I ordered one last fall and was very excited to start shooting it. A buddy of mine had bought one first and it was a tack driver, so he convinced me to buy the same gun but in different color.
I didn't have the same luck he did. Right out of the box the chamber was so tight and rough cut that you couldn't even close the bolt on factory ammo.
I called up CA, and although their customer service person was friendly and easy to work with, he made it seem like it was no big deal and it happens all the time, and that I'll have to send it in "to get the chamber polished." May not be a big deal to them but I was really hoping to take this on my mule deer hunt in a month.
Taking it to my own smith would've voided the warranty, so with my hands tied, I shipped it back to CA.
I get an email 3 weeks later saying they put a new barrel on it, and made sure it would chamber and extract a factory loaded round, and said it was good to go.
Well I had just left for my mule deer hunt (in which I had to sadly bring my old rifle instead of this new one that I was excited about) so the repaired CA would have to wait at my FFL until I got back.
After the hunt I picked up the new barreled rifle, mounted the scope again, and headed back to the range. Like they said, it would chamber and extract a factory round, but after extraction you could see scratches on the side of the bullet where some imperfections were left in the freebore of the chamber. Oh well, at least I could shoot now. And man did it shoot great! I will give it to this gun, it shoots factory ammo very well!
But I like to develop my own loads, so I began loading up some test loads with many different powders and bullet combos, all starting at the minimum charge weight (sometimes even lower). And once again I was very disappointed in what I found. Didn't seem to matter what combination of components, charge weight, or seating depth, I would hit pressure very early and would get creedmoor speeds out of this 6.5 PRC.
I ended up taking it to a local smith and he checked the headspacing with his go no go gauges. The bolt closed on the go gauge, but would not close with a piece of masking tape on the back of the go gauge, so extremely tight headspacing (and probably a dull reamer at the CA factory ) is my issue.
Not wanting to have to send it back again, I decided to live with it and just bought a bunch of that factory ammo that it loves to shoot, and decided I'll just rebarrel it myself once this barrel has ran it's course.
