Oh, I agree that the Walker Fire Control System is a flawed design. No quibble there.
The crux of the matter in Remington’s case is money. They went with the WFCS design because it allows them to harden the connector (a little strip of bent steel that rides in front of the trigger) apart from the main trigger bar. This is the same reason why, on the Rem 700, they have a bolt that is made from soldering three pieces together: The main bolt body, the handle and the forward part of the bolt where the lugs are. They did this so that they could heat treat the part with the lugs and not have to deal with heat treatment on the rest of the bolt. There are many bolts made from a single-piece bolt (with the lugs) and a handle is welded or soldered on, but Remington is the only one I know of where they chose to get so damned cheap about their heat treatment that they’d break the main part of the bolt into two pieces, heat treat only one and then silver solder them together. In every aspect on most all their products, Remington looks to cut costs to the bone. Appearance and quality be damned. There’s a reason why I own only one Remington rifle and nothing else from them.
At TSJC they warned us loud and long about Rem 700 triggers and their failure mechanisms, and to never set them under about 4 pounds, for reasons of protecting one’s self against liability. If you want to set some other type of trigger to 3.5 or whatever, OK, but the Rem700 original trigger is a lawsuit just waiting to happen - and has happened to Remington, several times in the last 20 years. They’ve paid off millions of bucks for this exact type of failure - i.e., failure of the connector to return with the trigger, the safety is what is holding the pin in a cocked position, drop the safety and the pin fires. The problem only gets worse when the trigger pull weight spring (which pushes back on the face of the connector) is set to a light weight. If someone wants a 1 to 2 lb. trigger in a Rem 700, they really need to get an aftermarket trigger.
The best way to see what is going on here is to look at the patent drawings:
See Fig 1. The connector is item # 39. It just floats on the front of the trigger, item #40, held in place there by the spring item #42. If there is rust, dirt, gummed up lube in between the two side-plates of the trigger group, the connector can be pushed forward by a trigger pull, and the gunk puts enough friction on the connector that it can overcome the spring pressure (from item #42), which leaves the connector off of the trigger. Now you’re set for a firing from letting off the safety.
This would especially happen because you used to be able to pull the Rem700 trigger with the safety on, and this, as you point out, is a rather large fault in the design. Safety on, pull trigger, connector doesn’t come back, and you have NO CLUE that it didn’t come back, flick off safety and rifle fires.
In this case, the owner was at least smart enough to check the rifle without ammo.
In Mike Walker’s defense, he suggested a fix to this issue to Remington years and years ago, but Remington never took his suggestion.
In your opinion, does a Timney unit solve this problem?