So I brought it up to Grech Outdoors last weekend and they had a look at it under warranty. They said the head space was a little loose, didn't close on a no-go gauge but still on the loose end. If my plastigage measurements are correct from before and after they took about 0.002" off the head space. Gave me two targets they test fired with CCI standard velocity, 1" and 3/4" groups "passed". Ok looks promising I didn't get groups below an inch with CCI, but I know two groups hardly tells the story with this rifle.
Ran through the SK Magazine experiment with it and aside from one group, all were under an inch. Hmm ok looks good, not great but meets manufacturers spec.
Did the wet then dry patch clean and tried SK + and well well isn't the rifle back to it's old antics.... arrrgh. 50% of the groups "fail" and go wild.
Clean, on to SK Rifle Match and again 50% of the groups "fail" 1"-1.5"
I shoot another box of SK+ without cleaning after the previous box. Shaved 0.1" off the average and 40% of the groups "fail" 1"-1.8" and with one group at 0.997" it was a hair away from 50% fail rate.
Rem/Eley Target 70% "fail" and this stuff is not "that" bad ammo it's never over an inch out of my Savage.
Aguila Standard Velocity 70% "fail" now going up to 2.3"
Hold yer horses! Fiocchi down the middle only had half a box but thems be some good groups! SK Magazine down the left and right doing terribly (wasn't it much better out of a fresh clean barrel??) So... Ammo picky to the extreme or only shoots one box of ammo well from a clean barrel and patching isn't enough to restore it to that state? Seems to be similar to my other new rifle the weatherby.
