Bull feathers, Dilly, Dilly. To the pit of misery. Remington sucks! Take it back and get your money back. You want an auto loader get a BAR.

 

Yes. This is the absolute best way to fix any remington centerfire auto rifle.............Get a BAR.

 

I learned my lesson on Remington guns when I was a kid. I busted my butt saving up for 742 because all the older guys had them. I
think I paid $120 new. It only took me a couple season to send that little pig down the road. Most of those guys have passed now, of
natural cause. Their lives would have been a lot shorter if they had been using Remingtons on dangerous game. Guys still buying Rem
stuff just like people vote Dem, because it's what their grandpa did. I like older Rems that were milled guns but want none of their new
stuff. You could melt a #8 down and make a dozen new Rem auto rifles and have enough metal left to make a decent six shooter. The only auto rifles I now own are a couple 8s & 81s.

 

In a monumental fit of penny pinching stupidity, Winchester President T G Bennet refused to pay John Browning a royalty on the autoloading shotgun they wanted to produce from his patent. Browning wanted a dollar or two for every shotgun manufactured. So Browning left the negotiations, sold the patent to FN in Belgium, Remington Arms in Ilion, and collected royalties from both. The shotgun became known as the Auto 5 for FN and the Model 11 for Remington.

The same recoil operated design principle went into the Model 8 rifle, originally called the Remington Autoloading Rifle of 1905. The reason the 8 and 81 are so good is because John Browning designed and made the prototypes for Remington to test.

 

My 7400 has been beating up my cases for the last 30 years, why who knows, I can not find a think wrong !!!

 

I have found out that it is extractor problem. I though it had to be a function of extractor/ ejector or action short stroking to cause
this. I have lot of experience with 742s working on them. None with 740 or newer series after 742. Some say don't worry about it
mine has done it for X years. That may be true just hope it doesn't quit on you costing you a trophy buck and not the rifle I would
take bear hunting.

 

A quick Internet search discloses that some 740 owners get dented brass when their rifle is dirty. Not sure exactly what “dirty” is but if dirty enough extraction can be compromised.


.

 

The only Auto loaders I own now are 8 & 81 Rems. I was digusted with the 742 the only one I ever bought and bought it new. It was
not accurate and jammed often. That was over 50yrs ago. I've had Win 100s and Brn BARs, both good rifles. 742 shot 3" if you were
lucky. Good enought to shoot deer at woods ranges. Autos have fallen out of style around this area. You don't hear those 5 shot bursts
near as much anymore. I miss it in a way because it kept the deer moving. I you were on a state hunting area you could tell where the
deer was and what direction it was running. Woods hunting anymore I use Lever, pump or single shot.

 

I bought my Rem.742 carbine, 3006 in 1970. I have never had a malfunction using factory, military, and in later years reloaded ammo. I have learned to keep my firearm actions clean and lightly lubed. I hunted the Adirondacks for many years with this firearm. I have heard all the horror stories of these Semi-autos. I guess I have a very special one. :top:

 

In our crew of Deer hunters everyone was a gun nut. Guns were cleaned and maintained. I have gotten Rem autos that look new. The bores were clean, actions clean but the chambers were not. They were only cleaned as much as patch down the bore would provide. When you see one that looks new and guy has owned it for 20yrs and it starts jamming this is usually the problem. When you think about it the average deer hunter doesn't shoot that many rounds. I would say most deer rifles aren't shot more than a box a year. Me and a buddy bought ours the same day in 1966. Mine was 742c and his the rifle. We shot them more trying to find a load
that would do less than 3" than we ever did hunting with them. Both of us hunted them season of 66 & 67 and got rid of them after season. There were a couple guys in the crew that never had any trouble with their 742s but they didn't shoot any better than ours.
Around 70 another young guy bought a new 742 and it didn't make it through sight in and had to be taken in for repair. Smith had
to send it back to Rem because trouble was with reciever itself. My 742 was the only rifle that I bought new and couldn't wait to get
rid of. Over the years I took several on trade only because they were popular and easy to trade off. They killed a lot of deer with them at woods ranges, under 100yds. I read about guys that have them that shot 1" at 100yds but I have yet to see one. I didn't pay much attention to them until I noticed they were hard to trade/sell at local gun shows. Most of our crew ended up with Win 100 or BARs that stuck with auto loaders. I sold a Rem 8/35cal to get mine and my buddy sold a Marlin 38/40 to get his.

 

My Dad bought a Rem 740 in 280 Rem in the 70's.
I remember going to the range with him to sight it in, and
a paper plate at 100 yards was about as good as it would do.
He finally got it to shoot about 4-5" with a Weaver 4X.
He traded it in on a 700 in 270, and hunted with that rifle
until the 90's.
He still cusses the model 740 to this day.

 

The Model 740 predates (if I remember correctly) the Model 742. I hunted with an old guy up on Tug Hill in NYS and he used his 740 to kill a ridiculous number of big north country bucks. Always worked for him but he was not putting a lot of rounds through it. I have two 742, one in 6mm Remington and the other a .30-06. Both will tend to dent cases and have to be kept clean (with particular emphasis on the chamber) an lubed with emphasis on the bolt and receiver rails. For reloading I can't see where the dents would be a major issue. You may....MAY....have to use small base dies to reload. My '06 I just use Lyman dies and for the 6mm I had to get small base dies. Not a gun built for longevity and thousands of rounds but good for hunting and they tend to be accurate. I used to shoot chucks with the 6mm out to over 200 yards and no chuck ever complained.

 

I had the newer Mod 750 in 308 Win (circa 2006) and never had any problems with it. Since I was a M60 machine gunner at my first Army duty station, I knew that this semi-auto had to be kept very clean for it to be reliable (to include the gas tubing). I have heard the various Remington autoloader models usually worked better with the short action chamberings (243 Win/308 Win/6mm---etc). The shorter cases supposedly caused less stress on the bolt rails and the recoil springs. An Army bud I served with in AK had his Mod 742 30-06 receiver crack due to the continual heavy 180 gr loads that he fired from his rifle. He did down a caribou with his Remington up in the Brooks Range but it was the last time he ever could use the firearm.

 

i bought a beater 742 carbine model 308win about a month ago for $149 bux at a pawnshop...
i have had several long action 30-06 742's & they always functioned well.
yes, the cases were dented a little... no big deal to me.
but the accuracy level was never stellar... and really wasn't meant to be.
within a 100 yards, 3" groups are the norm... some shoot better, some shoot worse.
the short action models are definitely better imho.
the 30-06's i had barely got the shell out of the gun... but they did clear the action.
my 308 throws them out with reckless abandonment!
if a barrel isn't threaded to the receiver, you shouldn't expect bolt action accuracy.
i killed 1 buck with the 30-06 742 i used to have. DRT.
heck, i had a Ruger model 77 mark II 270win that i bought brand new that wouldn't shoot 5" group's at 100 yards!
someone else's problem now!

 

Me and buddy found that 180gr & heavier RN bullets would close the groups up some, but velocity had to be around 2300-2400 fps to
matter. I had a bunch of 30/06s, other cals 6mm, 308 and 270. Most of them I didn't shoot except to check function. We just came to
the conclusion that if we dropped down into those velocities we might as well use 30/30 or 35Rem class cartridges. There is little advantage to auto loaders when you take into consideration the time it takes to recover from recoil. The only one I can see is you don't
have to interrupt your hold on rifle. One time when I was 14 and hunting with a Rem 8/35cal I shot 1 time at a jumped deer running through a thicket, nobody else shot. There was a guy just out of Marine basic that started hacking on me for only shooting once with a
auto loading rifle. The older guys got tired of his "war stories" and put a paper plate up at about 50 yds and told me to give him my #8.
He bragged he could shoot the center out of plate fast as he could pull the trigger. First shot did hit near center, last shot was just short
of straight up. I would have done worse, I only weighed in at about 110lbs back then. I still like my 8 & 81s but I started using 14 and 141s as my favorite in the thick stuff. The recoil of 35 almost makes it a manual auto loader without loosing your hold.

 

740's and 742's are similar, with the major difference being the 740 has no bolt rotation limiting latch like the 742, but some folks say that's one less thing to fail, and it definitely does fail in the 742's.

My dad bought a new 742 in .270 sometime around 1963 or '64, traded for a M742 in .280 (wish I had that one back for the heck of it, only 2% of M742 production), and then he traded for a 30-06 in 1966. He gave me the 30-06 when I turned 21. I hunted with it for several years and moved on to something that would shoot less than a 3" - 4" group. I gave it to my son when he turned 21, & he shot a deer with it on Thanksgiving Day in 2014 at 315 yards. After trailing that deer for 5 hours....well, the gun is now in retirement.

I don't know what causes dented cases. It would almost have to be something in the chamber, but it seems anything big enough to cause a dent would prevent the shell from chambering. I'd see if I could get a bore scope in there to check it out, or retire it.....

 

Don't worry about it and with that said don't mess with action or you probably will have problems - Locoman

 

I think a lot of badmouthing certain cartridges on killing power on game might originate from rifles it was used it. A rifle than shots 3" at 100" will be way out of kill zone at 200 and at 300 it would be luck to even hit the game. I won't keep a BA rifle that won't shoot 5shot groups at 100yds.into 1". I don't fool around with free floating or glass bedding, I just trade it off. I can shoot a rifle and
tell whether it can tighten up by loading for it. There are a lot of them that aren't and make has nothing to do with it. If the rifle will not group with any load you might as well get rid of it. Attempting long range shots will 3" rifles is rediculous. With assembly line guns every once in a while a cherry is produced and so are lemons. The Rem auto loaders are known to be 3" guns plus functional problems. I would call that a good chance of getting a lemon.

 

I have a 740 Woodsmaster in '06 that I inherited from my Dad.
I can't use it as a door stop, cuz would only hold the door open intermittently.