FrankenMauser
New member
Yep.For those who say the problems were overblown, there were a LOT of reported problems across the different gun boards at the time, and some pretty bad customer service reports too.
I've had myself neck deep in the Marlin world since before the buyout. The issues that Remington created by trying to recreate Marlin's products on CNC machines, with unskilled laborers, without gauging and inspection steps, and cutting as many corners as possible lead to a very, very bad product.
Some were okay. Some were pretty good. Most were terrible.
For several years, they were shipping 336s and 1895s where dangerously excessive head space was the norm (we're talking 0.040" excessive - sometimes worse) and some critical internal parts were completely unhardened (often wearing to the point of failure within less than 100 rounds).
And, of course, there's always ongoing brittle screw debacle*.
Marlin's management has been able to fight for better quality*, better quality control*, and more oversight of their own operation*, rather than having to request everything from the board of directors; so things are much better now than just a few years ago.
But the initial Remington production was very bad - possibly even worse than the internet says - and Marlin's management team does still have to fight Remington in order to make changes to their own operations if the change will impact the profit margin (even if only a couple cents).
For example, I've been told that a correction for the "sharp lever" issue has been a constant request by Marlin management for coming up on four YEARS, now. As of May, I had still not heard of it being approved.
*Before DPris passed away, we were working with a Marlin project manager to get numbers on the actual frequency of screw breakage - not just reports on the internet, reposted by the same guy to 27 different forums; and by other random people to 150 more. They had just revamped the tempering process for better control and higher quality, and were curious to see how the reporting rate would change "in the wild" rather than just through the repair center(s). I had an entire lot of rear barrel band screws and half a bushel of tip cap screws shipped directly to me, to mete out to victims of earlier brittle screws that had helped us compile reports on how, when, and under what conditions the screws broke. (Impacts with rests/benches, usually after recoil, turned out to be the primary suspect ... but that still doesn't mean that such failure is acceptable in any way.)