St. I can only relay what I was told by a Remington rep back several years ago (when Remington was still a DuPont company I believe). He said the then new "Express" guns were built after normal "production allotments/quotas" were already built and instead of changing all the tooling out for newer equipment the Express guns were run which had less critical tolerances and more "slop" in them as the maching was by then dulled and tolerances were off somewhat. This allowed Remington to offer the guns somewhat cheaper than they did normal guns. This was coincided with the boom of Wal-Mart and all of the sudden the Express guns were everywhere (whens the last time you saw a new/like new Wingmaster in the field?).

Now do I believe that? Not really, althought possible at the time (this would've been in the late 80s if I remember correctly) it does'nt make sense that a gunmaker would build "subpar" equipment for sale to the masses. But then again who knows, that was when beancounters from DuPont and Wal-Mart were in cahoots. I think mainly the "cheap" parts of the Express guns can be found in the finish as they wear-out and rust terribly quick. The wood stocks have practically NO finish on them and soak up moisture like a sponge. And remember that the Express guns come with only one choke tube as that cust costs considerably until you realize you need to spend $50-$100 more bucks for all necessary tubes. Some of the guns also come without sling studs. As far as I know the synthetic stocks are the same as the syn stocks used on anyother Remington (save for the ones with true Kevlar stocks).

Get a 870 SuperMag in MaxIV and be done with it!
RA