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Remington announced today that they’re shipping the “re-engineered from the ground up” R51 to dealers. They began shipping the redesigned guns three to four weeks ago to buyers who’d returned their pistols to Big Green when the original model was recalled two years ago.

So what’s changed? Remington’s re-worked the ejector, the extractor, and disconnector. They’ve also changed the finish on the action spring bushing along with other more minor tweaks.

They tell us that this time the design has been tested, re-tested, and tested again. Those are some of the new R51s above that I saw in production when I was in Huntsville a few months ago.

MSRP for the single stack 7+1 concealed carry gun: $448. We have one on the way now. Look for a complete review of the R51 redux soon.

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46 COMMENTS

  1. Nope, fvck em. They don’t deserve our hard earned dollars even if the damn thing works like it’s supposed to. Between the R51 fiasco and the crap rifles and shotguns they’ve been churning out, they deserve to go out of business.

    • Yeah. I’m pretty much the biggest fan of the R51 & Pedersen action there is, but Remington has shown they have no business making these, or really any other gun/ammunition. The new ones still use the original shitty frames, still have a crappy and unreliable disconnector design that will rapidly break/wear out, still have sharp/rough bolt camming surfaces that gouge and gall parts when unlocking, still provide insufficient support to the primer leading to bulges, still have a generally low build quality.

      The fixes weren’t all that complicated, but Remington is clearly done spending money on this project (and I can’t really blame them) so it will never be satisfactory. I’d love to be proven wrong, though; a polished blued/anodized gun in 9mm/45acp with nice grip panels & crisp light trigger would be a fantastic carry piece, even better with threaded barrel & a small silencer to take the edge off should you need to use it.

      • Not arguing with ya, honestly curious… Have you gotten your hands on one of the re-released “fixed” versions? I didn’t think they were actually out in the wild yet?

        • I just handled one in my shop today. I hate it.
          -Way too complicated for an average shooter to disassemble, even with the instructions. It’s just not intuitive in any way when compared with any other defensive pistol. It’s also difficult to take apart and put back together if you have weak hands or arthritis. You spend most of the time holding the various parts against spring tension in order to free them from the slide. And then you feel like you have to force them back into place. Also, if you install the take-down pin/slide-stop at the top of it’s groove, rather than the bottom, the spring will push up on it constantly, locking the slide open every cycle. It is EXTREMELY easy to make this mistake. There is a short and confusing line about this in the manual but no diagram or picture to help you along.
          -The trigger PULL is not too bad. I don’t mind it. There is, however, no discernible reset. I’d shot plenty of guns that had even the barest of feel to the reset, and a few that didn’t have that, but I could not tell at all when it did. You just have to let it all the way out.
          -Feels like cheap plastic. Not SAR Arms inexpensive plastic, but almost a cheap airsoft gun kind of cheap plastic.

          Admittedly, I have not shot it, as we don’t have a range at the shop. However, based strictly on my instincts of how the gun feels, I would not own it, nor will I promote it. I can see a lot of newer shooters having serious frustrations with them.

    • Ditto josh. Who needs an also-ran gen two? As far as I’m concerned the 9mm was dialed-in in 1984 with the Glock 17. The rest is just frosting.

      Big green needs to go bye bye. Debugging guns is not the consumers job and to continue to punish buyers of Rem products is beyond reproach. If or when the cooperate blowhards at BG decide to give a damn, then come speak to me but until then I hope the few American workers at Rem are looking for new jobs since it’s only a matter of time before big green is big red China.

  2. Yea, cuz a gun manufacturer going out of business is a ‘good’ thing in today’s environment/economy.

    I’m on a personally-mandated 2 year waiting list for this, hoping it’s fully functional and error free. If all the beta-testers prove it worthy, I’ll spend the flow on it simply because my spouse liked how it looks

    • If it’s an ossified, un-innovative, non-competitive dying hulk that gives arms makers in general a bad name, it has no business existing. It’s only hogging resources (namely personnel & market share) at this point to deliver substandard products at poor prices.

    • in ANY economy, the free market should select who grows, and who goes. That said, I’m glad the anti big green ire is based on product quality, or lack thereof. THAT said, I hope Remington can rise from the ashes and be reborn. Kinda reminds me of Harley Davidson. I’m onboard with hatin on em for sucking the life out of a great American firearms brand, but I’m pulling for them to climb out of the gutter. Guess I’m a sucker for a Rudy story.

  3. In my entire family there is one Remington, an 870 that’s so old it doesn’t have a serial number on it.

    I’ve never been tempted, nor has anyone else in my family ever been tempted to buy anything else Remington makes or has made.

  4. Man. Trusting remington now would be a giant leap of faith.

    And I’m too old and fat to leap. And I ain’t got much faith.

  6. Well, we’ve seen a range report on one of the pistols shipped to original buyers who returned their guns and it was not good. Multiple FTEs, severe case deformities, protruding primers, large amounts of wear on parts of the action after only 100 rounds. Wrong sized pin inserted in one spot. Terrible.

    I really wanted to like the R51, but I just don’t think it’s meant to be.

  7. Got an old police trade in 870, that’s all. Anything new has to be priced VERY competitively AND work flawlessly to earn any of my trust.

    • I had an 870 Wingmaster Youth Model in 20 gauge that was my first gun, back in the 80’s. It was used but flawless. The wood was beautiful, the receiver was as smooth as black glass, the action was slick as can be, and like an idiot I sold it later on to buy an ‘adult gun’. That will always be my number one gun regret. They really don’t make ’em like that anymore. I looked at a newer Wingmaster a few years ago at an LGS and I thought the guy had handed me the wrong grade of 870. There is no comparison.

  9. Trusting the R51 at this point would be like going back to a sub par restaurant that almost killed you with food poisoning and the manager inviting you back as you lie in your hospital bed.

    Then you go back, like an abused wife, and the first thing the Maître d’ says is ,”Ah! Welcome back, we got the freshest chicken for your arrival!”

    So, you didn’t even sniff that rancid bird last time you put it on a plate…

  10. So eagerly awaiting the review.

    Not because I want one, but purely for the entertainment value. Reality tv has nothing on this, and I don’t have a tv anyway.

    • A review is up on Gunblast JR-Jeff Quinn loves it. It’s kinda’ big for a small nine(actually huge-comparable to a Taurus 111G2 without the low price or 12 round mag)…

  11. Articles like this remind me to never, ever sell my police trade in 870 Wingmaster. Built in the 1970’s, well used, never had a failure to anything. Old guns rock.

    • Same here, as did most of the CCW world. The slim 9 market is now flooded with excellent alternatives, and the R51 is later than even the “it took this long for Glock to make a single stack 9?!” G43.

  14. I’d be interested to see how these measure up (not that I’d replace the Shield), but a reworked ejector, extractor, and disconnector does not sound like it’s “re-engineered from the ground up.”

    • They’re modifying existing frames, even, and claiming they hardened the locking surface; not sure how that’s possible without changing the aluminum alloy, and not sure how you do that without making a new frame.

      • Not sure exactly what they have/haven’t done to these frames, but there certainly are techniques to harden a material other than using a different alloy (heat treatments, surface treatments, diffusion of new species into the existing part, etc). some require finishing machining afterwards to correct for dimensions changes, but some do not. Like I said, no idea what (if?) they did, but its definitely possible using pretty common techniques.

  15. You know what’s most infuriating about this episode?

    All Remington had to do was… make a Model 51. That’s it. That’s all they had to do.

    But no…. the engineers and management at Remington are infected with the disease of “it ain’t good unless it’s good and cheap!” and they started trying to find ways to cut corners on the original Pedersen design.

    They could have resurrected the Model 53 design, made as it originally was, and had a winner. They could have entered the handgun market not at the $400 level, but at the $800 level, and had a winner. Most people buying 1911’s aren’t pinching pennies – there’s plenty of 1911’s being sold from $800 to $1K. I’d have purchased a Model 53 at $800 to $1K in a hot second.

    But nooo. They had to make a piece of cut-cornered crap.

    • This is one of the reasons that ‘capitalism’ as mass America tries to justify is screwed up.

      We vote with our money, then we realize we’ve voted wrong and come here to bitch about it.

      The great thing about war profiteering on a country level is R&D. You don’t have to pay people to figure out what works, the state does it for you.

      1911’s will never die out because they are one of the only truly wartime tested weapons still in use today.

      A 1911 is also patriotic, not BHP’s as much, because France screwed up the triggers. They are the only thing I actually believe America did right.

      The Model 51 worked. It worked because if the Krauts or the Ivans started appearing in the sky, they had better bloody work.

      Allow for modern metallurgy and processes and a 9mm $500-600 Model 51 was not an impossibly. Of course, when these things were designed a certain measure of pride was assumed.

      Where is your pride now?

      • Well, I’d add the following to the “war tested” ranks:

        – S&W Model 10 (and later) revolvers
        – Winchester 1897 shotguns
        – Sharps 1874 rifles & carbines
        – 1903 (& A3) rifles, and successive bolt action designs that also cribbed the Mauser design
        – The AR-15, and descendants

        There’s plenty of designs that were used by the US military over the last 150 years. I’m just listing some of them that come to mind easily.

        The problem here is that Remington, ever since the 1950’s, has been obsessed with cheapening every last dime they could out of their COGS. You can see it from the stupid riveted-in extractor in the Rem700 bolt onwards, the Walker Fire Control System trigger in the 7xx rifles, etc. Today, the preponderance of brain power inside Remington goes into making products cheap, not making them better or making them of previous quality at a lower price. No, the entire of Remington is how to make guns to a price determined by marketing and management, because the management of Remington is now that of Wall Street, and Wall Street destroys everything it touches in America.

        I run into this mentality in the gun business when someone comes to me and says something like “I want X done, but I don’t want to pay more than $Y.”

        My response is to turn away their business most of the time, because most of these people have no idea what it takes to get the job right. In engineering, there’s a famous saying: “You can have whatever you want done correctly, quickly or cheaply, pick any two.” That is especially true in guns and gunsmithing. In my mind, there’s only one question when I work on a gun: “Did I do the job correctly?” If the answer isn’t going to be “yes,” then it is probably best to not even start.

        Remington decided a long time ago that they wanted everything done as cheaply as possible, and then they’d give the problem of selling Duracoated turds to their marketing department.

        • Completely agree. The 1911 is one if the most prolific icons though. That was my intention. I am not American, but even as a child relatively ignorant of guns that we didn’t if someone used the ’45’ the gun was a 1911 to me.

          I’ve learned since coming here but to myself and many adults who did serve in our old military, if I show them a picture of a 1911 they only know it as ‘a .45’.

          The thing with Wall Street is, I think, that once you only trade in theoreticals you no longer know what a physical, tangible thing truly is. More money means better, why actually meet the peasant that makes your shoes?

          Which is why I spoke of pride. If you, DG, can’t do it right then you refuse to do it. You take pride in your work. The people today see a problem as being someone else’s problem. If not, how can I make it not my problem or make it such a great problem for someone else that my involvement is forgotten?

          You try to solve a problem, that’s pride. I don’t understand my own generation. It truly is vexing.

  17. “We have one on the way now. Look for a complete review of the R51 redux soon.”

    If it’s one they are sending you, I wouldn’t trust it one bit.

    If it’s a random pull from a distributor, that I’m slightly more inclined to believe the review…

  18. In a way, I am almost willing to give a little bit of respect back to Remington for not burying this design and trying to pretend it never happened. It at least shows some perseverance….or something.

    Having said that, if they screw this up again, they deserve no mercy or understanding from the gun media. If this turns out to be Dud 2.0 , I say release the hounds.

  21. well shit guys look how long it took them to admit there was a problem with the rem700 triggers? and how many people/children were killed in the meantime? i’ll never buy a Remington again. and no it wasn’t a tall tale, i owned one and it happened to me and my dad. you cycle the bolt and the damn thing fires and it wasnt a slam fire.

  23. I want to thank all of those commenting on how nothing Remington has every done or will ever do will be any good. Just reading the opinions of those experts telling us that something that hasn’t even been tried yet is surely something not to be even looked at has convinced me that it is true. I don’t have to have the facts. I don’t have to know the truth. I don’t care if it really is different, all I have to do is look at how many expert genius writers with absolutely nothing more that bias opinion to tell me it must be so. Damn you guys are a real value to me. Thanks again.

  24. Lots of notable gun manufacturers have produced duds. In 2012, TTAG gave the Glock 36 zero stars until they got a spring problem fixed. At least they gave the Gen.1 R51 one star. So should people not trust Glocks? Now the G36 is fixed and fine, as far as I know. The Sig P290 has been plagued by light primer strikes that continue into the Gen. 2 P290RS. But do people stop buying Sigs? You hear all the time of Kimbers and Kahrs having to be sent back to the factory, sometimes multiple times. But they are still popular. I think this is an interesting design. I’m gonna wait to see how it tests out.

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