emcon5 - it should be there however after calling Remington I discovered my rifle was made in 1999 during a brief period where they were not stamping it on the barrel but were putting it on the box it was shipped in.
http://remingtonsociety.com/rsa/questions/barrelcodes
"
(*) On 8/9/99, stopped stamping the barrels with the date code. They continued to mark the date code on the end flap of the shipping box. They resumed stamping the date code on the barrel on 10/1/01."
actually didn't take long at all as there is a separate call line for the trigger issue. I ended up calling as they don't have an e-mail any where on the Remington site.
At any rate my question is answered
