Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles New 700 ADL 22-250 bolt closure/misfire problems

New 700 ADL Varmint 26" 22-250.

Range session 1 with one box Remington 55 grain factory loads, one box 50 gr Hornady, one box Winchester silvertip 55 gr. All Hornady chambered and fired. 4 out of 20 Remington rounds chambered with stiff bolt closure, but did not fire due to light firing pin strike. Same for the several Winchester Silvertip factory rounds. I visually inspected all rounds. they looked good. No obvious defects. All rounds extracted fine.

Cleaned bore and chamber with shooters choice. Took bolt apart and cleaned/lubed. Action screws are not protruding into bolt lug area. Short screws used for front picatinny rail. Action runs normally and dry fires great empty.

Range session 2 with same factory ammo. Same thing. Additionally, I could not close the bolt at all on one factory Winchester round.

Rifle and leftover factory ammo is at the local smith for hopeful repair. I did get reasonable groups at 100 with the rounds that fired.

Any ideas from you 700 gurus while I'm waiting for repair? Headspace issues? Tight chamber? Other?

My only thoughts are that you should have had Remington send you a return slip and you should have sent it back to them. Since it is a new gun why should you have to spend your money to have a gunsmith fix it?

drover

Much prefer a trusted local Smith to any factory drone.

OK

A local smith may be Remington certified to work on their warranty stuff. We had one locally for years. If there was ever an warranty issues with a Remington product, could just take it to him and he'd handle the rest. No shipping!

I'd measure each brand of ammo from the case head to the shoulder if you have comparators. Measure the fired cases as well.

Thanks for the tips. My Smith has all my brass and un-fired ammo currently. I thought it might help diagnose the problem.

I have 3 other 700s that have gone bang every time for the last twenty years. Hoping to get this one up and running.

a friend had a Rem 770, given to him as a birthday present a few years ago...
in 7 Rem Mag...

straight out of the box, it wouldn't even chamber factory 7 mag brass..
nor would it do so after I sized it down with a body die..

sent the rifle back to Remington, and they just replaced it with another new one
instead of fix it...

guess no one thought about it at Remington, but the replacement had the
exact same problem...

sent it back to Remington again, asking how much to upgrade to a 700...

They just sent him a 700 in 7 Mag.. no issues with that one..

Suspect Remington, lack of QC on those, and would also think the same
if I had your ADL problems...

Local Smith might be able to clean up Remington's Issues...

but I've got an ADL 223, that I am having the same issues with...

it will chamber the brass, just the firing pin won't set off the primer half the time..

I agree, if new you should of sent it back to Rem.

Seafire,

Do you notice any tight bolt closure on the rounds that get light primer strikes? That is what happens on mine. That primer strike appears to be about half normal depth.

In other words, the round chambers, the bolt closes, but it’s a stiffer bolt closure than normal. Note that I’m not forcing the bolt handle down on these rounds. Also note that I have re cycled a couple misfires back out and in. Two then did fire after rechambering and refiring, the other light strikes did not.

All factory rounds extract no problem-fired, unfired, and misfires.

All 40 Hornady factory V-max sent a bullet down range without issue. 20 Super performance 50 GR vmax and 20 standard velocity 50 grain V max.

From an accuracy stand point, this rifle preferred the standard velocity Hornady vmax. 1/2 inch 3 shot groups and less than one inch 5 shot groups.

The other things I liked about this rifle were that it wasn’t finicky about the brand of bullets that actually went down range. All went into a 2 inch circle. The other was a minimal shift from cold bore to hot.

In summary, I will be happy with this rifle if my smith can get it to run reliably with all ammo.

Happy Update.

I got the rifle back from the Smith yesterday. Took it to the range today and fired 50 without any trouble. 20 Remington, 20 Nosler, and ten Hornady. I got a nice .6 inch 5 shot group from the 50 GR Hornady vmax and a .36 inch 3 shot from the Remington premier 50 GR Accutip.

He found a bur/tool mark near the chamber entrance. He polished that out and polished the chamber, test fired it, and I’m up and running.

I’m going to work up some reloads for it. I’ve got 100 new Lapua cases, H380, CFE 223, Varget, cci br and wlr primers, and a nice assortment of 50-55 grain bullets. Any accuracy tips/loads for this 26” 14 twist are appreciated!

This is my first ever .22 Center Fire. I’m really enjoying it.

Excellent! That's a good ending.

Glad it's working for you, but exactly how would a burr in the chamber keep a rd from going off if it chambered?

I’m not exactly sure, Grovey. The bur or tool mark or whatever was at the chamber entrance. Since all Hornady chambered and fired, I suspect the Remington’s and Winchester’s that did not fire/had tight bolt closures may have been sized a bit differently at the factory and were catching on the bur easier?

I’m just returning to reloading after a 40 year break. You guys would know a lot more about these issues than me. It definitely seemed to be related to the different manufacturers cases. That’s one of the reasons why I posted it in the reloading forum. That’s also why I retested it with Nosler, Hornady, and Remington just to make sure. I’m out of Winchester.