The 17 fireball is my favorite rifle. Mine is a cz 527 and feeds 20 grain vmax loads like a fat chick giving a bj on a first date. The gun has retired my rimfires mostly. The secret sauce for mine is also running a suppressor. It has the recoil of a springer BB gun now. Kills to beyond 350 yards. Will flat out just puff starlings. It will disappear them and leave behind just some puffy feathers wafting in the breeze. Mine started life as a 204 and I sent it to gcgowan barrels for the 17 barrel install. It’s kinda crappy that the 17 caliber is somewhat limited in bullets and use because it really is a load of fun.
As for fouling. It’s not any different than other rifles. I just wipe out soak it over night after a 100 rounds and after about every 300 I hit it with jb. Fouling is a product of barrel quality not cartridge. I really do wish I had a borescope for 17. I would love to see in the barrel.
The other problem with the fireball is getting a rifle to feed it. A Remington 700 is kinda a big action for it. They also clocked the extractor differently in the 221 rifles for it. So the 221 Remington 700 are not the same with their bolt. If you use a non 221 Remington 700. It will flip the case over and t will just land in the action backward. My buddy has a 17 mk4 on a Remington 700. His has a sako e tractor mod. It mostly works fine but I wouldn’t call the feeding super slick. It also isn’t as easy to pluck fired cases out either. A rifle with a fixed blades ejector sure worked nice.
To make matters worse cz quit making the 527 and spare parts. The rifles are expensive and parts and magazines are getting tuff to source. Another rifle that seems to make a great fireball is the sako vixen. Given the prices of donor 527’s one might consider doing a vixen because the price isn’t that much different now. Or a Howa mini but haven’t heard much about how they turned out
