Last summer I bought a Topper 158 Combo at a gunshow. It was rough. I cleaned it up. Trimmed the barrel to 16 3/4 to eliminate some boogered rifling at the muzzle and put a red dot Bushnell on it.
Shooting my standard .30-30 plinking load of a soft 165 RD over 8 grs. of Red Dot, I was getting shotgun patterns. I found out that the mounting rail was only secured to the barrel by one screw, the other one wallowed out. There was a third screw hole that was the wrong size. I ran a tap into one of the screw holes and got it to engage a screw. Now I am getting baseball size groups at 50 yards.
A friend is going to redrill all the mounting screws to #8 when he gets around to it. That's what you get for free. Anyhow, when I get the mounting rail securely screwed to the barrel and bedded, I will start to develop more accurate loads for plinking, small game and deer. In November I did kill a small (very) doe at about 7 yards with the 165 RD over Red Dot.
