Remington 700 CDL

[pittyone]

Does the Remington 700 CDL .243cal come with a fully floated barrel?

 

[M700]

I've got two CDL's, a .25-06 and a .300 RUM. Great rifles, but like most,all?) Remington 700 sporters, they do not have a free-floated barrel.

For decades Rem has used a small pressure point/pad near the forend of the stock, which contacts the barrel. This actually seems to work out fairly well with the light sporter-contour barrels.

My .25-06 has produced 1.5 - 2.5" groups with deer hunting ammo at 300 yards and the .300 RUM is hanging at around 1 MOA with factory 200 grain ammo. I've been shooting 700's for 30+ years, and am not convinced that there is any reason to eliminate the pressure pad on a sporter barrel.

Now... The varmint models, w/the heavier barrels are free floated, and they typically produce excellent accuracy. I've read & heard a lot of theories about why the sporter barrels shoot well with a pressure point - perhaps it dampens the barrel vibration. Point is, they typically shoot real well, even without being free-floated. Several years ago I free-floated a 6mm Rem, 700 BDL. Accuracy got worse. That rifle now has a pressure point again, and shoots fine.

The only gripe I've got about current Remington CDL's, and their other rifles, is that the trigger pulls are stout! I haven't put a scale to the triggers of these two CDL's, but they're pretty tough. A brand new 700P I just set up for the SWAT team had a really bad factory trigger.

Sheesh, I got wound up and wrote a whole bunch to a short, simple question eh?

 

[jb747]

I guess it depends just how you're shooting your rifle, but I've not found the pressure points working for me. Recent cases were two LVSFs, a 30/06 BDL, and a 270 CDL. All shot better after the pad was removed. The improvement for the LVSFs was quite substantial,in the order of 50%), the BDL was a little better,about .2 moa average), and the 270 CDL was marginal.

And the triggers are horrible, but the do respond to a little work.