly none of them will put their name on a Rem 700 project. Read from this what you will. The Winchester also has an actual recoil lug, and an action made without the manufacturing shortcuts of the Remington. The Remington 700 receiver is pipe, with what I feel is a homely arrangement of a sandwiched recoil lug between the receiver and barrel, versus Winchester's integral to the action lug. Finally, the Model 70 is controlled round feed, with a Mauser-style claw extractor, versus the Remington's push feed, and "paperclip" extractor.

To play devil's advocate, benefits of the Model 700 is a minutely faster lock time, irrelevant to 99.9% of hunting likely, factory detachable mags if you prefer that, and it is extremely easy for gunsmiths to work on and tune, for instance the entire receiver being round as a manufacturing shortcut is easily chucked into a lathe and trued. The Rem 700 is a decent agglomeration of shortcuts to summarize.

I came to my heavy favouritism for Rugers and Winchester after building all my custom rifles on Rem Model 700's, when I first started I was a big fan of them. Time and some issues changed that, now you can't pry my Rugers and Winchesters away, they're just better built hunting rifles. There are some serious quality control issues to bear in mind with late model Remingons as well.
 
huntersmith said:
Remington 700 BDL SS with a D.Mag and the other is a Windchester M70 Classic SS, both were ordered for a guy who didnt pick them up. New in boxs but are about 4-5 years old. Both in 270 cal
Click to expand...

The BDL SS last year production was 2004, the M70 classic SS last year production was 2006, so they are 9 and 7 years old at least.
 
I sold all my Remington's. Replaced my m700 in 7 rem mag with a model 70 extreme weather in 7 rem mag, just ordered a 375 h&H in the m70 safari. I prefer the mauser style action way more than any push feed, a personal preference. I have a couple more mauser style actions in 30-06 and 338 win mag. Play with them both before you buy and you'll find what you like.
 
Love the the m70. Would I have another rifle? Not unless it was a cz 550 or a custom built on a mauser action. Feels alot better to me then the push feeds. Before I got my m70 I was looking at savage, rem, tikka, and browning. After the m70 nothing else felt as solid.
 
The 700 BDL SS was a nice gun when they still made it. I always thought it felt nicer than the SPS or XCR which replaced it. Probably just my imagination. Of course I also like Model 70s of all types. Neither is a better gun though, in terms of practical utility. Go with your gut. As far as the safety and CRF goes, I have never had a Remington safety fail on me nor have they ever failed to feed or extract. Then again, I don't allow rust or crud to form under the clip extractors. I have also never had a bolt break to pieces in my hand because it was made of more than one part. I have had CRF rifles jam and a M70 one time fired when I flicked the safety off after passing on a moose. Fortunately it was pointed in a safe direction, so no injury, just a shocking surprise. I don't think either problem was the fault of an inherent flaw in the design of either gun. I love the Model 700, but also love CRF, if for no other reason then a fine tuned CRF just feels like more moving parts working together like a Swiss watch.
 
I've always wanted a Winchester Model 70 CRF but have never fired one yet. I have had lots of Rem 700s and have never had any issues with them. If I were in your shoes with the 2 choices that you have, I would go with the Model 70, assuming it's a CRF and not a push feed.
 
I like the Model 70 as well. I had one rem 700 and I didn't like the way the bolt worked. On a M70 you can look at the rifle from 10 ft away and see if the safety is on. You can't remove the cartridge from the chamber on the Rem with the safety on like you can on the Win. To take the cartridges out of the Rem without dumping the mag, you have to close the bolt down on each round to get each round to eject. With the Win you can just run the bolt back and forth to eject rounds without rotation of the bolt. You can't double feed the M70. These are little things I know but have become personal preferences for me.

I just bought a new featherweight M70 in 270 and I shot a one inch 5 shot group at 200 yds. This was on my first time out with federal blue box ammo. The ones from FN are good IMO.
 
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