Tikka T3x Lite garbage. Am I the only one?

(.270 Winchester)

I bought this gun on sale and still lost money.

The first shot on a cold bore is a laser beam. POA/POI every time. After that, it's anyone's guess where the next round will go.

I fired:
Winchester Power-Point, 150 grain, 2850 fps.
Federal Fusion, 130 grain, 3050 fps
Hornady American Whitetail, 130 grain, 3060 fps.
Hornady Precision Hunter, 145 grain, 2970 fps.
Hornady Superformance, 140 grain, 3090 fps.

All behaved exactly the same. The first shot is the only reliable shot. Surprisingly, the cheaper ammo grouped a bit tighter than the more expensive stuff.

The scope did not get lose and the action is properly torqued. I just don't get it. The gun simply cant handle any heat at all. If I sit 15 minutes between shots, it fires sub MOA. If I don't wait... 3” group... 4” group... So, I guess if I don't pull a bang/flop, then it's going to be a long day. I'm not happy. Now I'm torn between taking a bath and selling it, or maybe start throwing parts at it.
This is my first Tikka and it will be my last.

P.S.
On a positive note, the barrel is free floated, but only on the right hand side (I guess the savings were passed on to me.)

The CTR version in 308 for me is lights out. Out shoots rifles I have that have significantly more invested in. Have a simple Luepold VXIII on it and with federal gold medal it is a sub moa gun if the idiot behind it does its job. Have only been out to 300 with it but beyond price of extra mags very good purchase.

Think it's just you...below is my review in .243.

https://www.mdshooters.com/showthread.php?t=149674

FWIW, A couple of years ago I had a heavy barrel CZ 550 in .308 behave similarly and I never did figure it out. First shot would be dead on. Subsequent shots would be 3-4" from POA no matter what factory ammo I tried, including a friend's tried-and-true 165gr HPBT reloads. I thought about putting it in a different stock but decided in the end to sell it and get something else. I hated the trigger anyway.

Just guessing, but I wonder if the one-sided stock contact may be heavily contributing, possibly worse than not being free floated at all/stock making full contact with the barrel. As the barrel heats, that pressure from one side of the stock might really be throwing off barrel harmonics as the effect of the pressure on one side only begins to increase. Just my theory: barrel whips and bends more as it warms up and more prone to being thrown off by the uneven pressure from one side.

If you have the time to test it, maybe try shimming the barrel on the other side to even up stock pressure and see what happens. If it's touching on the bottom as well, do shims on the right side and a few zip ties around the barrel and stock to keep pressure flush and even on both bottom and sides. This wouldn't be a fix, just for testing purposes to see if that's your culprit (Mosin sniper/M14 approach for light-barreled accuracy by tightening the barrel to the stock to control barrel harmonics, opposite of free floating). Just be sure there's no tension on the sling when testing since the stock will again pull on the barrel.

The other approach may be to remove and remount the action, torquing one end at a time to see if you can get it to fully free float (i.e. if there's more torque on front of the receiver then it may be pulling the barrel down into the forend with it).

This seems to me like a very unsurprising manufacturing inconsistency in a budget-minded rifle. Action, barrel, bolt, trigger all pass QC inspections, then they slap it in a stock from the bin and send it out the door. That would explain why some have experienced excellent accuracy and others have issues like yours.

Of course the barrel could be stressed/warping due to bad forging or heat treating but since you've observed an obvious flaw you may want to take a look at that.

I'm not a gunsmith, just throwing out an idea.

I think you should relieve the stock that is contacting the barrel. Make it free floated or change to a different stock like a Boyd's.
Having said that, 3-4 inches is still in the kill zone for a whitetail.

GHDIII said:

...The first shot on a cold bore is a laser beam. POA/POI every time. After that, it's anyone's guess where the next round will go.

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Have you talked to BerettaUSA about the problem? They import Tikka and should stand behind a factory defect.

Tikka is made by Sako. They share many features with the milspec TRG line, and they are usually fine rifles.

...am I the only one?...

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Perhaps...

FWIW, I have seen 30 or so Tikka rifles come to training and ALL of them shot great. Made me want one...or two. Yours would a very unusual example and I'd send it to Beretta and have them fix it.

Zzzzz_man said:

FWIW, A couple of years ago I had a heavy barrel CZ 550 in .308 behave similarly and I never did figure it out. First shot would be dead on. Subsequent shots would be 3-4" from POA no matter what factory ammo I tried, including a friend's tried-and-true 165gr HPBT reloads...

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If the interface between the action and stock is good is good (bedding/clearances/screws tight and not bottomed out prematurely), this sort of problem is usually a barrel (stress relief) issue.

Handloads can perform well in the intended rifle, but may not be optimum for any others. If the precision of a .308 rifle is ever in question, try FGMM 168s. If it won't shoot with those, there is something wrong with it.

E.Shell said:

If the interface between the action and stock is good is good (bedding/clearances/screws tight and not bottomed out prematurely), this sort of problem is usually a barrel (stress relief) issue.

Handloads can perform well in the intended rifle, but may not be optimum for any others. If the precision of a .308 rifle is ever in question, try FGMM 168s. If it won't shoot with those, there is something wrong with it.

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Just for my own understanding, would uneven stock pressure from the forend on the barrel affect accuracy substantially? I was under the impression that imparting a fair amount of pressure unevenly on the barrel could affect accuracy, even if the action is bedded well. Which of course it may not be in the OP's case, we only know that the screws are tight although perhaps the action is not mating well in the stock.

My frame of reference would be taking a light free floated barrel and then driving a wedge onto one side of it which might mimic the OP's condition where the stock is putting pressure on the barrel from one side. Or would that just cause a POI shift and stringing in that direction with heat and not so much groups just getting wider overall?

Perhaps the poor barrel/stock fitment is as much an indicator of poorly bedded action pushing the barrel into the forend unevenly. I'm thinking of what I've seen in some budget-oriented rifles where they need to cut costs somewhere in the process and they indiscriminately drop an otherwise fine action and barrel into a cheap stock with no fitting.

E.Shell said:

Have you talked to BerettaUSA about the problem? They import Tikka and should stand behind a factory defect.

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I would second this; send it in for factory service. Even if it costs you a couple bucks it's still better than being out money and not having a rifle to show for it.

I agree with Ed's advice. All the Tikkas (All M595/696 or T3s, no T3Xs yet) I have owned or worked with for friends have been respectable or better than respectable shooters. Im not much on their stocks, but that is a function of my preference for a target/varmint type stock. The factory T3 stocks tend to be ok if you like sporters. I haven't had the experience of a barrel in contact. If I did and i intended to keep it in the original stock, I would be calling the importer, Beretta. It should be a straightforward fix for them to correct the barrel inlet for you.

benton0311 said:

Just for my own understanding, would uneven stock pressure from the forend on the barrel affect accuracy substantially? I was under the impression that imparting a fair amount of pressure unevenly on the barrel could affect accuracy, even if the action is bedded well. Which of course it may not be in the OP's case, we only know that the screws are tight although perhaps the action is not mating well in the stock.

My frame of reference would be taking a light free floated barrel and then driving a wedge onto one side of it which might mimic the OP's condition where the stock is putting pressure on the barrel from one side. Or would that just cause a POI shift and stringing in that direction with heat and not so much groups just getting wider overall?

Perhaps the poor barrel/stock fitment is as much an indicator of poorly bedded action pushing the barrel into the forend unevenly. I'm thinking of what I've seen in some budget-oriented rifles where they need to cut costs somewhere in the process and they indiscriminately drop an otherwise fine action and barrel into a cheap stock with no fitting.

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I don't disagree with any of what you say here and your points in this post and your post above are salient. I would agree that the barrel contact probably indicates overall stock bedding issues.

Poor bedding and subsequent uneven contact points are definitely detrimental to precision. Usually, this is as you suggest, stringing away from the point of contact as heat expands the barrel. Large groups with no real pattern are not usually a product of barrel contact, but can be any number of things.

Were I stuck with fixing this rifle myself, I would not do anything else to it until I had stock fit corrected and retested. My own wild-ass guess is that they bolted a decent action into a defective (warped/distorted) stock and it somehow escaped inspection.

While Tikkas are manufactured by Sako as part of their civilian rifle inventory and are available at about 1/3rd the cost of a TRG, they are still not inexpensive and other than the synthetic stock being a little more flexible than I prefer, I can't find fault with them. I have had quite a few Tikkas come through class and have never had one shoot more than about 1/2 to 3/4 MOA when properly driven. Because the rifles I have seen on the firing line been almost universally impressive, and because there is an obvious problem with assembly, my first suggestion would be to send it back and let Beretta correct it. They have Sako-certified techs/gunsmiths at their stateside facility and they should be able to correct this production/QC issue expediently, which is why I'd suggest this as a first step in solving the problem.

Contact Tikka. Unless they’ve changed, they have a 1MOA guarantee. It should taken 45 minutes to make that group. I have an early 80s Sako Forrester almost as old as me. It has a sort of similar issue, but not as bad. The barrel is not free floated. It can shoot 3 round groups, but at that point it has heated up too much and it starts to wander.

A good 155gr HPBT .308 round will shoot about .5-.7MOA, but then it’ll open up to around 1.25MOA by shot 5 and 1.75MOA by shot 10.

If I keep a very slow cadence of about 1 shot per 10 minutes I can shoot .8MOA 5 shot groups and I’ve done it twice. But the rifle just can’t tolerate a bunch of heat. It also doesn’t get much worse. With PPU M80 it’ll shoot just over 2.5MOA 5 shot groups as fast as I can work the bolt and reload or slightly under 2MOA for the first 5 shot group. If I shoot slow I can keep it hovering around 2 MOA for 5 shot groups, but it is about a group an hour.

But it’ll do just under 1MOA with PPU 165gp PSPBT rounds I use for white tail hunting for 3 rapid shots.

Which is probably more shots than I need to take.

The fact that a second shot wanders so far from POA/POI of the first shot, but that everything is great if shot very slowly is odd. Unlikely as heck, but try a different scope on it. Otherwise I’d assume the one sided contact. But give Tikka a call.

I have a Tikka T3x Lite in 223 and it shoots well. I think you might have got a lemon.

lazarus said:

Contact Tikka. Unless they’ve changed, they have a 1MOA guarantee.

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I think they still do and Beretta support is really good.