RPR Upgrade Barrel Experiences

[RDRFab_65]

My brother and i share an RPR Rimfire rifle for local NRL22 matches. The system shoots well but just cant group tight enough after trying all sorts of things to keep up with the guys who have kidd and volquartsen systems.
After performing action torque tests and about 15 different types of ammunition we found the RPR we have likes SK Pistol match and another CCI ammo we had shooting at roughly 1082fps average. Unfortunately we see lots of fliers still and cant really get the group any smaller than 1.2" at 50 yards.
We have decided from these results to upgrade the barrel and trigger and are wondering what your experiences are with different manufacture barrels. We are trying to stay in the $350 and below range on a barrel and have run across some manufactures that we are not familiar with: Green Mountain & Shaw.
We appreciate any experiences you can share with us.
Alex

 

[Boyd L.]

This is an answer to a question you didn’t ask, but if your fliers are intermingled with “good” shots on target I’d be inclined to think your issue is inconsistent ignition.
While a good barrel certainly won’t hurt it may not be the issue.

 

[RDRFab_65]

We never thought about it that way.
Sometimes it will make a few groups without a flyer and other times its every other group i see a flyer. I know i have pulled a few but the ones where i absolutely have no idea what happened, those are the ones im counting as flyers.
Are there known ignition issues with the RPR22 that i can look into further?

 

[cmillard]

Just rebarrel! I had same issues and ALL issues went away when I took barrel off and put on a Green Mountain barrel. Shoots lights out now and consistent

 

[RDRFab_65]

Just rebarrel! I had same issues and ALL issues went away when I took barrel off and put on a Green Mountain barrel. Shoots lights out now and consistent

That GMR barrel is thinner than the Shaw. How is the balance on your setup?

 

[Boyd L.]

We never thought about it that way.
Sometimes it will make a few groups without a flyer and other times its every other group i see a flyer. I know i have pulled a few but the ones where i absolutely have no idea what happened, those are the ones im counting as flyers.
Are there known ignition issues with the RPR22 that i can look into further?

Any inconsistency in firing pin mass, velocity, depth of strike, or location of the strike can cause a flier (at least a flier as defined by BR shooters) with some ammunition.
A smooth, unimpeded firing pin fall, a bit stronger spring, and a properly profiled tip are usually described as “fixes”. I’m not familiar with the RPR’s firing pin setup so my advice might only apply to someone with an Anschutz, a Remington 540-580 series, or 40-X.
I would think that somewhere there’s someone who is familiar with the firing pin and could advise if it’s a spot of concern.

 

[Tim s]

One of the easy things is to see what type of pin strike you’re dealing with given not to many great fixes available via the internet.
If you get ambitious take a good image of your pin tip
With the bolt in fired position and one or two fired case heads.

 

[cmillard]

That GMR barrel is thinner than the Shaw. How is the balance on your setup?

It is shorter than stock (16.5 vs 18) and .920 diameter (I think). Balances well!

 

[Tech0214]

Well I did a bunch of testing with the Shaw barrel. It seemed like it was gonna shoot okay then i started having second thoughts after the new wore off. Called Shaw and told them about my concerns with the inaccuracy of the barrel. They sent me another barrel.so I shot every brand of ammo known to man. Still didn’t satisfy my taste. Just these random fliers that I couldn’t explain. Don’t clean it. It would shoot a 6 to 7” group at 50yards with the best shooting ammo for about 15 rounds. Craziest thing I ever seen. Then I purchased a Green Mountain Barrel. Let’s just say the rest is history. It’s a shooter now. It’s favorite ammo is the new SK Long Range Ammo.

 

[RDRFab_65]

I should post an update.
My brother purchased a GMR barrel 16.5". Right away this barrel fixed our chambering issue where the bolt would pick up a round from the magazine and then crush it because it didnt feed properly into the chamber. We broke it in with some cheap stuff which was grouping slightly better than the oem barrel. when we switched to sk pistol to check how the previous favorite was, the rifle came right on down to .9 moa at 50 by the second string of 10. the best group of that day was after roughly 300 rounds and the sk came in at .75 moa at 50. We argued about cleaning the rifle and decided on letting it build up. so the first 100 rounds it got a cleaning regime and 150 after that are no clean.
i took the action out and inspected the floating bedding block (part 54 from the owners manual) which houses the magazine tensioner and ejector. it was very loose and none of my other competition rifles have anything close to that kind of play so i shimmed it up with tape so it would still be removable and tested it. we have groups down to .6 moa at 50 and are very pleased. i think the stock is a poor design and an upgraded aluminum chassis could benefit by reducing movement of the action in the stock. we did notice the groups would change if you loaded the butt stock up. I think this has to do with how flimsy the neck of the butt stock is (by the grip). we try our best to shoot in free recoil to prevent the stock issues from causing grouping issues.

that was kind of long but i wanted to let everyone know what we have tested and what we have tried to reduce our groups and improve the platform over stock. in short we are very happy with our GMR barrel.

 

[cmillard]

What kind of tape did you use?

 

[RDRFab_65]

I used some aluminum ducting tape. I had some lying around from my dragster. Easy to mold, holds up well.

 

[cmillard]

I heard that stuff works