Dang the luck!
My good friend and Varmint/Big Game Hunting partner Brad finally got his replacement N.E.F. Handy Rifle in 17 HMR last Friday!
If you may recall I set one up for him a couple months ago. I bought some rings for it and mounted a scope for him. He also wanted me to bore sight it and sight it in for him. I did bore "align" it (no 17 caliber spud for my boresighter!) and headed for my range. It fired only sporadically! The 17 HMR rimfire cartridges were igniting at the rate of exactly 50% of the time! Several makes of ammo were tried and various energies of action closing and trigger pulling - nothing alleviated the sporadic firing! The rims were obviously not being struck quite hard enough by the firing pin/mechanism! We debated whether to send the Rifle back or hire a local smithy to try and fix it! He decided on a new Rifle and away it went.
Well the new Rifle got here a few days ago and I remounted the scope and realigned the bore to the crosshairs the old fashioned way!
The little Rifle was extremely accurate - but it only ignited the cartridges at the rate of 12 ignitions on 18 cartridges attempted!
Dddyyyyaaahhhmmmmm!
I shot one 4 shot group at 50 yards of 3/8" (with a 6x scope!)! But this group was interspersed with several F.T.F.'s (fail to fires!).
Kkkkeeeehhhrrriiimminnnneee!
I hated to call him with the good news - bad news report - AGAIN!
The little Rifle shoots great - when it decides to go off!
I have a local gunsmith who is just itching to get his hands on this Rifle as he was made aware of the first units failures to fire also and is interested in these Rifles and intrigued by the problem. He does need a schematic and take down procedures which I have not attempted to obtain as yet.
I made a posting down on the Gunsmithing thread of this forum and I got several really good tips on what was wrong with the first "neat" little Rifle! To tell the truth that Rifle shot very well also and I had in my mind that I would like to try one of the little $135.00 rigs myself! Yikes I feel kind of snakebit and turned off by the two bad experiences in a row with these guns!
I did volunteer to flood that little break open action with solvent and blow it out several times with my compressed air system but I do not know if that will do anything useful!
What ever is the problem I am certain it is a minuscule variation from the Rifles intended norm as this Rifle is firing at a 2/3rds of the time rate!
I am just flustered and sad that this fine shooting little rig is again plagued by some intermittent demon!
Any suggestions?
My friend wants this Rifle for Fox calling during day and night Hunting and some Ground Squirrel shooting. The Ground Squirrels would be a lot more tolerant of the intermittent clacking of the misfires than a Fox would I am sure of that!
Oh well - oh hell patience I guess!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

I would be willing to bet it's a firing pin shape and/or protrusion problem.It happens on rimfires sometimes..

Does the gun have a rebounding hammer???

VG:

I have two NEF's Handi Rifles in rimfires, in fact the only two I own. One was in 17 HRM for $109.00, ( they couldn't move it!) and the second one in 22 Mag for $109.00 also.

I got the 22 Mag since the 17 had been so accurate. I am playing with getting the 17Mach2 in one also. Those are available locally for $129.00.

It does not matter what brand of 22 Mag ammo I feed it, that little critter is a tack driver! I have always found 22 Mags to be real finicky, but not the HandiRifle. Its accuracy rivals my 22 Long Rifle CZ training rifle! which is a good thing.

If you try one out I am sure you will be pleased.

Cheers and good shooting
seafire

NEF/H&R rifles come from the factory with a bunch of crud and machine filings in the frames and barrel lug, a good cleaning is the first step to trouble free shooting. The second "secret" to shooting them is knowing that trigger pull follow through is real important due to the transfer bar mechanism, the trigger needs to be pulled fully to the rear instead of releasing it at the shot. If that doesn't solve the problem, it's back to the factory for proper timing/tuning of the transfer bar or whatever they do, I know of 2 sportsters that needed to be returned for that problem, both had light impacts on the case rims. I have a .17M2 that shoots real well and 7 other Handis and Ultras from .204 Ruger to .45-70 on 4 frames, have done a couple trigger jobs on frames and love em, for the money, they can't be beat!

let me first say that i like handi rifles, I am still missing the one that got stolen with my truck in july.

however if one wants a 17hmr I think the better value is a marlin 17v from walmart They run 179$. go and get a pentel pen spring and you can have the trigger to about 3# or less. the 17v has a heavy barrel, and I have never heard of one shooting badly. I think this would be a lot more fun to mess with than a single shot handi albeit you need to spend a few bucks more.

FWIW, the Marlin 17V is an old model, the current model as of 2004 is a 917V, better safety, same crappy trigger, though with a different design, also is drilled and tapped, comes with weaver bases whereas the 17V just had a rimfire dovetail with the exception of the late production units just prior to the release of the 900 series. I have a 917V and a 917VS, can't say they shoot any better or worse than the NEF Sportster....BUT, the trigger on the NEF can be reduced to less than 2.5lbs with just a few minutes of honing and at no cost and it will be a nice trigger that is both smooth and breaks crisply with no creep. Both my Marlins were pen springed but the triggers had a lot of slop and a bunch of creep, weren't nice at all. I ended up adding the Rifle Basix triggers to both, made extremely nice triggers out of them, adjustable to a few ounces and glass smooth to break like glass. If you go to rimfirecentral.com you'll see what I mean about the RB triggers, lots of happy campers there using them in both the Savage and Marlins, but a lot also accept the pen spring trick, but I consider it marginal, at best.

WRONGTARGET, RIGHTTRACK!

I have a friend at work with the same problem with his NEF (also bought at Bi-Mart. Very accurate when it will go off. He brought it in for me to look at, and I took it into the machine shop. With the ejector clamped down, and a hornady shell dropped into the chamber, the top of the rim was .013" below the face of the breech. The firing pin only protrudes .020" at full extension, so at best he was only getting a .007" dent in the rim. Enough to fire it about 30% of the time. He called NEF, and was told that they did have a problem with that a few months ago, and to send it back to them and they would put a new barrel on it for him. He also talked to the sporting goods manager at BiMart, and they would send it back for him. (he's had it since july, and put 400-500 rounds through it, so they couldn't just take it back). try here to get ahold of NEF www.hr1871.com/repairs/index.htm good luck, pete

If the top if the rim was .013" below the barrel face,we call that EXCESSIVE HEADSPACE here in "flyover country".!!



No wonder the darn thing won't go off!!!

Hobart: Thank you very much for the trouble shooting idea on my firends NEF Rifle!
I appreciate it very much!
And welcome to the Varmint Hunting thread of the AR Forum! I have copied your findings to give to my friend and our local smith. This rig shoots so well I hope we can find a fix that uses this barrel!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Last week I was at the range beside two very unhappy shooters. Both had new Handi Rifles and both were misfiring quite a bit. One was a 30-30 and the other a 223. They asked me if I would look at them and both seemed to have short firing pins.



I'm certainly no gunsmith but I found no crud in the firing pin "hole" and couldn't get them to protrude enough to dent the primer any more than a very mild bit.



I suggested they send them back to NEF and both hunters informed me that they were supposed to be in Kentucky in 2 days for a hunt.



They headed off to buy new Remingtons or Savages at Wally World on my advice.



I've owned a 223 and 25-06 that were both "Ultras" though and they were both VERY accurate and reliable but bought them both used and had NO problems with them.



I just fell in love with Encores and like them much better but haven't even approached the accuracy I got out of the Ultras....



Not saying the Ultra's are better than the Handi's though. I think that NEF has a quality control problem but considering their prices it's no wonder. All in all I consider them to be an EXCELLENT value.



On second thought maybe it was a headspace problem... Like I said... I'm no gunsmith. Certainly a problem that needed to be fixed by NEF though.



$bob$

He can also email H&R at hr1871@hr1871.com