Hi All,
Just wanted to post about my experience with a Terminus Apollo action that I'm about to list on an auction website.
After having a couple rifles built on Remington 700 actions that worked very well, I decided to move up to a custom action. I looked at BAT, Stiller, Defiance, and Terminus. When it came down to it, I wanted an action that already came from the factory with a nitride finish, and with the high lead times and cost, I settled on Terminus. I also liked the idea of their threaded trigger pins.
I had a well-known gunsmith install a Krieger barrel into the action, chambered for .308 Win. Pretty standard set-up. What could go wrong?
The fit of the bolt to the action was OK, a little looser than I was expecting, and it seemed only slightly, if at all, tighter than a factory Remington. As soon as I got the barreled action back from the gunsmith I attempted to assemble it into the Manners stock. My stock has the integral mini chassis for use with AI or Magpul magazines. That's when I ran into the first two problems.
1. The magazines would not go in far enough to lock in. Neither Accurate, AI, or Magpul mags would go in without a LOT of force and wiggling. At first I thought there was something wrong with the stock, chassis, or magazine catch, so I installed a factory Remington 700 action into it to verify, and the magazines went in fine. So, I figure the cut-out on the bottom of the action was not deep enough. I emailed Terminus and was told they are made to the same spec as Remington. (Which may be their intention, but I doubt it's the case on my action.) I ended up removing about .020" from the top of the mag catch, which allowed the magazines to lock in. That's when I encountered problem #2.
2. I use Accurate, AI, and Magpul magazines. My preference is Magpul because they are inexpensive and don't scratch my brass. (Like many of you here, I reload and I like my handloads to look like they were made in a professional manner). With the bolt back, I could insert a Magpul magazine, but the bolt was hitting the feedlips when I closed the bolt. It worked fine with the metal magazines, however. So, again, I put a Remington action into the stock to verify that the problem was the Terminus Action. I ended up filing about .020" off of the feedlips from the Magpul magazines. in order to make them work.
So, by this point I've had to modify the magazine catch and magazines in order to work with the Terminus action. Now I was ready to go to the range.
That's where I encountered problem #3.
3. Every few shots, when ejecting the spent case, it would barely clear the ejection port, falling out right next to the gun, sometimes falling back into the action, while other cases were ejected a foot or so away. When I contacted my gunsmith, I was told to send the entire gun in. After having the gun for a little while they called me. During the conversation, I came to believe they were blaming the problem on empty cases hitting my scope knobs, and getting kicked off the bolt face before they could be freely ejected. Well, I'm sure no one is using Terminus actions without a scope, and since Terminus could have probably positioned the ejector and extractor however they saw fit, and probably in a way to not allow empty cases to hit the scope knobs, I don't think this is OK. But, since I had another scope with different eye relief, I figured I'd swap scopes out to see if that would solve the problem. This lead me to problem #4.
4. I swapped a Leupold scope out for a Bushnell. This put the scope knob in a different position above the ejection port. After shooting about 50 rounds, still having the ejection issue, I removed the scope and found anodizing chipped away on the bottom of the windage knob. The scope was fine before this trip to the range.
So, I brought the barreled action to a local gunshop, and asked if they could just remove the barrel so I could sell the action. The person I spoke to mentioned a similar situation with a Terminus action magazine cut-out.
I know a lot of you have had good luck with various actions, including Terminus, but the most accurate rifle I own shoots like a laser, and is built on a trued Remington action.
Just wanted to express my experience. What has yours been?
Thanks for reading my post.
