Remington 7400 extractor replacement

[47_MasoN_47]

Hey THR,

My fiance's father brought me his Remington 7400 30-06 because it wasn't extracting brass proper when firing. It works about 70% of the time if you cycle by hand, but when firing it leaves the brass in the chamber. You can shake the brass loose but it's annoying as you can imagine.

Anyway, I've spent a long time digging around for potential problems with these (one of my friends had one that he ended up sending to Remington for the same problem, but it took them forever to fix and they charged him quite a bit as it was out of warranty) and tried a lot of fixes with no results. I decided it would be best to just replace the extractor. I had to buy some stuff from Numrich anyway, so I bought a new one. I finally got the gun apart today (the bolt holding the barrel on had been stripped awfully), took the bolt out of the carrier and found that apparently he had some gunsmith tinker with it before, and they drilled/tapped the bolt and put a little screw in there to hold the extractor in place. I asked him about it and he said that it was brazed in place. I'm not familiar with brazing, but I'm guessing that I'm not going to be able to remove this little screw very easily.



The way I see it I have a few options.

1. Take a dremel and carefully grind the screw out of there
2. Use a drill and just drill it out
3. replace the entire bolt

There's not a whole lot of information out there regarding smithing these things. Most of the general consensus I've read is that they suck and aren't really worth messing with. He wants it fixed though, so I'm asking for help/advice from anyone out there that has experience with these before I start making drastic changes to it.

Thanks,

Mason

 

[rcmodel]

Well, it most certainly isn't brazed.

Brazing involves brass welding rod and very high acetylene torch temperature.
Doing so on a bolt would completely ruin the heat treating.

At most, it might have been soft soldered or silver soldered.
But I doubt even that..
I might suspect Lock-Tight, if anything at all was used by a "gunsmith".

I'd try unscrewing it, and if it won't move, heat the screw head with a soldering iron tip until it smokes.
That will release the Lock-Tight.

If you can see any trace of silver solder, I would replace the bolt if you can find one, as even low temp silver solder would get the bolt locking lugs hotter then I would care to get them.

And good luck fixing it at this point!

BTW: The most common cause of hard extraction in the Remington auto-loaders & pumps is, nobody has ever properly cleaned the chamber since it left the factory.

I'd run a cleaning rod down the muzzle and screw a 0000 steel wool wrapped bore brush on the end. Then hook it up to a cordless drill, apply bore solvent, and have your way with it for a while.

rc

 

[47_MasoN_47]

Thanks for the info. I've already tried cleaning the chamber and most of the "easy" fixes like making sure the gas valve isn't clogged, etc.

 

[LoonWulf]

If i remember mine correctly it was riveted on...i think. You know, i could never figure out why so many people are so vocal about how crappy the 74-75 series are. I never once had a problem with mine, and the only ones that ive seen with problems were usually poorly cared for (issues extracting), or had damaged/bad magazines (issues feeding).

 

[rcmodel]

I don't think the 7400 was, but the 740 was.
Looks like the gunsmith used a 700 riveted extractor for a replacement, and said screw it.

Like this:
http://www.brownells.com/.aspx/pid=321/Product/REMINGTON-700-STYLE-RIVETED-EXTRACTOR-KIT

rc

 

[LoonWulf]

Ill defer to you Rc I can't remember anymore LOL.

 

[jhnrckr]

chances are it is a dirty chamber. Remington included a special chamber brush and a packet of remoil to address this well known issue. Time for you to break out the solvents and brushes and go to town on the chamber. I have heard of guys using a drill and attachments to get it clean. I spray out my barrel, chamber and gas port with brake cleaner after each shoot. It sounds crazy but I use Shell Rotella diesel engine oil to keep mine running. That stuff is designed to fight soot and it works great.

 

[47_MasoN_47]

The extractor appears to be the right one (though it looks pretty worn), it's loose in between that screw and the ejector, but I can't remove it because the screw prevents me from rotating it around and out of the bolt face.

I just really don't think it's the chamber. The brass will just fall out if you hold the bolt open and turn the rifle muzzle-up. You don't have to shake it or anything, it just falls out. It seems like if the chamber was the problem the brass wouldn't fall out so easy. It seems like the extractor's tooth that grabs hold of the case rim might just be worn down.

The rifle overall is in pretty horrid shape. It looks like someone has been shooting that crappy corrosive .30-06 ammo that was going around a few years ago. There's green corrosion around the gas port; and the barrel shows signs of improper cleaning and damage due to corrosive ammo. There's a TON of copper fouling in the barrel. Overall it hasn't been cared for well at all, but I have already cleaned the chamber, and as I said the brass comes out so easy I just don't see how it could be a sticky chamber.