Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing 700 Rem. in 223 has hellacious bolt lift

Brother has above and have looked at all the regular fixes. once bolt is fired have to really yarn on bolt to recock. this happens with or without live ammo. can find no burrs and have applied moly at usual places. only wear mark on one side of bolt lugs so know not setting on lugs evenly but don't see how that would cause problem when dry firing. have changed firing pin assembly to get rid of j lock but lift didn't change at all. the caming surfaces show no weird wear or burrs. Any ideas?

Same happened to me on a 700 after a trigger installation. It took some figuring, but it turned out have a pinched trigger housing. Driving in the trigger pins put a tweak on the "box" that contains the trigger and made the top gap super-tight on the underlugs at the rear of the bolt. Cycling the bolt was just fine, but lifting on a fired bolt required some grunting. I removed the bolt, looked down at the top of the trigger housing where the underlugs slide through. Everything looked normal, but miking the gap and then miking the underlugs showed that the gap was too tight. A few angled taps on both sides of the triggerhousing with a drift punch spread the gap a tiny bit and fixed it right up. No more problem.

Make sure the front action screw isn't to long and rubbing on bolt.I just had one doing that and shortened the screw a bit and now it's perfect

That's always a good tip as well, but it wouldn't explain why the extra effort is only needed for cocking a fired pin.

A tight cocking piece will cause this,binding in the trigger housing,but also check for the firing pin binding up in the bolt as well...

thanks guys . the trigger has been changed. will be checking that out.

Also check to be sure your scope mount screws aren't protruding through and contacting the bolt ... both front and rear. Usually not a problem with factory screws but a couple I made from extra long stock I got from Brownell's did that to me. Oops!

The other thought I had was lube on the lugs but it sounds like you've already checked that.

Tom

One other thought ... you mention moly. Are you using moly on the bolt threads / shroud? If so, maybe clean that off and see if there are scratches/scrapes being hidden by the moly.

Tom

Thanks JPro, my model 700 was having the same symtoms, just checked it out and it was as you discribed, thanks again.

I suppose this is why the replacement pins for the RifleBasix triggers come with the slip-fit pins that don't require as much force. The safety sear cam is easy to get pinched in there when the housing gets torqued by the drag of tight pins. Live and learn I guess.

100% dead on. feel like an ass when didn't see for myself. thanks for the enlightenment.

No biggie, at least it wasn't something botched up. I've shipped guns to my smith for easier stuff than that, if that makes you feel better. (grin)