Barrel life of 17 HMR

wizbanger

December 09, 2015 21:59

A friend recently purchased a Cooper in 17 HMR here on GunBroker and after receiving it couldn't get better than a 6 inch group no matter what ammo he used. He called Cooper and they told him the barrels were shot out after 2000 rounds. They offered to replace it for $400. Is the barrel life of all 17 HMR's that short?

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  bpost

  December 10, 2015 13:47

  First I would try a VERY good cleaning with Montana Extreme, making sure the bore is spotless. I would also suspect the scope and switch it out with a different high quality scope. Third, look at the muzzle crown with a magnifying glass to see if there is any damage to the muzzle.
  
  After he does that get back to us.

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  charliemeyer007

  December 10, 2015 23:34

  That seems like an awfully short barrel life for a 2600 fps. 220 Swift, 264 Win Mag I would believe. Even the 17-223 is 4000 fps range.
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.17_HMR
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.17-223

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  Mobuck

  December 11, 2015 03:59

  I doubt this. What I've found is certain lots of ammo produce widely varying levels of accuracy. When I got my first 17 HMR(Ruger 17/22), I bought the only ammo on the local dealer's shelf which was Hornady V-Max. I was getting 100 yard cloverleafs so started buying the same ammo by the 500 round carton. Later I was having accuracy problems and did some deep cleaning, changed scopes, had a mental butt-kicking session, and nothing helped. Opened a different lot of ammo and the problem went away(well sort of-the cloverleafs haven't returned but it's "good enough"). In this case, different ammo lots increased group size by 5-6X.

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