Now that should have the attention of a few of with you, I rekon the good VarmintGuy especially!

I was trying to get max COL length for my new .204 the other day and found that with the 32gn V-Max & Blitzkings I couldn't them to stay in the case so as to get a reading.
The throat on the bloody rifle is too long.

Initally I worried that I might have trimmed my brass too short but a double sheck on the net showed that I had cut it, by pure chance to 1.850" - the standard case spec and the exact lenght I had chosen in a round about way in mm based on the shortest case I already had.

I've got the same problem with magazine length with another Remington rifle in 7mm-08 and another Rem 700 that I'm not even bothering with - it's already getting a new barrel with a SHORT THROAT so the rounds will fit in the magazine.

Sorry to rant like this but it really pisses me off, and there must be some moron, idiot, cretin, dunce some bastard I can take my frustrations out on who blew himself up because of a "normal" throat didn't accomodate his reloads. Christ knows all the factory ammo is already so short...

What can we do? If anyone else here thinks this is a problem we should write to Remington and complain about it.

Ok, enough. Good shooting.

...and I can't find an email address for Remington where I can send them my thoughts either...

Instead of getting a new barrel, why don't you just have a gunsmith turn the barrel back a few threads until it has the throat length you are looking for???

That would be a boat load cheaper...

or replace the barrel and send the factory barrel to Seafire, he will take it off of your hands for ya!

Seafire, setting the barrel back would, of course, require re-chambering with a new reamer, ground with the correct throat.

quote:

Originally posted by eddieharren:
Seafire, setting the barrel back would, of course, require re-chambering with a new reamer, ground with the correct throat.

Still would be cheaper than a new barrel...I don't know what they are charging in Europe, but locally here, it would be the cheaper way to go...

as for myself, I can live with a long throat.. I am sure it is that way, to accept the 50 grain Berger target bullets... and I will bet the trend will be the market will be seeing more heavier and longer bullets coming on the scene.. and Remington is chambering accordingly...

Too long of a throat, this is the first time I have heard this complaint about it...

I have been through TWO XR-100s in .204, and both had looooong throats.

The barrels are not much good, and the 12" twist is marginally slow for the 40 V-Max bullets - some rifles will shoot them, and some won't... neither of mine would!

I finely gave up, and I have ordered a Pac-Nor barrel with a 10" twist.

If you are going through the trouble of pulling the old barrel, why rechamber a turd.

quote:

Originally posted by CatShooter:
I have been through TWO XR-100s in .204, and both had looooong throats.

The barrels are not much good, and the 12" twist is marginally slow for the 40 V-Max bullets - some rifles will shoot them, and some won't... neither of mine would!

I finely gave up, and I have ordered a Pac-Nor barrel with a 10" twist.

If you are going through the trouble of pulling the old barrel, why rechamber a turd.

Well that is good news to know!!!

I hadn't heard anything negative about the 204 Barrels on the Remingtons....

But an after market Pac Nor.. ( made right down the highway here!)... well then you have a good shooter...

Ever tried their polygonal twist barrels???

I have been wondering how those shot!.. they are supposed to add to the life span of the barrel considerably...

The long throating is normal for the 204.....the saami chamber specs call for a longish throat. It's not just Remington .

In spite of that , I'll wager most any varmint weight factory 204 will shoot less than 3/4 MOA.......and many of the factory 1 in 12 twist barrels will shoot the 40 gr V-max lights out.

Those that don't shoot the heavy v-max will more than likely shoot the 39 gr Sieera or the 40 gr Nosler.

Instead of bitching, why not shoot the gun and see what it does ? My Ruger will shoot all the common bullets into 1/2 MOA .....long throat , 1 in 12 twist and all .

What sdgunslinger said!

for the record, on the first trial with the 32gn Blitzkings and H4895 I didn't get anything under MOA.

I've got a series of 32ng V-MAX ready to test with the ladder method hopefully tomorrow.

Another complaint I have with this particular rifle is the trigger. Godaweful at best. I haven't done anything with it yet but it has about 6 stages of scratch, scrape, grating fingernails down the blackboard to ruin your shooting experience...
Maybe it's full of grit and gunky grease, I'll take it out after the next range session.

I'll post my results.

Well...afer adjusted the trigger; sear engagement, overtravel as well as pull weight I got it fairly crisp but still heavy to my liking. A good blasting with compressed air, then silicone spray then air again, and the various stages of scrach dissapeared although you can still feel a slight budge before the shot breaks.

I incorrectly wrote that I had already tried the Blitzkings - The first loads were in fact with 32gn V-MAX and in this trial I used the 32gn Bliztkings.

One "small" detail might have caused some problems, - I discovered that the Picatiny rail had come loose.
After taking it off and putting glue on the threads I stared off again.
I had the same rail and rings on a .308 with 8-32 screws and never had a problem not using anything to block threads, but this rifle was tapped with M3.5mm threads which I think are too small...It seems that the rifles that leave the US for export are tapped differently?

The results with the ladder method were a little surprising, and I think that 300 yards isn't far enough with this round, sonce I only got 11.45cm (4.3") spread between shots 11 & 14 as a maximum spread.

The other problem was that my chronograph wouldn't pick up these bullets. It worked fine with my 6PPC which I was also zeroing and coincedently, I found that I get about 59fps less MV out of Lapua .220Russian brass than from Sako brass. All the 6PPC loads were 26gn of VV N130 giving 3069fps and 3128fps. From memory the Lapua cases are a bit more capient so maybe there is less pressure there? I also get slightly higher MV (3140fps) from VV N133 at a lower load (relative to the 26gn of N130) of 28.8 grains.


Back to the .204Ruger...I only loaded 15 rounds, from 27.6gn to 29gn of H4895 going up in 0.1gn increments.
I cannot remember the COL for this load off hand, it's up in my reloading shed in my dairy but there is substantial freebore since I could not get the bullets to seat at all if I tried to get close to the lands.

Shots 1, 2 & 3 went into 47mm (1.8") in almost a horizontal line.
27.6, 27.7 & 27.8gn

Shots 4, 5 & 6 went into 35.5mm (1.3") with #4 doubling #1.
27.9, 28.0 & 28.1gn - Numbers 5 & 6 were within 5mm of each other.

Shots 7, 8 & 9 went into 69.1mm (2.7")
28.2, 28.3 & 28.4gn

Shots 10, 11 & 12 went into 52mm (2.0")
28.5, 28.6 & 28.7gn

Shots 13, 14 & 15 went into 83mm (3.2")
28.8, 28.9 & 29.0gn

The best group was .43MOA so I'm pleasantly surprised to find that this rifle will shoot even with the deep throat ;-)

I'll load up some more with 28gn of H4895, no big surprise there, most of the information I've seen has pointd towards this load

If anyone is interested in showing me how to post with an imageshack account I'll put up a pic of the target.

Want to see a nasty Remington barrel? Go to lilja barrels website and watch their borescope video on the homepage. I am sure its an exception but they claim its an unfired rem take off. It made me cringe at some of the lands in the rifling.

When the .204 first came out I built a dummy round and went to a gun store that had six of em and I know the owner. He was nice enough to let me try my dummy in all of em and not one fit a 39 grain Sierra BlitzKing into the lands. Long story short I called the great folks at Hornady and discovered one of the concerns was Rugers in that the .204 would most likely end up in a semi auto one day, in particular the mini 14. Bottom line is we all get to deal with a giraffe like throat so some guy some day can spray a 4 inch pattern with his Mini 14. Most unfortunate but typical. That's the chamber that was designed by Ruger and Hornady and turned into SAMMI it had nothing to do with Remington (however they just did the same thing with the .17 Fire Ball they are coming out with, hope it turns out cause that too is a great round that I fear will suffer with a long throat).
In spite of that it seems that a lot of .204's shoot real well anyway. For factory chambers my first suggestion would be a WW case with RL10X, a 39 grain BlitzKing which is a long bullet and comes close to the lands witnessed by the fact a lot of guys seem to have their best accuracy with that bullet around or a little above 3,800fps.
My solution as mentioned above was to have a turn taken off the barrel on my CZ 527 Kevlar and have Greg Tannel at Gre'Tan Rifles rechamber it using a custom minimum spec chamber reamer with zero free-bore and a bit tighter neck. I can now get a 32 V-Max or it's favorite bullet the 39 grain Sierra BlitzKing into the lands and still have excellent neck purchase and have the round fit the magazine. The downside to the zero free-bore is if you ever want to shoot factory rounds cause they are designed for that long throat and could be catastrophic in my much tighter chamber with no free-bore. "Make no mistake on this part". As my rifle will never see a factory round and I've even gone so far as to mark all my ammo boxes and am going to have the barrel stamped warning against factory fodder I don't care. This rifle now shoots in the upper .3's to lower .4's with that 39 BK at 3,880ish, and it'll reach out and touch stuff.
Something to think about if your a permanent reloader and want a cheap fix for the throat problem, it works.