I have a 1903a3 with a 3-43 remington barrel. The barrel and reciever match to with in one month of production and everything on the rifle appears to remington and correct. The rifle is very clean with correct arsenal stampings for a possible rebuild of some sort. Anyway here is the question what is the maximum headspace allowed? I fired this rifle for the first time the other day and let me say with open sites it will hit a 6''x8'' plate at 150 yards everytime with open sites if you do your part but I noticed that with my reloads the primer was backing out slightly. I thought at first this may be due to a hot load but since these reloads were for my M1icon and were a little light I ruled that out right away and even after trying some korean surplus M1 ammunition in it and it did the same thing I came to the conclusion we are looking at a headspace issue. The rifle chambers the rounds fine and extracts and ejects normally. I see no indication of case seperation and I bent a paper clip and felt the inside of the case as well and could feel no ring either. I measured over all length and found the primer to back out on average .008 so what is the conclusion to this I have heard that military tolerance are more open than sammi spec if so is this with in those or am I in need of a gunsmith with some go no-go gauges to make that determination. The ammunition used was also fired in my 1955 springfied M1 and I had no primer issues as well.
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