stock cartridge shears off in chamber of nearly new puma rossi .454 casull rifle

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Pol

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stock cartridge shears off in chamber of nearly new puma rossi .454 casull rifle

Dear CGN community,

So a couple of years ago I bought a Rossi lever action carbine chambered in .454 casull made by Taurus in Brazil.

I shot factory 45 LC through it for a couple of years now, as Rossi touted it was permitted. But only this last year did I actually get around to throwing some .454 casull down range.

On the very first shot of .454 casull, the factory hornady brass sheared off breaking off half inside the chamber and stuck. :(

3 hours and 100 dollars later, my gunsmith hands me the chunk of the brass that was lodged inside and told me the rifles chamber diameter "looks to have been milled a little bit too wide"

So I'd ask for some advice or maybe some guidance,

1. I've maybe put only 100 rounds of 45 long colt through this and it shoots fine...Is there any way or chance I might get a warranty repair honored by Rossi on the grounds that this rifle was manufactured incorrectly right from the factory despite being 2 years after warranty expired?
2. If 1 is a no go, is there any custom, extra thick brass I can get to reload .454 casull that might put up with the case expansion
3. or should I just resign myself to shooting 45 LC in it for the rest of its life, or consign it as a lemon rifle.
4. or is there any other options I might have?

I'm afraid if i shoot it again ill have to pay up another 100 bucks to the gun smith. I love this thing, but its a bit of a slap in the face now to resign myself shooting long colts when the rifles chamber stamp clearly says .454 casull. Help.

Thanks,

Pol
 
It would be interesting to measure the expanded portion of your fired .45 Colt brass just ahead of the web, to see how it compares to SAMMI specifications. The .45 Colt brass undoubtedly expanded to the full diameter of the chamber, and if you kept any, I would look for signs of failure on that brass. The problem with handloading a straight wall cartridge for an over sized chamber, is that the resizing die will repeatedly work the brass back to a diameter that would fit in a correctly cut chamber in order to resize the neck sufficiently to hold the bullet. Should the situation occur with a bottleneck case, just the neck can be resized and the shoulder set back a hair, while the body of the case need not be resized unless chambering problems occur. Brass will stretch an amazing amount without failure, and it makes me wonder how much over-sized your chamber might be, although a small amount of excess head space will result in a case failure. The description of the failure you describe suggests excessive head space rather than an overly generous chamber diameter. Did any of your .45 Colt loads exhibit extruded primers? If head space, as opposed to too big a chamber is indeed the culprit, a gunsmith can remove the barrel and shorten the tenon to correct the error.
 
Just fyi you can neck size 45 colt, and therefore 45 Casull. Doing so eliminates headspace as an issue for the rounds so sized. It is still worthwhile to have the firearm checked out The Casull is a high pressure round as compared to the Colt.
 
John Y Cannuck said:
Just fyi you can neck size 45 colt, and therefore 45 Casull. Doing so eliminates headspace as an issue for the rounds so sized. It is still worthwhile to have the firearm checked out The Casull is a high pressure round as compared to the Colt.
Click to expand...

Correct, I was thinking tapered case not a straight wall case for some reason.
 
Gibbs505 said:
But it should headspace on the rim?
Click to expand...

Yes, but because its not a bottle neck case, if there is some looseness due to variances in rim thickness, or the actual distance between the closed bolt face and the face of the barrel, provided sufficient energy transferred from the firing pin to the primer to fire the round, the case is forced back against the bolt face as the pressure increases to move the bullet down the bore. So there is no lengthening of the case, as manifests itself with a bottleneck cartridge fired in a too long chamber. Think about a rimmed cartridge in a revolver, you can sometimes hear it slide back and forth as the gun is tipped up and down, yet the gun fires reliably and the cases expand normally.
 
John Y Cannuck said:
Agree with Boomer, long firing of the shorter 45 Colt case could have left a deposit in the front of the chamber raising pressures significantly when the longer 45 Cassul is used.
Click to expand...

Agree, a good theory. You would have thought the gunsmith would have seen this however. Did he run a borescope down it? That would answer it for sure.
 
Since we don't know what the smith did we'd just be guessing.

You can check for this yourself. Generously flare the mouth of a .454Casull casing and using a brass chamfering tool sharpen the mouth so that it carves away any deposit. This is an old trick used by revolver shooters that shoot a lot of .38 or .44spl and then want to shoot some magnum rounds. The amount of flare should be such that it's a firm thumb push to get it to slide into the chamber and then as you push it ahead the idea is that it acts as a scraper to remove the worst of the carbon ring buildup. On the other hand if it suddenly gets loose and then tighten again as you draw it out then the forward end of the chamber is cut badly oversize somehow.

The only real fix for it is a new barrel or to shorten the barrel from the chamber end and get it re-chambered if the front is oversize. Fortunately these are non-tapered barrels so this is a job which is possible. Of course if it's a short barrel version already then shortening and re-chambering isn't an option thanks to our laws.
 
1. I've maybe put only 100 rounds of 45 long colt through this and it shoots fine...Is there any way or chance I might get a warranty repair honored by Rossi on the grounds that this rifle was manufactured incorrectly right from the factory despite being 2 years after warranty expired?

Warranty on a Canadian sold Rossi? Heck you cannot even get parts for a Rossi in Canada; unless things have improved in the last week.
JW
 
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