I ordered in a M70HV in 223 back in '97 IIRC - 1st thing I noticed out of the box was that there was a punch mark on the muzzle that displaced metal out over the bore. Looked like it was done deliberately, but if so, by whom? - it was NIB. Had a local smith cut a new crown, only to discover that the chamber was grossly oversize - this made me wonder if the punch mark on the muzzle was some sort of factory inspector's mark that was overlooked, and a rifle with a defective chamber was shipped. Sent it back to Winchester, they re-barreled it, but the replacement bbl had an out-of-round chamber. By this time, I was totally disgusted with Winchester's QC, so explained what was going on with it to a dealer and get rid of it.
Several years later, after buying a lathe to do my own bbl work, I bought a M70 Stealth in 223 - very similar to the HV, but with matte black finish bbl. This one was advertised as having a 1-9tw bbl, but when I tried some S80MKs in it, I found that they shot very well. Measured the twist rate and found it was 1-8.3, a very odd rate, but again, it shot pretty darned good with the Sierra 80s. However, when I examined the bore with a Hawkeye borescope, I found some really nasty machine marks in the last 4" at the muzzle, which went a long ways towards explaining why it coppered badly. I had a PacNor match grade 1-7.5tw four groove blank of roughly the same contour, so used a 223 Match reamer in it, trued the receiver face, and wound up with a very accurate 223. With a Jard trigger, EGW one pc 20 MOA scope rail, and an inexpensive Nikon Buckmaster 6-18x40 scope, it's the rifle I use to introduce new shooters to 600yd shooting.
