Remington 597

[One1]

Grabbed one of these today for $99 so couldn’t pass it up. Top questions:

 

(1) headspacing good enough to dry fire if i am ever without snap caps?

 

(2) lower power ammo like CCI QUIET - any issues?

 

(3) whats the biggest magazine available?

 

(4) anything i NEED to do to improve any issues the gun may be known for? So far they look to be a solid choice.

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

[FrankD]

CCI Quiets will fire no problem, I believe they will even cycle the action.  I know I have run through a couple boxes with mine no issue.  I think Pro-Mag mags a 25 round magazine, but I haven't had very good luck with mine feeding very reliably.  The only thing I have replace on mine is the extractor since the stock one decided to explode out of the bolt while shooting one day.

My dad has that same one you have and he keeps it out on the porch for squirrel duty and it has been fine with literally zero maintenance

 

[One1]

Thanks! I’ve noticed a huge difference in how the Remington hits the snap cap (right) vs my M&P 22 Compact (left). Hopefully no light strikes with it, I’ll shoot tomorrow and find out.  

Edited May 6, 2020 by One1

[Quavodus]

Sounds like you got a good deal

[Guest BCR#1]

No way would I ever dry fire any .22 w/o something in the chamber. I use aluminum snap caps, plastic ones don't hold up very well.

Bill

[1gewehr]

It do not believe it is a good idea to dry-fire a .22 or any other rimfire.  The problem is that without a cartridge or snap-cap, the firing pin will always be striking the barrel next to the chamber.  

I have a beautiful Remington 12 that some fool dry fired until he broke the firing pin.  I bought it for a song because it was broken and he didn't know why it a) would not fire, and b) had difficulty chambering and extracting cartridges.  Firing pins for these are not cheap, but I had a spare. and a few minutes with a chamber reamer fixed the deformed chamber rim peening.

 

As far as the Rem 597 goes, folks who have them seem to like them.  All .22 semi-autos are ammo-sensitive since the round has so little extra energy to operate the action.  Buy a box of whatever you want and try it out. A few seconds of Google-foo shows a variety of 30-rd mags.  And Pro-mag makes a 70-rd drum.

[One1]

Ok so ran the gun today, or tried to. I had ordered a metal mag because i already know the plastic one doesn’t work well, but that’s what i have until it comes. Within 3 mags it got pretty dirty and started hanging up. The malfunctions were inside the mag with the bullets failing to feed from deep inside the mag. If you smacked it the ammo would pop up. The gun ran great when you consider that i tried to manually load a shell and the chamber was already so dirty that i could only push the shell halfway in.  It had been scrubbed before using. Knowing how dirty it was I’m very impressed with the gun. With a solid mag this gun will run like a champ. I’ll probably still polish everything just to help it along. I think it’ll be a great gun. Accuracy was amazing @ 100yards. Groups were 2” off the hand standing in a field with no support. That’s pretty solid because the gun is fairly heavy.

[DaveTN]

My 597 is possibly the most accurate .22 I have ever shot. But I’ve never shot it past about 25 yards. I had issues with it when I got it 15 years ago. Remington sent me a new mag, that didn’t fix it, so I sent it in; still randomly had FTE issues.

I read about issues with the bolt guide rails binding up. Now I thoroughly clean it completely after shooting, grease the guide rods and make sure they are properly torqued.  Doing that I haven’t had anymore problems.

I don’t usually use anything but CCI Mini-Mags in my rimfires. The thing I found unusual about this rifle is that Hollow points seem to give a tighter group than round nose. That doesn’t make sense, but that’s what I seemed to notice, without starting a full congressional investigation.