700 SPS getting flat line grouping.... help

sabre

sabre

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Hi Gurus !

Rifle: Remington 700 SPS DM in .30-06
Scope: Leupold VX-III 3.5-10x40
Rings/Bases: Leupold

Work Done: Trigger has been lightened between 2.5-3 lbs This brought the groups down from a shotgun-style pattern to the following:

Problem: The rifle shoots flat line groups. For example, the holes will look like this: (1) (3) (2)
If I shoot 4 and 5 they tend to rise a bit. The width of this "group" generally ranges between 2.5 and 3".

This happens consistently between 2 shooters using both cheap and premium ammo. The only thing that changes is the exact placement of the line on the target, and the width of the group may fluctuate slightly (no more than 3/4").

The first shot generally cuts the centerline of the target approximately 2" higher than the bulls eye - which is exactly where I want it. Everything moves to the right from there.

I have noticed that the synthetic stock seems to touch the barrel on the left side of the channel near the end of the forearm. The left nub at the tip of the forearm contacts the barrel tightly, while the right one does not. Is it safe to say that the root of all this evil is the stock? Is it worth chasing Remington for a new stock? Or should I just dump it and look for a HS Precision or McMillan? Or is it me?

Thanks in Advance!
 
It certainly sounds like a stock/receiver bedding issue. Have your stock screws been torqued properly? Is there any oil in the bedding? Is it an injection moulded stock or wood or laminate or fiberglass?

Has it been epoxy bedded or just as is from the factory?

If it's one of the injection moulded stocks, some of them shoot very well, most need work. They have a pressure pad about one inch from the stock fore end tip, sometimes removeing this and relieveing the rest of the barrel channel back to the receiver will be enough to make the rifle shoot acceptably.

If you're looking for sub MOA groups with factory ammunition, you should go to a precision aftermarket stock or even a factory laminated stock and bed it properly, which of course opens up another Pandoras Box and leads to the dreaded ACCURACY ADDICTION. Almost as costly as drugs, but you have something to show for your trouble and money and a smile on your face. bearhunter
 
Hey Bearhunter Thanks for the info !!

It is an injection molded stock and factory bedded ( meaning no bedding ). The screws are torqued correctly. I will check the pressure pad and let you know how it turns out at the range. Again thanks
 
An inexpensive trick is to use an old credit card and cut it to fit underneath the action (where the bolts tighten). This raises the action and barrel off the stock and free floats the whole thing.
 
If that stock is actually touching harder on the left side than on the right at or close to the forend, It will cause shots to walk Right as you shoot it. What happens is as the barrel warms, (even a little bit) it expands and then the contact is yet tighter. This additional pressure "walks" the next shot right more, etc, etc. You need to get rid of that contact to eliminate that horizontal stringing. Regards, Eagleye.
 
thanks Woodsman and Eagleye ! :)

I will try a shim under the action to see if it will lift the barrel far enough to stop the pressure.

Eagleye that is what my coworker and I thought as well.

Is there anything negative to be worried about if I dremel off the pads ? or at least shave them quite a bit ?
 
If I were you I would first get rid of the sidways pressure, so that the only contact is on the bottom of the bbl in the center. Then try shooting it, if it is still unacceptable you could then try totoaly free floating the bbl.

If you do try to use a shim to test how it may shoot with a free floated bbl remember that the Remington action is round, if you put a wide shim under it it will wrap around the action and bind on the sides, causing the stock to flex outwards and will probably result in poor accuracy. The shim needs to be narrow enough not to wrap to far around but wide enough so the action does not "wobble" side to side.
 
Take the pressure pad in the barrel channel out. Then bed the action. If it doesn't shoot any better put the pressure pad back in with a dab of bedding compound.
 
Sabre, I have a 700 SPS as well and the bloody thing was all over the paper. I filed down those little pressure pads that you are talking about and it didn't seem to make much difference. I even went so far as to purchase a used and already bedded walnut ADL stock. Again not much difference. I am a handloader, so I have been experimenting with different loads and so far only a couple of different bullet weights. I think that part of the problem maybe the fact that the barrels are very light on these rifles and a 30-06 is quite a potent round. This may be causing the barrels to whip. With some carefull handloading the rifle is starting to settle down somewhat, but I was very dissapointed in the accuracy. I also have a 700 SPS in .223 Remington and it's a friggin' laserbeam:rolleyes: go figure. But the barrel is slightly heavier on the 223 and only bored out to .22 cal so that makes a lot of difference. Basically what I'm saying is that it appears that only a certain bullet weight and powder combination will make these rifles accurate.
 
One of my buddies has one that did this for a while as well. His is in 300 uber mag though because it is much deadlier. lol.

It was all over the place as well. Cold bore shot was decent, after that, they would walk several inches.We tried a bunch of things. Shoot from a rest/no rest. Bipod, no bipod, several 165 and 180 gr tips. Really wasn't doing much. Along the way, we messed with the stock. Put in shims(pieces of those spark plug feeler guages work awesome), bedded it, and tried both free floating and some front pressure. It was still a 3-4moa (over 3 shot) gun.

Finally, he broke down and bought a better stock(H&S) and we again bedded it. It is now a decent rifle. Over many loads as well. Trigger is still factory BTW.
 
Hi All,

I'm the owner of the rifle (boat anchor?) that Sabre is referring to. After spending all day yesterday with a bottle of Butch's Bore Shine, I stripped out every bit of fouling that I could and took it to the range for some testing.

Another bit of back story here - I've tried everything from stock bedding to 3 shims made out of strips of plastic from a cottage cheese container. Three is too many - the rifle won't feed rounds out of the magazine with three. One seems to free float it, as verified with some Canadian Tire Money, so I tried without any shims and with one shim.

A box of 180gr Fed. PowerShoks got me the following results @ 100 yds:

2 sets of vertical stringers, far to the right side of the target - I readjusted the scope to bring them more onto the paper and added my single shim.

The next group of 4 shots put 2 in a ragged hole, 1 about 1/2" to the right and 1/4" up, the next 1/2" left and 1" up, and the fourth 1/2" left and 1.5" down.

For kicks, I brought it over to the 50 yard range:

1st shot takes out the bullseye (woo!)

2nd shot is 1" left of that

3rd is about 3/4" left of bullseye and 1/2" down

4th is about 1/4" left of centerline and 1" down from center

5th is about 3/4" right of 4th

6th is 1" right of center

That works out to a nearly perfect U shape with 1 in the middle. If I'd been doing that on purpose, I'd be very happy, but I had the rifle rested on 2 rests - so pretty solid - constantly aimed at the bullseye with no scope adjustments.

Any more suggestions? I'm trying to get a hold of a couple of gunsmiths to see if they can find out what's wrong with it.

Many thanks to all of you who've offered suggestions.
 
thejeff said:
Any more suggestions? I'm trying to get a hold of a couple of gunsmiths to see if they can find out what's wrong with it.
Click to expand...
I understand this rifle has a Leo III mounted on it ? I'd get the scope checked out or at least try it on a different rifle to see if it's good.
Just a thought as a Bud went through a similar experience with a rifle, bedding, floating, trigger jobs, bore lapping, loads and ammo up the wazzoo etc.. only in the end to discover his scope was #ucked :bangHead:

Good luck to you, hope it works out:rockOn:
 
Hi All,

I've been looking at my rifle a bit more and I'm noticing that the front ring is not quite in line with the barrel.

I've taken a set of calipers and one side of the front ring is closer to the back ring than the other, but only by a millimetre or two.

Would this be enough to throw my scope off kilter and create these lousy groups I'm still experiencing after floating the barrel?

Thanks,
Jeff
 
The slight misalignment you mention is nothing to worry about as long as your scope is adjusting properly, and you mention it is.

Your scope bases or rings may be loose. It doesn't seem to be the rings from your description, so maybe the bases have one loose screw. I like to put enough torque on the base screws so I don't have to worry.

One thing that set off alarm bells right away and your description of the group seems to bear this out is the "plastic, cottage cheese container, shim". The plast in these containers is very ductile and make poor shims because of this feature. The plastic will move almost everytime it's shot.
I made the same mistake myself so don't feel bad. You need either aluminum or brass shimstock, aluminum blinds work fine or tin from a can if you're not worried about rust, brass is better, they also have plastic shim stock available that is purpose built for shimming applications, whatever, get rid of the cottage cheese container.

That SPS seems to be capable of grouping well, if it doesn't shoot under 2cm, don't be alarmed or disappointed, most off the shelf rifles with off the shelf ammunition won't. YES we all know of exceptions, you're rifle probably isn't one of them.

Something is loose, and sometimes it can be extremely frustrating to find out what. Replace the cottage cheese shim with a proper one. Make sure your front action screw is tight and your rear action screw is just snug enough not to come loose, it doesn't need to be as tight as the front screw as it can cause slight action warping, check your base screws, they should be as tight as you can get them without galling the heads or if torx type, not screwing up the wrench tip. Try it one more time, If this doesn't work, take off the scope and send it to Trace Scope Repair Okotos Alta. 403-295-1534. I think that they are still the Canadian warranty depot for Leupold. bearhunter
 
Interesting, I'd never thought about the shims being too soft - I met a guy at my range who recommended plastic from an ice cream pail (he said he has a .300 win mag that he fixed that way), so I figured this was a close approximation.

Now that I look at my plastic shims, they are all bent up. I spent this evening shaping a few shims out of tin from the lids of frozen juice cans.

LOL, bearhunter... I think if I got anything in the neighbourhood of 2cm groupings, you'd hear me cheering. :) It's my hunting rifle - if it'll do 2cm @ 100 on bags at the range, I'll be quite happy.

That's interesting about the rear action screw - Remington's website recommends 30-35 in-lbs on synthetic stocks, so I set the torque wrench at 32 to split the difference and have just been torquing them both down.

I've just finished putting it back together, so I'll try to run to the range tomorrow to see what happens.
 
Forget the bits of plastic and metal. Take it to a good gunsmith and have it floated, bedded and checked over, including lug contact and scope mounts. It is unlikely your scope is the problem.

Is flinching the problem? Everyone flinches to some degree.

Try more than one load. Try several. It just may not like the one you are using. Save your brass for handloading and start loading for your 30/06. 700s will shoot and there are PLENTY of 30/06 factory loads out there.


.
 
carbonrod said:
One of my buddies has one that did this for a while as well. His is in 300 uber mag though because it is much deadlier. lol.

It was all over the place as well. Cold bore shot was decent, after that, they would walk several inches.We tried a bunch of things. Shoot from a rest/no rest. Bipod, no bipod, several 165 and 180 gr tips. Really wasn't doing much. Along the way, we messed with the stock. Put in shims(pieces of those spark plug feeler guages work awesome), bedded it, and tried both free floating and some front pressure. It was still a 3-4moa (over 3 shot) gun.

Finally, he broke down and bought a better stock(H&S) and we again bedded it. It is now a decent rifle. Over many loads as well. Trigger is still factory BTW.
Click to expand...

carbonrod, when your buddy bedded his rifle with the new stock did he free float the barrel, or is the barrel bedded as well? I have a pic of a target that I shot today with my SPS 30-06. I always handload, but to eliminate me as the problem I purchased a couple of boxes of Winchester Power Points, 180gr. and 165gr. The 1 1/4" group was shot with the 180's. I got rid of the Tupperware stock and bedded the barreled action in a used Remington walnut ADL stock. The barrel is completly free floated. I even switched scopes to eliminate that as a problem but as you can see it still exsists. The 1 1/4" group was shot one at a time with about 15 to 20 minutes of cool down time. After firing the last shot, I continued to fire three more, and you can see the result:puke: I wonder if bedded the barrel for the entire barrel channel or added a pressure point? The 165's gave very similar results.

70030-06Groups001-2.jpg
 
Hi All,

I finally got to make another trip to the range after fabricating some metal shims for my stock, so I thought I'd update you on my progress.

I created a couple of new shims out of the lids from frozen juice. Admittedly not the greatest material, but it was on hand :)

I fired two groups of three 150gr Winchester SuperX PowerPoints at 50 yards, and lo and behold, the rifle works! One group shares a large hole, the other is three holes that are so close together, the paper in between ripped.

Woo! Off to the 100 yard range.

I fired off 10 more at 100 resulting in 2 groups of three about an inch in size. Yes, that's 4 fliers - I got a bit excited, what can I say? :D

Anyways, the next test is to see if it'll shoot 180s this well. If it does, I'll keep it as-is for hunting season and take it in for a new stock and bedding after the pre-season gunsmithing rush is over.

Thanks a bunch for all your help, guys. If anyone wants pictures of the shims I created, let me know and I'll try to get some up.
 
thejeff said:
If it does, I'll keep it as-is for hunting season and take it in for a new stock and bedding after the pre-season gunsmithing rush is over.
Click to expand...
The existing stock probably is not the problem. Bedding it properly will help.

A nice fiberglass stock is a nice improvement to the SPSs. I put a Bansner on my 270. I like it, but the original stock, properly bedded, would have worked just as well.



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