Bergara B-14 R tips, tricks, mods, and photos

MOBILE 1 said:
Might is the Key word. What is the Rockwell of the interior the barrel where the burr is? That is a factor. Sending soft lead that is coated to slide easier down a metal barrel my round the burr but a burr that size I would have serious doubt.

How I would fix it. Easy .
1) get or make an aftermarket barrel.
2 make a cutter to take the burr out of the barrel.
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Perhaps the burr in the artist's rendition is too large to be reduced by shooting a few thousand rounds through the barrel. No matter, however, as your disagreement would be with Bill Calfee, the rimfire specializing gunsmith who said he knows of it happening.

Regarding how to remove the flaws, while the first option doesn't do anything to them, the second option is interesting. Can you share some details? Is there any risk of the cutter moving the leade further from the breech? Or is the leade left intact, with only the burrs removed?
 
grauhanen said:
Perhaps the burr in the artist's rendition is too large to be reduced by shooting a few thousand rounds through the barrel. No matter, however, as your disagreement would be with Bill Calfee, the rimfire specializing gunsmith who said he knows of it happening.

Regarding how to remove the flaws, while the first option doesn't do anything to them, the second option is interesting. Can you share some details? Is there any risk of the cutter moving the leade further from the breech? Or is the leade left intact, with only the burrs removed?
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If you know what you are doing the burrs is the only thing removed.
Simple make a cutter the proper size Not to cut in to the land. In a linear motion remove the desired amount of stock. The hardest part would be to figure the angle to set the barrel at. Simple trig. Measure the height of the land make the cutter. In this case I would most likely use ceramic. Make it a safe cutting side not to cut into the barrel and remove the burr.

I have no disagreement with any body. Gun smith or not. Running some thing soft over a harden steel will at best round the edges just from the pressure. If it were to be a jacked bullet that is a different story.

In any case this thread is about B14s. Do not need to derail it and get it locked.
 
Longstud said:
How did you fabricate the lapping tool used and what angle did you use? Did you spec the chamber measurements from the manufacturer? Thanks
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I cast a lap in the bore. For the core, I just removed the bristles from a brush for the lap to form around. Melt some lead, pour it in, poke it out and load up some lapping compound then get to work.
 
MOBILE 1 said:
If you know what you are doing the burrs is the only thing removed.
Simple make a cutter the proper size Not to cut in to the land. In a linear motion remove the desired amount of stock. The hardest part would be to figure the angle to set the barrel at. Simple trig. Measure the height of the land make the cutter. In this case I would most likely use ceramic. Make it a safe cutting side not to cut into the barrel and remove the burr.

I have no disagreement with any body. Gun smith or not. Running some thing soft over a harden steel will at best round the edges just from the pressure. If it were to be a jacked bullet that is a different story.

In any case this thread is about B14s. Do not need to derail it and get it locked.
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Thanks.

The concern raised in the final point may be misplaced. Keep in mind that the information from Calfee was offered in an attempt to answer the OP's question in post #24, "Will they [burrs] finally wear off? Are they detrimental to accuracy?" It was you who added the view that the Calfee information must be wrong. You offered no further information until asked. In the end, as this discussion relates to the OP's questions, it shouldn't be a problem.
 
When I seen Johnny Boom's rifle I decided to buy a B14R barreled action. And after looking at stocks I decided on the MPA as well. Sorry Johnny:redface:

I'd consider myself a novice shooter. Not fast, not the best shot either. But I have a Area were I can shoot out to 750 yards or so. And I figured I'd shoot more if I had a .22 percision trainer.

After getting the stock and action I realized there were no action screws included with either. Luckily had an extra set for my Rem700. They needed to be cut to length. So if you are looking at the same maybe grab some action screws.

I mounted a Nightforce 5.5x22x50 MOART reticle. But I'm looking for a different scope as I robbed this one off my .308 to get shooting. If anyone has any recommendations I'd be interested in hearing. Kinda gandering at an Athlon. Something with plenty of internal adjustment.

After work last night I took advantage of a calm still evening. No time to set up paper, no match ammo, but why wait. I had shot the previous evening as well, but it was a 50km wind so I really had no idea of how it was performing. I was having some problems with failure to feeds. But after adjusting the mag catch, the issue was resolved.

Here is a picture of my Rifle and a 5 shot group from 100 yards on 6" plate. Now there were worse groups, but I'll only show the best one :p I was shooting Federal black pack 36gr cphp out of a the 1100 round box. Out of 60 rounds I had 2 failure to ejects. The brass was ejected. But landed in a way in the chamber that the bolt wouldn't cycle. Had to drop the mag, and tilt the rifle so it would fall out.

Really happy with it so far. Can't wait to try match ammo and a Tuna Can. Looking forward to seeing some nice groups, and getting out for some long range.

View attachment 487530

View attachment 487531

View attachment 487533

Here is a pic of the failure to eject.

View attachment 487534
 
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tlovell said:
When I seen Johnny Boom's rifle I decided to buy a B14R barreled action. And after looking at stocks I decided on the MPA as well. Sorry Johnny:redface:
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Great looking rig! ;)

That's odd about the action screws, I thought the MPAs usually come with them.

I had a bit of a feeding issue as well before I installed the adjustable mag catch. The rimfires are a lot less forgiving about the mag heights.

For the scope, there's a lot of choices out there. I did find with my 40 MOA rail that I have about 28 mil of vertical adjustment, so I'm pleased that I can use the full range of travel.

Did you try cleaning off all the goo in and on the bolt? I had similar failures to eject early on but a good cleaning and a few hundred rounds of ammo later, they have gone away.
 
Johnny Boom said:
Great looking rig! ;)

That's odd about the action screws, I thought the MPAs usually come with them.

I had a bit of a feeding issue as well before I installed the adjustable mag catch. The rimfires are a lot less forgiving about the mag heights.

For the scope, there's a lot of choices out there. I did find with my 40 MOA rail that I have about 28 mil of vertical adjustment, so I'm pleased that I can use the full range of travel.

Did you try cleaning off all the goo in and on the bolt? I had similar failures to eject early on but a good cleaning and a few hundred rounds of ammo later, they have gone away.
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Ya I had kinda figured the action screws came with the stock too. Another thing that was missing out of the box was the barricade stop.

I did not break the bolt down to clean it, just sprayed some G96 on and wiped her down.

Right now I have a 20moa rail, what I had left in spare parts. I should track down a 40moa as I look for glass. Thanks
 
tlovell said:
When I seen Johnny Boom's rifle I decided to buy a B14R barreled action. And after looking at stocks I decided on the MPA as well. Sorry Johnny:redface:

I'd consider myself a novice shooter. Not fast, not the best shot either. But I have a Area were I can shoot out to 750 yards or so. And I figured I'd shoot more if I had a .22 percision trainer.

After getting the stock and action I realized there were no action screws included with either. Luckily had an extra set for my Rem700. They needed to be cut to length. So if you are looking at the same maybe grab some action screws.

I mounted a Nightforce 5.5x22x50 MOART reticle. But I'm looking for a different scope as I robbed this one off my .308 to get shooting. If anyone has any recommendations I'd be interested in hearing. Kinda gandering at an Athlon. Something with plenty of internal adjustment.

After work last night I took advantage of a calm still evening. No time to set up paper, no match ammo, but why wait. I had shot the previous evening as well, but it was a 50km wind so I really had no idea of how it was performing. I was having some problems with failure to feeds. But after adjusting the mag catch, the issue was resolved.

Here is a picture of my Rifle and a 5 shot group from 100 yards on 6" plate. Now there were worse groups, but I'll only show the best one :p I was shooting Federal black pack 36gr cphp out of a the 1100 round box. Out of 60 rounds I had 2 failure to ejects. The brass was ejected. But landed in a way in the chamber that the bolt wouldn't cycle. Had to drop the mag, and tilt the rifle so it would fall out.

Really happy with it so far. Can't wait to try match ammo and a Tuna Can. Looking forward to seeing some nice groups, and getting out for some long range.

View attachment 487530

View attachment 487531

View attachment 487533

Here is a pic of the failure to eject.

View attachment 487534
Click to expand...



First time out I shot from a bench and had no feed or ejection issues, but when shooting from a barricade, this exact same thing happened to me as well.

This lead me to some root cause analysis...

The problem occurs because Bergara obviously made a stupid decision to allow the bolt to stroke farther than it should so it feels like a center fire.

That exposes the ejector post and leaves the rifle vulnerable to this problem.

I am still working on a few corrective actions intended to resolve the problem.

The first potential resolution is to limit the height the mag is allowed to get up into the action.

The idea here is to lower the mag so the extracted round does not get ejected prematurely by the rim of the top round in the mag, instead of the ejector post.

This can be achieved by adding layers of masking tape to the top of the mag behind the functional parts. Then adjust the mag catch on the MPA chassis lower if needed to compensate.

If you land on solid ground with this effort and reliability improves, substantially, I would suggest drilling and countersinking a hole and threading in a drywall screw to act as a jack screw to control the mag height and prevent it from changing when resting on a bag.

The next step would be to do what Bergara should have and shorten the bolt stroke to the rear. This can be done by drilling a hole and adding a roll pin to the lug on the left side to shorten the stroke by about a quarter of an inch. Find a handy guy or gunsmith for that.

Another problem I had was created secondary to the mag height problem, where a round would not feed under certain directional pressure on the mag. This is also common to Vudoos (which I have as well) and it can be improved the same way I described it here.

When the mag misfed because the height was not idealized, the round got to the left side of the Bergara action and upon closing the bolt, it got wedged into the lug way on the left side and trapped between the lug channel and the barrel. That took more effort than it should to clear.

I'm considering solutions to this such as pouring JB Weld or Cerrosafe into the left side lug way to fill the void. That would prevent a round from getting trapped in the pinch zone.

BTW, you can use a Vudoo mag in a Bergara in an MPA stock, but you cannot use a Bergara mag in a Vudoo. The Vudoo mags like 6 layers of Frog Tape on top to feed reliably under all conditions in the Bergara. That's about 0.023"
 
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Good points, I think Go Big Tact carries the inserts. Is it possible that not cycling the bolt fast enough causes the spent brass to lodge like that?

Maybe I was soft stroking it?:p
 
tlovell said:
Good points, I think Go Big Tact carries the inserts. Is it possible that not cycling the bolt fast enough causes the spent brass to lodge like that?

Maybe I was soft stroking it?:p
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It's possible. If your phone has a slow motion mode you can use it to observe the ejection of the spent cases. Also, it could be the brand of ammo. Mine was doing it more with Federal Gold Medal than anything else. Wouldn't extract and eject live rounds either.

Hey, diff'rent strokes for different folks.
 
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Just showing up to the party. I complete my build yesterday.

B14R Carbon Action,
Trigger Tech Special,
Manners Prs2 stock with mini chassis,
Vortex Raxor HD Gen 2 3-18,
area 419 hellfire 2p,
atlas bt10

Any Recommendations on ammo? I have some SK standard plus for now.


IMG-0035.jpg
 
DCC709-DD-BF79-49-BA-A3-A2-79992-A5782-F2.jpg

My b14 has 6000 rounds through it with 4 failure to eject.

It’s in a cadex chassis, but I modded the mags for the mag latch.

My stock carbon barrel had the notorious first shot point of impact shift.

Recently put in a new IBI barrel, problem solved.

I would personally take my b14 over any rimx or vudoo any day. This is a game of reliability. Any gun that is not reliable no matter the quality is not worth it. If you drop points every match because your gun jams, is not worth the cost no matter the price.
 
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Only 1200 rounds through the barrel now, a little too early to tell.

Although, groups so far have been under 1/2” @ 50, 1.5” @ 150 and 6” @ 300, all 10 rounds, but I still have more proper testing to do.

I’ve tweaked the headspace so the bolt is a little stiff but still acceptable, that gives an SD of 4.5 ES 17, it’s nice being able to fine tune headspace with the barrel nut.
 
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