Ohio3Wheels wrote:It's been an ongoing problem since Remington bought Marlin.
Make smoke and Merry Christmas,
It was an ongoing problem with Marlin if what I've read is at all true.
The story goes that Marlin had for years adjusted the drawings to fit worn tooling and was on the cusp of failure to be able to continue having not put the money into machine maintenance.
Remington bought them without realizing exactly how bad it was. Moved the machinery possibly without the people. Found out they didn't have the knowhow. Didn't exactly have RELIABLE drawings to work to since everything had been being worked to a series of redlines. And screwed the pooch royally trying to put out guns using that data anyway. Further screwed up by not being able to access the lack of quality (or in many cases functionality) of what they were producing and allowed them to get out into the wild until the customer feedback was enough to make them look at what they were doing.
Word is they finally had the sense to stop production and have been model by model, caliber by caliber, going through the line and reblueprinting each one. Hence we got the .30-30 .336s, followed by the .45-70 1895s then the 44 1894s. Those being the most popular being the most used in actual hunting brush guns and certain areas having a prohibition on the .357 Mag out of a rifle (or so I'm told) that will allow the .44 Mag.
Sounds like they still haven't got their QA department up to snuff. IMO that is and has been a failing of Remington for the past 25 years or more. Remington has released several new guns that have been utter flops requiring recalls and or redesigns. In the case of the R51 they have blamed the difference in prototype production vs. production tooling and methods but when you produce an entire production run that doesn't work worth a darn it means you didn't bother testing them as they came off the line.
I want to see Marlin producing good guns. I have one of the Remlin .45-70s and it is right.
I've got a couple friends who have the 336s that seem to be what they should be.
I want to see the same thing in the 39A and the 1894s from Marlin.
Although I have to say that Henry makes a mighty fine .22LR/.22 Mag rifle.
I still want a Marlin and would like to find a Winchester 9422.