,243

[mytyace]

why is .243 not a more popular round in the ar platform? seems to be a great round in a bolt

[OdinIII]

.243 Winchester?

[mic2377]

Horrible barrel life and the fact that most AR's have 16-20" barrels instead of the 24-26" barrels of most bolt guns.

[Auto-X Fil]

What he said - barrel life and length. Overbore rounds need a lot of barrel. Few people want a 24" AR10 that only lasts 1,000 rounds.

[sabrefan]

Is a .243 considered an "over bore" round? Never heard of anyone complaining about barrel life in a bolt gun .243. But yea. You'd need a longer barrel than most ar's to get the most out of the .243. Come to think of it you really need a longer barrel to get he most out of the .223.

[tigershilone]

barrel burner, half the life of a typical bolt action barrel if you are lucky. There are better alternatives today.

[.46caliber]

Is a .243 considered an "over bore" round? Never heard of anyone complaining about barrel life in a bolt gun .243. But yea. You'd need a longer barrel than most ar's to get the most out of the .243. Come to think of it you really need a longer barrel to get he most out of the .223.

That's cause nobody puts that many rounds through a .243 bolt gun. All the people I know that own one use it as a deer rifle for wives or youth and maybe put 10 rounds a year through it.

[TomD]

That's it! Knew a high power shooter who shot a .243 Win and set the barrel back every 1000 rounds. Very flat to 600!

[Eurodriver]

Speaking of .243 barrel life...I have a buddy who shoots his .243 made by GAP out to 600 every week.

He shoots six strings of 5 rounds every Thursday and buys a new barrel annually.

That is crazy!

[LRRPF52]

If you're in the larger frame of the AR10, 6.5 Creedmoor and .260 Remington are the way to go.

Either will do anything the .243 will do, and then step up into much heavier projectiles.

If you want to roughly duplicate .243 Winchester performance with a solid target bullet that is lightweight, shoot the 107gr SMK really fast, but with lower chamber pressure, and you'll have excellent barrel life compared to a .243 Winchester.

You can run a mild load of Varget behind the 107gr SMK and get 3000fps with the .260 Rem, 1.3gr below the max load.

The 107gr SMK has a higher BC than Sierra lists, when you look at Litz's data for it:

G1 Litz - .461
G7 Litz - .230