The Infamous Remington R51

 I am hard pressed to come up with a firearm that was such a complete and total commercial flop as the first generation Remington R51, 9mm pistol.  The stigma that follows these pistols rivals that of the  Colt All American 2000, Zip 22, S&W Sigma, anything made by Jennings, Davis, Rohm, Jimenez, and Charter Arms.  Why all the hate?

Remington invited a slew of gun writers to review their new R51 at a special even held at the prestigious Gunsite Shooting Academy.  The reviews were glowing, giddy, and gushing.  There was nary a bad word to be said about Big Green's latest attempt to garner a share of the pistol market.  Once the productions guns hit the shelves however, the bloggers and social media reviewers started observing a plethora of issues.  Sights falling off the gun, Failures to Feed, Failures to Extract, pins drifting loose, magazines dropping loose, and even reports of unintentional discharges.  The gun buying public was outraged, with good reason.  Customers were trying to determine how a firearm that received such glowing, gushing reviews was such a failure.

In short order the inevitable accusations were made.  Gun writers and magazines were accused of writing false reviews for money.  Counter accusations were made that the integrity of gun writers was unassailable and those making the accusations were petulant children, then that Remington misled the gun writers by stocking the event with hand built, pre-production pistols, rather than production units pulled off the line.  Within five months Remington issued a complete recall of the R51.  Owners were offered a replacement Gen 2 R51 with two extra magazines and a Pelican case, a replacement R1 1911, or a complete refund.  

Two years later, in August of 2016, Remington started to roll out the Gen 2 R51s with little to no fanfare.  The external changes were a relocation of the logo, set screws in the front and rear sights, and a thicker magazine base pad.  The internal differences were numerous.  The included a redesigned disconnector, redesigned breech block, knurled pins, a heavier action spring, redesigned ejector, and much better machining overall.  

I've wanted to get my grubby mitts on a R51 since they first came out.  I was fortunate to miss out on the FUBAR of the original guns.  By the time Remington had started to release the second generation pistols my interest had moved on to something else, mainly because of all the distrust we as gun buyers had of the product and of Remington.  This past week a local gun store listed a later production model as used-but-doesn't-look-fired for a decent price.  I decided to take the plunge and see what I could determine on my own.

R51, Crimson Trace laser, and two magazines

My R51 came with two seven round magazines, a Crimson Trace trigger guard mounted laser, the box, paperwork, and the obligatory and completely useless lock.  I was pleased to see that the laser printed directly in line with the front sight starting at two yards.  I manually cycled dummy rounds without an issue with both magazines.  I then proceeded to field strip the pistol for a quick inspection...well not really.  What actually happened was that I had to watch a couple Youtube videos to remove the slide from the frame.  This pistol is based on a 103 year old design that never caught on.  While innovative and functional, it is NOT intuitive.

As I was doing my due diligence and researching the R51 one of the recurring themes I noticed mentioned was deformation on the ramps of the breech block and the shelf of the frame where the breech block rests.  I noticed some deformation on the breech block ramps once the gun was field stripped.  I regret not taking pictures at that time prior to my trip to the range.  After 100 rounds there was no discernible difference.  There was only some loss of finish on the shelf of the frame.

Deformation of breech block ramps.

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict the deformation of the breech block ramps will stop at a certain point, similar to the flame cutting of a revolver.  I will continue to track these wear points as that seems to me to be a likely failure point.

Finish loss on frame shelf.

There was also signs of wearing and deformation on the frame rails. Again my hope is this will go no further.  Time and more rounds downrange will tell.  A couple of the vloggers mentioned that Remington said the R51 had a 100 round break in.  I can find no mention of that in the owner's manual.  My goal is to run 500 rounds through the pistol with no issues.  I'll clean it and inspect it every 100 rounds unless there's a major issue that requires immediate inspection for safety.

Slight deformation on frame rails.