Pac-Nor success story

[river grant]

I ordered a new 28" super match grade barrel chambered in 284 win from Pac-Nor. I sent them a dummy round with a 168 gr berger vld for throating purposes. After 8 weeks, I received the barrel and checked the throat length with my OAL gauge. To my dismay, the throat was reamed too deep for the 168's or the 180's. Probably would have been fine for normal bullets with longer shanks though.

I called Pac-Nor and spoke with Casey. Casey listened to my gripe and said, "Ship it back now, I'll get a new barrel started immediately". Really? Just like that? Then he told me to ship my action with the barrel and he'd headspace it for me while he was at it. In addition to all of that, he said he would expedite the barrel and have it to me in a few weeks. So I sent my action with the original barrel and also sent another dummy round.

After a few weeks, the barreled action arrived and was throated to the exact length of my dummy round. After following Pac-Nor's break-in instructions, I went to the range to do some load development. In my first round of development I found a load that shot .3's. I'm sure the barrel will do better but I'll definitely be loading that recipe again and again.

It's nice to see a company that is as concerned with customer satisfaction as Pac-Nor is. For the record, I am a tiny customer, this is only my second barrel purchase from Pac-Nor...though I am sure there will be more.

[steveinwv]

My brother just ordered a PacNor barrel. I hope he doesn't have to send it back.

It's a shame that a company offering a product or service can't just get it right the first time.

With such a good range of bullets to choose from, I have often wondered why more people don't choose the .284 Win.

[McKinneyMike]

Stuff happens with any business. They made it right and that is the key to a happy customer, although everyone would prefer to not be the one that had to find out about the great customer services :)

[steveinwv]

The trouble is, this happens more and more. And the companies just send it out and hope the customer doesn't notice..........and most of the time they dont. In my personal opinion, a half ass company probably has to rely on good customer service and doing things twice. An excellent company requires very little customer service.

When you are buying a barrel and it isn't right the first time, no big deal (except for the fact that you had to wait 6 months to begin with). When you have an action worked on or a trigger job done and things go wrong the first time, you are probably SOL. How many companies are going to replace parts that they didn't supply to begin with, even though they did ruin them? They usually say that 'you' did something wrong or 'they' are not responsible for errors.

[McKinneyMike]

If it continues to happen, the company will suffer at some point, as forums like these will expose the ones that seem to get it wrong more than right.

[river grant]

Stuff happens with any business. They made it right and that is the key to a happy customer, although everyone would prefer to not be the one that had to find out about the great customer services :)


If it continues to happen, the company will suffer at some point, as forums like these will expose the ones that seem to get it wrong more than right.

Very well put.

Steve, I get your point too but I think that most of us have had experiences where companies that were offering a uniform product (no customizing) got something wrong and didn't step up quite how we thought they should have. In this case, the barrel they sent me was different than my custom specs but I can assure you, it would have shot great. The reason I want them to short throat my barrels is so that I can get more barrel life as throat erosion starts to push the seating forward.

I haven't heard many (if any?) other cases of Pac-Nor sending anything other than well-built barrels out the door. The barrel I sent back was a thing of beauty, it just didn't quite meet my specs...and I got a fresh one within a few weeks.

I like to give credit where credit is due and I believe this example is worthy. Vortex Optics' commitment to their customer's satisfaction is also exceptional.

[JCalhoun]

Maybe things are changing at Pac-Nor. I ordered a sporter contour barrel from them a couple years back. It was threaded and chambered in .300 Savage. The barrel was lousy! With handloads and factory ammo I could never get a consistent group and the best group size was 3 inches at 100y. Anyway, it coppered very badly. The bore had a lot of pits and scratches and the chamber was reamed off center.

I told them about it and sent them the barrel. They "inspected" the barrel and then told me the problem was caused by improper cleaning! You can imagine how I felt.

I told them there is no way that the problem was caused by a graphite rod with a nylon bore brush. I had the barrel inspected locally by an experienced and well thought of rifle builder and he confirmed it was Pac-Nor's fault. He said it appeared that the bore was rifled with a dull button and the chamber reamer was drilled off center.

I asked for a new barrel or a refund and got neither. I cannot recommend a Pac-Nor barrel to anyone regardless of how good their quality gets. >:(

[river grant]

I told them about it and sent them the barrel. They "inspected" the barrel and then told me the problem was caused by improper cleaning! You can imagine how I felt.


Holy cow!! You must have really been putting some torque on that cleaning rod to take the chamber off center. I'm sure glad my experience didn't work out like that.

[McKinneyMike]

Maybe things are changing at Pac-Nor. I ordered a sporter contour barrel from them a couple years back. It was threaded and chambered in .300 Savage. The barrel was lousy! With handloads and factory ammo I could never get a consistent group and the best group size was 3 inches at 100y. Anyway, it coppered very badly. The bore had a lot of pits and scratches and the chamber was reamed off center.

I told them about it and sent them the barrel. They "inspected" the barrel and then told me the problem was caused by improper cleaning! You can imagine how I felt.

I told them there is no way that the problem was caused by a graphite rod with a nylon bore brush. I had the barrel inspected locally by an experienced and well thought of rifle builder and he confirmed it was Pac-Nor's fault. He said it appeared that the bore was rifled with a dull button and the chamber reamer was drilled off center.

I asked for a new barrel or a refund and got neither. I cannot recommend a Pac-Nor barrel to anyone regardless of how good their quality gets. >:(


Yours is the first bad experience that I have ever read about Pac-Nor. I will say again, in this day and age of the internet and forums like this and others devoted to shooting sports, any company that neglects or mistreats a customer is, is sitting on a very big time bomb. Word gets around very fast and then others hear and continue the spread. Businesses can not take the chance of trying to pass off shoddy work and not get called out and undressed. If this becomes a typical occurrence with Pac-Nor, they will not survive. Too many up and coming barrel makers that are setting high standards for excellence to neglect even one customer or their issues.

[JCalhoun]

Yeap. I have since then replaced it with an E.R. Shaw barrel. That barrel shoots the 150gr Remingtons quite well and was also cheaper and faster to get. To make matters worse I had bought two barrels from PN before and they were great. It was almost like they turned into a completely different company. I would still be buying from them if they would have replaced the bad barrel to start with.

I have also bought barrels from Broughton and just recently a Brux from Sinman.

[river grant]

Here is a group I shot that I thought was pretty good (probably my best at this distance). I normally shoot 5 shot groups but this was during load development and I was getting scope elevation information at the same time. The group measured .893" center to center and was shot from 400 yards. I have no reason to think that it won't do better, but I might not be able to do better...we'll see.
http://i929.photobucket.com/albums/ad135/rivergrant/021.jpg