DIY Tikka Barrel Swap, By Dioni Amuchastegui

[HighUintas]

I just torqued on a factory takeoff 223. I have a 223 go gauge. Cleaned chamber, gauge, and bolt face. I did NOT remove the ejector pin or extractor. The bolt closes easily, although with a little more resistance than empty chamber. Probably close to when chambering brass.

I put a piece of Scotch tape on the bottom of the gauge. The scotch tape measures very nearly 0.002 with my calipers. The bolt closes easily, although with a touch more resistance than without tape.

I put two pieces of tape on and the bolt will not close. It doesn't even go down very far at all, like it's just barely getting over the camming surface.

Does that sound pretty good? Maybe about 0.002ish over minimum?

My other two barrels I only hand load for, so I just made sure the brass wouldn't grow excessively on first firing and went for it. No gauges.

 

[Castle Rock]

Perfect

 

[KY_coop]

I've used two pieces of tape. That's where my research pointed me and it hasn't been negative yet.

 

[MattiG]

There's a ton of room for error in some gauges. First time I installed a pre-fit barrel, I was a nervous little Nellie because my Forster no-go gauge closed just as easily as the go gauge. Torqued barrel to 75ft lbs. Proof Research said 1 piece of tape on the no-go gauge is fine. So that's roughly 4 thousands larger than the go gauge.

Rifle shoots .3-ish MOA with a rank amateur behind the trigger and hasn't ever done anything weird.

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[Dioni A]

I just torqued on a factory takeoff 223. I have a 223 go gauge. Cleaned chamber, gauge, and bolt face. I did NOT remove the ejector pin or extractor. The bolt closes easily, although with a little more resistance than empty chamber. Probably close to when chambering brass.

I put a piece of Scotch tape on the bottom of the gauge. The scotch tape measures very nearly 0.002 with my calipers. The bolt closes easily, although with a touch more resistance than without tape.

I put two pieces of tape on and the bolt will not close. It doesn't even go down very far at all, like it's just barely getting over the camming surface.

Does that sound pretty good? Maybe about 0.002ish over minimum?

My other two barrels I only hand load for, so I just made sure the brass wouldn't grow excessively on first firing and went for it. No gauges.

That sounds absolutely perfect. Even if there is some extra room in a chamber if you were reloading and sizing setting dies properly, it’s probably not even a big deal. If you read the saami blueprints for many of these cartridges. There can be as much as 10 thousandths tolerance on chamber depth most no go gauges will be shorter than the actual allowable chamber depth by a few thousands

 

[TeaGull]

PSA - SAC Bravo Tikka Bushings is not a great fit on a PBB factory lite "Duplicate". The taper is slightly different than the factory barrel.

I was expecting a challenge getting a 15 year old T3 barrel off. It almost came off too easy, leaving me fiending for a battle.

New PBB 6PRC factory lite contour showed up today. Went to torque it on and had trouble keeping the barrel tight with drywall tape. The contour of the Tikka bushings from SAC was not quite correct for the new PBB prefit. I added a bunch of brown sugar and ditched the drywall tape. This held and got the barrel torqued to 100#. Slight battle scar on the cerakote, but such is life in the garage.

 

[Schmo]

@TeaGull,
What are the specs on that barrel! I recently got a 6PRC barrel from them

 

[TeaGull]

21" lite contour, spiral flute, 7.5" twist, PBB's standard chamber, .140 freebore.

 

[Schmo]

Oh cool! I did an 18” .750 taperless 7.5 twist. Diamond fluted matte stainless, with .040 extra freebore, for a total of .180 FB.

I haven’t got to shoot it yet, and won’t be able to for awhile. Curious how yours will shoot

 

[uglymud]

Guess I got lucky, mine came off easy with no oil or heat. Didn't even bother mounting the vise up yet. Torqued it back down to 75 ftlbs. Went from 7 mag to an 18" 7 saum.

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[Tahoe1305]

Yeah I wonder what the difference is. I’ve done 5 now and never had an issue.

I will say the barrel vice has to be insanely tight and zero movement. I also find a cheater bar (close to 24”) is typically required.

 

[uglymud]

Yeah I wonder what the difference is. I’ve done 5 now and never had an issue.

I will say the barrel vice has to be insanely tight and zero movement. I also find a cheater bar (close to 24”) is typically required.

I did get a little slippage and had to tighten it more than expected. Was able to give it a few good tugs bracing my foot against the table and it loosened up.

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[EastHumboldt]

I used jimbee’s tool set which has a fal barrel vise. (Post #150). https://www.faltools.com/?page_id=11

It’s about 3-1/2” long with six bolts, flared to fit the barrel. Really fits a tikka factory sporter barrel good and holds it very tight with Sheetrock tape. With a 3’ long cheater and a wheeler action wrench, it came off so easy I was wondering what all the fuss was about. Newer T3xl so I’ve heard they come off easy.

BTW I’m done with the tools if anybody wants to use them.

 

[Randonee]

Just a quick note to thank everyone who contributed to this thread! Super helpful!

A few notes based on things I wondered about:

• Barrel that was removed was a Tikka fluted superlite.
• I used the MechForce vise. Like others have found, the leather didn’t work, but the TP tube did. I had to tighten the vise with a 14” bar and make it about as tight as I could. Tightened in a star pattern.
• The vise was about 2-5/8” from the action. Maybe I’ll move it a small amount further away next time to be on less of the taper.
• I used a 4.5# hammer to hit the end of a 12” extension to the wheeler external wrench. It took 3 blows with the last one being a pretty darn hard blow.
• One layer of drywall tape protected the action. I just tightened the external wrench until snug, but needed to tighten it a tiny bit after the first hammer blow.