How are the newest R51's running?

[Hrfunk]

Hi all, I decided to start a new thread to try to get the "up to the minute" report on the R51. I've now owned mine for 4 months, and as you may have seen in my videos, it took a trip back to Remington to resolve the issues I was having with it. I don't know just when my pistol was actually manufactured, I would guess last winter or early spring. At this point, I'm wondering if Remington is taking the information they are gleaning from the pistols that are being returned and incorporating changes to eliminate issues from the R51's they are building now. So to flush that out, who has the most recently manufactured R51 and how is it functioning?

Howard

[R51Fan2017]

Howard,

I have a small list of serial's on another thread that folks had been posting on. I will have to go back and find it. Last post, I think the highest serial was in the 36,000 serial number block (belonging to Chokejug on this forum) while the lowest I have recorded to date is 920 (belonging to duoglide).

[Hrfunk]

Just as an update, I took my R51 back out to the range last Saturday and ran another trouble-free 50 rounds through it. All mags were loaded 7+1, and all fed just fine!

Howard

[mr220v]

Hopefully we can look forward to totally reliable r51s then.  People are critical of this gun's quality issues, but guns operating off of a totally new (or not developed) mechanism tend to have issues for a while.

Nice thing about the r51s action is that it appears to be very strong.  Change the timing on the slide's cam, and you could run much higher pressures.  Rounds normally used in revolvers, rifle rounds maybe?  You could probably turn the r51 into a 45 without changing much of anything.

[springfield art]

Gosh, don't know why you'd want to nitro up a pocket pistol like that. Good ol' 9mm with 124 gr. bullets, what's not to like? If a fellow wants to shoot a hot-rod, just use a .45 or .357, whatever. Just sayin'; of course one may do as he chooses.   

[R51Fan2017]

You could probably turn the r51 into a 45 without changing much of anything.

Ironically, the Model 53 (direct predecessor to the Model 51 both designed by Pedersen) was originally chambered in .45 ACP. It was a very successful design that got the Navy's attention during WWI. However, even though it came out on top in field trials versus the 1911, Ordinance demanded standardization throughout the branches so, in effect, the 1911 killed the Model 53 even though it was the better gun. So after meeting with defeat on a potential government contract, Pedersen turned his focus to the civilian market in the 20s and scaled the Model 53 down to chamber in .32 ACP and .380 ACP. And so the Model 51 was born.

[mr220v]

The r51 seems to be more robust than the model 51.  The breech block on the r51 is one solid piece wheras the model 51 has a lot of material machined out of the middle.

I looked into getting a model 51, but decided against it since the breech blocks are known to break, and are irreplaceable.