How do you disassemble a Nylon 66?

Answer 1

I own a Nylon 66 and have for about 40 years.
The dire warnings about full dis-assembly and more importantly, re-assembly are way overstated and this nonsense below is just that. There are several good YouTube clips, but there is nothing very difficult or tricky about dis or re-assembly on the '66.

I fully strip every outing and clean the bolt face and firing pin assembly.
The real advantage is being able to pull the barrel and clean the bore by running the rod from the breech end.

If one was to categorize the hardest re-assembly or 'trickiest' step it is the exercise of feeding the bolt recoil spring into the stamped, rolled (and unfairly maligned) bolt guide and then feeding the hammer block back over the sear assembly and through this guide - not really that tricky, but tedious. Pull the trigger and push down on the sear assembly while pushing backwards on the hammer block.
No big deal.

There are also folks with ridiculous warnings on the fragility of the Nylon stock -- I have splashed all kinds of bore cleaners all over that Nylon 66 stock and have not one bit of cracking/crazing as reported elsewhere.

Now, one does not probably need to do as I do on taking this rifle down every time, but in the 40 years I have owned this rifle, it has never complained, never had a FTF or FTE, and I have put probably 75,000 rounds though it with no perceptible loss of accuracy -- it also functions flawlessly. And I clean it every time after fully taking it apart.

N5PN --


The answer is: Don't!

I am a retired master gunsmith, and I have seen many "basket case" 66's come through my door before I retired.

I understand and deeply respect your need to dissassemble and clean this fine rifle. As I recall, the Remington original ad for them said something about their being used by Eskimoes, or some such; they're tough, and it is a mystery to me why Remington discontinued them.

Back to the advice part: If you feel the need to clean this gun, do as follows:

1. Hold the bolt handle back and spray the Bejeebers out of it with Birchwood-Casey Gunscrubber, and watch the crud roll out of it.

2. Use Qtips and pipe cleaners to get out the caked crud.

3. You're done.

NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, SHOULD AN AMATEUR ATTEMPT FULL DISASSEMBLY OF THIS RIFLE! IN THE VERY UNLIKELY EVENT THAT A RIFLE CLEANED IN THE ABOVE WAY SHOULD MALFUNCTION, TAKE IT TO A QUALIFIED, PROFESSIONAL GUNSMITH.