Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Tikka T3 Bolt Won't Close - At a Loss - Ideas

I just bought a Tikka T3 270 second hand. I inspected and cleaned it and did function checks. Everything worked great. I took it to the range for the first time today. I fired factory ammo in it. First round, fed and fired perfectly with, what appeared to be, zero problems. No excess kick, nothing. I went to fire the next round and the bolt would not close. I removed the round and tried to close the bolt on an empty chamber and the bolt will not close. I inspected the bolt and the chamber and everything, visually, appears fine. I inspected the fired case and it shows zero signs of any defects. Has anybody here had something similar happen with a forehead-slapping easy fix? Any ideas?

Try cleaning the area of the bolt lugs maybe a bit crud got kicked up and is preventing the bolt from closing.

Clean as a whistle both before and after, as I did that both before and after Prwlr. That was my first assumption; but, it's not the case.

Very interesting. I'll be following to see what you find.

Good luck !!

Jerry

May not be relevant but many years ago I had exactly the same thing happen with a Remington 700 Mtn rifle in .270. Took it in to gunsmith and can't remember exact problem but something INSIDE of bolt was screwed up preventing handle from rotating down.....................FWIW

TheBigSky;
Good evening sir, I'm sorry to read about your rifle issues and hope other than that this finds you and yours well.

Whenever I'm diagnosing a hard to close bolt, the first thing I do is strip the bolt down and see if the bolt body works without the firing pin, firing pin spring, shroud and cocking piece there.

Sometimes if the shroud or cocking piece get out of place the bolt won't close on some bolt rifles.

As well when you've got it all apart it's a good time to check the inside of the bolt body to ensure nothing is blocking the firing pin from moving freely, etc.

If the bolt body works without the inner parts then you know where to look for binding parts anyway. If it doesn't, then it has to be something interfering with the lugs and/or raceways.

Hope that helped somewhat, good luck with your rifle and all the best to you all for the remainder of the summer.

Dwayne

I'm not familiar wit the T3, but on a Rem 700 it is possible for the front receiver bolt, or even a scope base screw, to intrude into the lug recess and interfere with closing the bolt.

Could the spring loaded ejector in the bolt head be stuck or partially obstructed in travel so it won't let the cartridge back against the bolt face?

Whoops! i just re-read your original post and saw the part where you say it won't close on an empty chamber. I missed that the first time.

I had a similar prob. Sure as hell one of the scope base screws protruded very slightly into the chamber.

Before you panic, remove the bases and check the bolt for function.

Bob

I'd disassemble the bolt assembly first and make sure everything is put back together correctly. Next, make sure when you run the bolt forward you push it all the way before pushing down on the bolt handle. When my .243 was new, I remember having to push the bolt handle forward a little harder before it would drop.

If you are still having problems you could call Tikka Shooters in Mt. I had a great conversation with them last year. They know their stuff.

https://www.tikkaperformance.com/

406-285-2371

Could also be on the back end of the bolt. Check the shroud for cracks or debris inside or even try the bolt function without the shroud in place

Thanks for all of the input all. I hadn't thought about the scope bases. Even though, having run my finger around the inside, I never found any protrusions, I will remove them tonight and see if that remedies the problem. I am using the Sako/Tikka steel rings. This is interesting to me because I felt that the rings were loose after the first shot mentioned above. I then tightened them and after that is when the problem occurred. Those tighten horizontally though; but, interesting timing. If that isn't the problem, I will strip the bolt and check everything. Thanks all for the input. I will report back if any of that works. If it doesn't, it's off to a smith to see. Either way, I will report findings.

Bases are very unlikely to be the problem since they were not on the previous shot...

As several pointed out there are lots of potential issues at the rear of the bolt. I have seen broken shrouds doing exactly this intermittently.

My first M70 Classic had a problem closing the bolt but not every time. The bolt had a burr where the case rim contacted the bolt and would dig into the rim. I smoothed the burr away and that fixed the problem. I had to use a magnifying glass to see the burr.

I'm Interested to here what you find

This.

You mean the lug area not the chamber. If this is so how did he manage to close the bolt the first time and fire it ?

Elk,

Correct. NOT the chamber.

I've worked on 4 different Tikkas now that had the wrong screws in the front base. It's a common problem when not paying close attention. Said screw protrudes just enough to sometimes keep the bolt from closing enough to fire. I've had two out of four actually fire with the condition, depending on ammo, screw and the bolt lug engagement.

Yeah that makes sense, I just have never had that happen, usually I can't close the bolt the first time with a screw in the way.