Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Should I Hill Country accurize a Kimber or sell??

I'm of the opinion that a few not as good as they should be Kimbers have been blown way out of proportion here on the internet.
Light rifles are not just harder to shoot good groups with, they are much harder. They are very sensitive to how consistantly they are held, for instance.
I've got a couple of full custom rifles that shoot that poorly with certain powder and bullet combinations. Light rifles are quite capable of shooting well. But they do not shoot nearly as many loads really well as the heavier models.
By all means have it checked out by a competent gunsmith. And try and different scope after that. If any part of the rifle isn't up to basic industry standards, I'll bet real money that Kimber will make it right.
The Kimbers I've looked at were beautifully and well made. A cut above the Remington/Winchester/Rugers that I've seen and owned. E

Well said E.

But I do feel for the guys that spend the grand and get a bad one.

Bill

Reloder28 has it right. Keep on trying loads. Bet you're not there yet. It'll happen.
As far as the 50/50 comment---I'm either married to Cindy Crawford or I'm not. Does that make my odds 50/50?

Having been down this road with a bad rifle before, I can tell you...it is easier to just sell it to someone that wants the challenge, and move on.

The small loss you take on the sale, still won't be as much as Hill will charge you to try and fix it, or the hours of aggravation it will cause you if you dick with it yourself.

What did Kimber say? Call them.

Do you handload for it? Have you tried another scope on it?

Shoot it with just the front quard screw tight. Shoot it hand held. Break the corner on its crown.

I have been building and shooting rifles for quite a few years and have probably been lucky in the fullest sense of the word in that I have NEVER had a rifle that would not shoot a decent group. By that I mean at the least into 1 1/2" for three shots, which is to me all the hunting accuracy I require. Most of my rifles shoot well under 1" consistently. If I experience a problem I immediately full length glassbed the rifle and I mean FULL length. That's barrel AND action. In almost all the problems I have ever encountered this has cured the problem. On some occaisons I HAVE had to experiment with bullet weights but have found this to be the minority of cases as also different powders. I am kinda fixed in my ways as I use predominately Nosler Partitions and IMR4350 for most everything I shoot that has a book load with that combination.I have found this powder and bullet combination to give me uniformly good results for more years that I care to enumerate.I have gotten to where I routinely use a torque screwdriver to tighten mount and stock screws and do pay attention to the crown. I find the crown fairly easy to check simply by looking at the carbon on a clean muzzle after a shot. If it is uniform and looks correct it probably is. Any good gunsmith should be able to look thru the barrel and check the concentric rings and see any really discernable bend. As I say I am probably just lucky as I don't seem to have the problems a lot of the people on these forums have. I can honestly say I have never gotten rid of a gun because it would not shoot respectably.

Have HC accurize it. Trust me, it will become your favorite rifle very fast. My Kimber shot well when I got it. Then the groups started opening up a bit. I sent it to HC and now it shoots everything I feed it sub MOA. Most groups in the 3/4 inch range. The only problem I have with Kimbers are they should just sell them for $1400 in the first place and fix the accuracy issues on some of there guns. Thats in the same price range as a Sako and its still a better gun IMO. Besides, if it doesn't need much, HC won't charge for the full accurizing job. Send it to HC, trust me, you will be very, very happy.

now that I can agree with if the kimber would shoot like a sako it would be more gun if they where both the same price. as for light rifles not being easy to shoot well I can partially agree with that however everyone seems to have good luck shooting their sub 6.5# tikkas. mine is hard to shoot .5" groups with, however shooting MOA or less is very easy, if I am on top of my game I can shoot 4 different bullets and 2 different powders into .5 groups with my little tikka, truely accurate rifles in my experience shoot more than just one load accurately

Here' my latest thought on the issue. Even if I spend the full amount on accurizing the kimber (assuming it will shoot sub moa), I'll have about 13-1400 in it. A new accurized remington action with factory barrel and custom stock from hill country runs 1700+. And It still won't feel like the montana in my hands and certainly won't be as light.

Don't you just love it when you have to send a $1000 rifle to
Hill Country to make it shoot right.

You'll be out $300.00 to $400.00, at least that is what two close friends of mine have had to pay HC to get their rilfe's to shoot and one of the rifle's is still a hit and miss. He's talking of selling his for a big loss.

I say sell it, if it can't shoot on it's own merit dump it.
Take the $$$ add another 400 and build your own.

What model, caliber and price?

Montana, 7mm08, 875 shipped to ffl (if I decide to sell). Never been hunted with and is in "as new in box" condition. I have several other rifles in the safe so this one has only had limited range work.

Here is my post from above which you have not answered yet. I have four Kimbers and I have got them to shoot.

"What did Kimber say? Call them.

Do you handload for it? Have you tried another scope on it?

Shoot it with just the front quard screw tight. Shoot it hand held. Break the corner on its crown."

If it shoots well with the rear guard screw loosened then it may need some bedding work. Search here on how to break the corner on a crown. I did that on three of the four Kimbers.

Since you have other rifles take the time to shoot this one and to try various changes.

I have two rifles down at Hill Country Rifles right now. I want them to shoot, and realise that it will cost some money. However, these rifles are keepers, so I had no thoughts of selling them.

Having had a Montana 7/08 that was a bad shooter, I will tell you to sell it and don't look back. The factory is of no help. The friend who bought mine sent it to them twice and it ended up shooting worse. Tried just about every bullet/powder combo, rebedded, polished the crown, tried various tensions set with an inchpound torque wrench. My gunsmith looked at the rifle,good looking light rifle and then just laughted. So I sold it, added money that I would have spent for corrections and had one built to my desires that really shoots. Don't put good money behind bad, sell it.Rick.

Smiling.

Or you could do what Mrs. Barsness did - keep the action and throw everything else away. Well, some people have had trouble cycling rounds, so try that first...

Really, though, if you plan to have a Kimber, whether or not this one works, it depends what you can get for the one you have. I'd say if you can get $875, then sell it and try again; if you need a $300 bath to move it out, then rethink. It's a numbers game, and while Kimber's numbers aren't reassuring, there's a better than even chance your next one will be good. (I couldn't sell mine for much - every time someone asked "How does it shoot?" I'd tell them, and they decided to keep looking.)

I wouldn't bother with working with the Kimber factory, personally. "Send it in," is their answer (how could it not be?), so you'll be stuck with shipping, and at least in my experience, nothing much improves when you do get it back. You don't like it? "Send it back in," they'll say. BTDT.

You like the feel of the stock? Send the rifle to someone to have it rebarreled and rebedded and just skip the forensics.

It is not hard to bed a rifle and lap a crown...or at least look at it real close with a magnifying glass to see if it is ok...most I look at probably are, but every once in a while you will find one that is a little off. I guess if you've never done it before there is that mystery factor...but it's very easy to do and worthwhile learning...

I like to eliminate any possible fundamental problems right out of the starting gate, so I normally don't even bother to shoot a rifle until I have bedded it, checked the crown and stroked the bore a couple of dozen times with JB, and made sure all the action bolts and scope screws are tight and even...call me old fashioned but there is a big difference in a rifle that is properly set up, barrel properly cleaned and ready to go and one that isn't.

When a rifle is right, that mostly eliminates problem areas in advance...and I haven't had to re-barrel one yet.

On another note...

A dozen or so years ago I jusst happened to be picking up a new rifle while on my way to the range. I generally don't shoot factory loads, but I just had a few bullets on hand and I had loaded up everything I had into less than a box the night before. I wanted to wring this new rifle out, so I grabbed a box of factory ammo to make up the difference.

At the range...I opened up the box of factory loads, fired a few sighters getting on paper, then fired a group for POA testing...hmmmm...not so good 6"...I never saw a group like that before...it's hard to do any sight adjustment with that, so concentrating this time I tried again...6 1/2".

I figured I had better check things out...so I tightened the mount and rings up...checked the action bolts...everything looked ok so I fired another group... better this time...5 1/2"...for an old style Ruger barrel you don't really expect too much, but this rifle must have a serious defect...a crown is a likely culprit.

I figured I was in for some major work on this one, but as that was it for the box of factory loads, I loaded up 3 of mine and touched them off...walking up to the target I could see the group was a little higher and to the right, but a nice little round 3/8" cloverleaf...all touching...what the???...a fluke...maybe...the next group...7/8"...

So even when a rifle is good-to-go out of the box, ammo, bullet weight, brand, etc... can obviously make a big difference...and to think that I had actually had some doubts about my cheek weld and getting some new glasses...

I always make sure every round I load is as right as I can make it... just a habit...

A slim barrel is a lot less forgiving, and finding a load that hits the barrel timing just right to shoot little groups takes more time...ocw is your friend here.

I still get a kick out of the gun mags that do all this accuracy testing of new rifles with factory ammo, and whatever that is supposed to prove...but there may be one brand or bullet weight that your barrel likes...you may have to try several factory types before you find it, and it may be just that one.

Good luck.

TC

What does Hill actually do? Bed your rifle, maybe recrown?

In my opinion, bedding a crowning are things that can make a good gun shoot great, but that is assuming you have a damaged crown, or a stressed receiver.

In my opinion, when a gun is a complete turd, it is a bad barrel, or barrel alignment. How is Hill going to fix that, without truing, and screwing on a Krieger?

I'd go with what Jaywalker said if you want to keep the rifle.I won't buy another one because of their service department but I have a friend that really likes his Kimbers even though he's had a few that won't shoot.He just has them rebarreled and so far everyone has shot well with a new barrel.For what it would cost to mess around with it, I'd just make sure it feeds well and if so, put a good barrel on it.