Remington 700 SPS Synthetic Varmint .308 Win. 26" Any good?

[BigShep85]

Hi guys, I am looking for a good long distance rifle for hunting and just shooting in general at long distances, and also have some money left over for a scope and bi-pod and maybe a nice hogue stock. I found this Remington 700 SPS Synthetic Varmint .308 Win. 26" very cheap ($529) I am wondering if these are any good, there are some pretty bad reviews on them talking about the magazine plate breaking, etc. Do you guys have any experience with these rifles? because I don't. Any input would be very helpful.
OR.....Would you gentlemen suggest another rifle for long distance shooting maybe 1000 yards or so, I am set on a .308. Thanks again for the help.

 

[Jimro]

The Rem 700 SPS is an entry level rifle in the realm of long range shooting.

It is a great option, along with Savage, to "get your foot in the door" and start tossing lead down range.

The good, it will be plenty accurate right out of the box.

The Bad, you will probably hate the flimsy synthetic stock after a while and start shopping for a used quality synthetic stock (HSP, McMillan, etc). 308 is a "marginal" 1,000 meter round depending on atmospheric conditions, but if you use 155 gr HPBT or 175 gr HPBT bullets you should be ok. 168 gr bullets just don't have either the mass of the 175's or the speed of the 155's to do well at 1k.

The Ugly, you will have to resist the temptation to have your rifle "rebarreled and blueprinted" which really drives up the cost. Just ignore the gunsmith hype, shoot your stick a LOT. And by the time you need to rebarrel (which is in excess of 8,000 rounds of 308) then you can consider some custom work.

Jimro

 

[Rimfire5]

I bought a Remington 700 SPS Varmint in .22-250 in late October and haven't had any problems with the bottom plate.

I did find the factory trigger a bit too heavy at 5.5 lbs and it felt gritty also.
After I found that the rifle had real potential, I bought a Timney trigger on sale for $89 and set it for 2lbs 1 oz to match three of my other rifles. I just didn't want to mess with the Remington Trigger after all the reports on trigger problems and Remington's warnings about touching the adjustment screws.

The Timney trigger improved the accuracy and I got down to between .6 and .65 inches on average depending upon the load.

I suspected that the synthetic green factory stock was binding on the barrel so I broke down and bought a Bell & Carlson Medalist pillar bedded stock and got an improvement of 0.19 inches on average with the same loads.
The rifle now shoots three different weight bullets under 0.5 inches with a number of different loads and three other loads under 0.55 inches.

I don't have the SPS in .308 but the .308 is an inherently accurate cartridge and easy to load for. I have a Savage 10 FP in .308 and had no trouble finding loads that would shoot really tight groups.

If you are planning to restock the SPS anyway, I think you'll find that the basic SPS Varmint rifle will be pretty accurate but with a good trigger (maybe you'll get luckier than I with a factory version) and an pillar bedded stock that gets the barrel free floated, you can have a very accurate rifle.

I get a kick out of shooting tight groups and my SPS delivers. I can honestly say that it has a WOW factor when it puts one hole on top of another. It gives me confidence in the rifle's basic accuracy and encourage me when I have to take tough shots at longer distances.

The heavy SPS Varmint barrel lets you shoot a number of rounds without the barrel heating up too much, and with a .22-250 you don't want the barrel to get too hot because it shortens the barrel life.

 

[WWWJD]

Here's the damage I did a few weeks ago with a Remington 700 SPS 20" (tactical model .308). .5 MOA with Federal Gold Medal Match 168gr. No mods to the rifle. Fixed 10X scope and a bipod. I'm not sure what else you could ask for in a $600 rifle! I'd say go for it. By the time you get her trimmed out, you'll have $1k in it. FWIW, I have my trigger tuned down to 2 lbs, and I don't have any complaints. At all. Nothing's broken yet, but then again, I've only got 160 or so rounds through it so far.

 

[warbirdlover]

The new X-Mark Pro trigger on my new SPS Buckmasters is one of the best triggers I've ever used. I adjusted (per the Remington video on their site) down all the way which is 3-1/2 lbs. ..... Just like they said. It is crisp, silky smooth with short travel and as their ad says "breaks like glass". And I've also not had any other (B.S.) problems with it. I tried numerous triggers on other rifles (Vanguard, Tikka T3, Browning X-Bolt etc) before I bought this and the Remington trigger was by far the best. Not saying a Timken wouldn't be maybe better but I've had Timken's before and none were any better then this new Remington trigger. My 2 cents.

And my SPS Buckmasters .270 is a tackhammer.