dylan_b

its not your rifle, its the ammo. the saami (the guys that standardize ammo) initially standardized the .303 brit to have no more then 0.045'' shoulder radius in the chamber and 0.035'' on the ammo. headspace was 0.050''-0.064''. these dimentions are circa 1979 and are extremely small because the saami wanted all american made ammo to be safe in any brit, canadian, pakistani, aussie, american or turkish enfield. most ammo makers still follow these guidelines for obvious safety reasons. later in either 84' or 85' when the saami was making changes to certain chambers they "corrected" the dimentions to the original british imperial dimentions with 0.090'' shoulder rad on both the chamber and ammo and 0.064-0.071 headspace. even though these are the new ammo dimensions, the only thing the ammo makers have done was switch to a 0.060 rad on the shoulder. this honestly makes sence considering the huge chamber differences from one war time rifle to another. the only down side is that new production ammo suffers from case stretching and fired ammo tends to look like it has a weatherby style shoulder.

and to answer your coal question, could be that your chamber throat is worn and to touch rifling your bullets need to stick out a little further. imo stick to your manual, even if you get a little less accuracy its better to stay safe with these old rifles