What is your take on Kimber Montana 84 and 8400

blargon said:
This is what bothers me. You never hear of these issues with Sako, Cooper or other "higher" models. IMO for the $$ you are spending on these, they should be flawless...

Oscar, did you contact Kimber about your barrel? What are you doing with it?
Click to expand...

Yah, i wish Cooper manufactured the Kimber:D.

That was about 3 years ago, Kimber said to send it back until I told them I was in Canada........ sold it to a guy for a reasonable price (lost my shirt) who figured that was plenty accurate for what he wanted.

I've owned enough rifles of most every brand to know they all make duds once in a while.
 
One of the things everyone forgets about Kimber rifles when they talk about accuracy issues is they weigh 5 pounds.

It's far more difficult to shoot small groups with a gun that jumps off the bench even when it's a 308. I loved mine, but if it weighed 7 lbs I would never have bought it.

The long action standard weight models bear little interest to me at least.
 
Ive had my Montana in .325 WSM since early 2007. I love it. First box of shells were factory Super x 220gr. First 4 rounds were within 1 moa and everything Ive loaded since then has shot very well, and due to the stock design it surprises everyone who has shot it with the "low" felt recoil. Expected significantly more. Not one feeding problem to date. I feel it is a great value, and its a pleasure to carry.

I think they got a bad rap online when they were released. When I sold guns for a living, I had to return 2 Sako 75s for new barrels, 1 Rem 700 that had a bolt handle fall off the first time the new owner fired it. 1 700 that had a large burr in the barrell, and a few A Bolts that had triggers and floorplates break. Noones immune to it.
 
Kimber Montana 8400

I own a kimber montana 8400 chambered in 7mm wsm. Ive had good luck with mine. One thing I noticed right off the bat was, how tight the chamber was, I have to completely full length resize the brass or it won't chamber. Kimber rifles have match grade chambers which aid in accuracy. The trigger and barrel are also match grade. My rifle likes 140 gr accubonds backed by a charge of h4831sc, with that load, my gun will shoot 1/2 inche groups on a regular basis.
 
I hated mine -- stainless 84m in 308 Winchester. It was a 4 to 6 MOA gun from the factory, and it didn't feed reliably from the left side of the mag (a "mauser" that wouldn't feed reliably, go figure!). A couple hundred tries with a pair of pliers bending the mag box into a shape that would seem to more suit proper feeding, the feeding problem was resolved to 100% satisfaction, but that looked to me like a design flaw, not a particular problem with my gun. After a thousand rounds or so of unsatisfactory load development work, I did what I should have done way sooner, and I spent some $$ at a gunsmith, who gave me a laundry list of things that in his opinion (and mine) should never have left the factory -- loose headspace, rolled lip on the crown, firing pin protrusion was WAY too short, and a few other things I forget. He fixed all that up, and after that, I managed to get an honest 2MOA out of it (10 round group).

By that point, I was not only fed up with all the issues I'd had with the gun, I'd also come to despise the blind-box magazine with a passion -- so I sold er with full disclosure on the issues I'd had with it. Lost a bunch of money on the deal, but at least I didn't have to live my life getting upset every time I looked at the stupid thing.

While I do agree with some others here; it is an excellent handling gun, it feels VERY good to hold and to shoot -- after all the problems I had with mine (and a bit of time with Google tells me I am far from alone); you would have to pay me to own another one.
 
Seems like there's a few lemons. A 4-6 moa rifle that didn't feed properly would be going back if it was mine. I wouldn't even start to waste a 1000 rds on load development. You can't polish a turd.
 
Happy .300 WSM montana owner here. Sub-MOA five shot groups with it's favourite load. Fantastic factory trigger. As someone mentioned earlier I was prepared to get absolutely punished by recoil, but was suprised that it was a manageable "push" on the shoulder due to the stocks design.
None of my other rifles follow me into the Camelsfoot mountains since I picked up that Montana.
 
bisonhd said:
Seems like there's a few lemons. A 4-6 moa rifle that didn't feed properly would be going back if it was mine. I wouldn't even start to waste a 1000 rds on load development. You can't polish a turd.
Click to expand...

:agree:

I am not knocking you BrotherJack, but your situation would have been totally unacceptable to me.
 
bisonhd said:
Seems like there's a few lemons. A 4-6 moa rifle that didn't feed properly would be going back if it was mine. I wouldn't even start to waste a 1000 rds on load development. You can't polish a turd.
Click to expand...

Oh, I would have LOVED to send it back to Kimber. But, it was a second-hand rifle, Kimber only has a 1 year warranty, and Kimber doesn't do warranty service in Canada anyway. The whole situation was made worse by the fact that I failed to discover it had accuracy problems until about 4 months after I'd bought it. I got it just before hunting season, and during my first run at load work-up, I'd gotten 3 fairly nice groups in a row (though the groups before and after those, were rather disappointing), so I loaded up a whack of the middle load and went hunting with it. The guy I bought it from claimed it to be a sub-1 inch shooter, so I took his word and 3 good groups that it was at least accurate enough for a hunting gun. Later on, when I was putting in more serious range time, I kept getting these inconsistent sized groups, as well as some really wild fliers about every 4 or 5 shots (I mean, 3, 4, 5, 6 inches out of line -- at times, I even had a few that were clean off the paper). Based on the assurances of the guy I bought it from (a long-standing member here with a very high trader rating), and the fact that I got good groups fairly often, I had the idea that I must be doing something wrong with my loads, so I worked at it a whole heck of a lot harder than I otherwise might have.

Anyway... hindsight is all 20/20.
 
bisonhd said:
Seems like there's a few lemons. A 4-6 moa rifle that didn't feed properly would be going back if it was mine. I wouldn't even start to waste a 1000 rds on load development. You can't polish a turd.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you did the right thing Brother Jack. I had some accuracy problems with a sako 25-06. 2-3 groups. I found that after I fired several groups that it would start to tighten up. The same thing happened with my 284 winchester.
 
I have owned 3 of these rifles now, all WSM's Montana's and Classics and I have to say I like everyone of them. Only one of them gave me any grief and it was a matter of shrinking 1.5" groups down to .75" groups. I think if Remington can charge $2100 for that Alsakan Ti think $1350 is a steal for a Montana.
 
I have owned 4 of them, none of them shot until they were bedded and the barrel free floated and then every one shot excellent, my favorite rifle is a standard wood 308 84 with a Leopold 2.5x8 that weighs under 7 lbs loaded with ammo and a sling, the trigger is excellent , the bluing isn't as good as it should be and I've heard there have been some with feeding problems.The people who made the original Kimbers are now making the Cooper Rifles and are coming out with a lighter short action version that I think will be a higher quality rifle than the Kimber and has a 1/2" MOA guarantee.
 
Last edited:
From all the accounts I've heard and read, they are very hit and miss. I've heard A LOT of people say that they got a rifle that had major flaws from the factory, but I've also heard a lot of people say that they are very accurate, light-weight, and well put together.

The Kimber of Oregon rifles were much more focused on "show" than "go", as where the Kimber of NY rifles are built to work more than they're built to look pretty (not that they look bad! Just not as stunning as the Oregon rifles).

Either they're really, really good, or else they're horrendous.
 
I have a 8400 montana in 300wsm and I have BrotherJacks old .308 which will be a .338 federal by next week. I have been happy with both but a couple of observations. They need to have the recoil lug bedded before you will get decent accuracy and they seem to like light for caliber bullets in a .30 cal tube. Both the .308 and .300wsm prefer 150 grain bullets. Accuracy with 180 grain bullets in the .300wsm with some work 1.5 inch first try with 150 grain .5 of an inch. Similar results with the .308 but it only got to 1.5 inch groups but I didn`t try very hard as I had planned from day one to have it rebored.
The bigest selling point on these rifles for me is the quality of the stock and the light weight.
 
People get their backs all up when the odd Barnes bullet fails. Well, just like rifles, every type of bullet fails from time to time! As with anything mass-produced, you can and will eventually find a sample that fails.

The problem is that when people pay a premium for a product over and above the average price of the market, they expect FAR fewer failures than average. This goes for bullets, rifles, scopes, cars, etc. Case in point, people expect to see bullets fail from time to time if they are in the average price range- Sierra, Speer, etc. But if even 1 in 10,000 Barnes bullets fails, LOOK OUT! The same goes with rifles, if people pay $600 for a rifle, they are OK with having to re-stock it, re-crown it, bed it, etc. But if they pay anywhere north of $1000 for a rifle, even 1 quality control issue out of 10,000 rifles is 1 too many! Kimber seems to charge a premium for their rifles over and above the standard rifle companies, and they also seem to have just as many, or more, quality control issues. That's why they get a bad rap. If you paid $400 for a new Kimber with a flaw from the factory, people would say "What do you expect, it's a $400 rifle?"
 
I have a 270 WSM Classic that is an excellent shooter and very reliable and has a beautiful stock to boot. I also have a 300 Win.Mag. Montana that shoots equally well. They are one of the best deals out there out of the box. I don't think I could built such light rifles that shoot that well at any price.
bigbull
 
So on average I have seen the Classic to Montana in the 1199 to 1399 range. That is very reasonable for the quality that has gone into it. The "premium" people keep talking about isn't there. Remington throws a cheap Bell and Carlson on a fluted barrel and charges the same price. The stocks on the Kimbers, wood or synthetic, are of much higher quality than a Remington, not to mention the 84/8400 action is much more expensive and complex to build. It is in the right price range.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom