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Cracked Sphur Mount
- Thread starter mikeblake
- Start date
Hang on does this mean I can't make a sammich because I'm not a chef (or a chick)?
Dang, got to hire a contractor cause it takes tools to install a drywall hanger. Clearly not a consumer item.
Yes,I do think it’s a ridiculous position and frankly I think you’re being defensive cause you own a bunch of them.
Yes,I do think it’s a ridiculous position and frankly I think you’re being defensive cause you own a bunch of them.
- Nov 3, 2010
- 9,682
- 20,202
Funny they state fingers are more than capable??? All I ever used to adjust mineScrewdriver for the flat on the nut opposite the clamp, bud.
Are you a gunsmith or did you just stay at a Holiday Inn?
- Nov 3, 2010
- 9,682
- 20,202
I slept in a van down by the river. Gunsmiffin skewl is spensive
By the standards of this thread we’ve got a lot of gonsmifs here.
He’s defensive because he pays a gunsmith to mount them…
Ok, I have been avoiding this train wreck, but how hard is it to install a scope mount? I have installed a dozen or so of them, really a piece of cake. some were QD mounts, most were traditional. Just tightened them using my trusty fixit tools, never had an issue even on the zco I put in one. Understand some have had issues, I believe the same can be said for almost anything sold in the last 100 years. I know that every broken mount has be fixed/replaced, sounds like a good product. And no I have not bought one in the last 12 years, I am now using ZCO block mounts, they work great especially if you can follow directions, and yes you do need to know how to read. 
It’s a 3 week practical at SDI. They send you an empty paper towel roll to mount on your school issued pop gun.
Just don't get why Sphur commands such a price and why people pay for it when there are mounts that are more resilient for less. Maybe it is because I have never owned one that I don't get it? I own a mount from ARC and had several NF mounts in the past. Just, how hard is it to build what is essentially a scope holder that doesn't have issues. Now, I know ARC had their issues with the hinge in the past, but that was fixed. So why do people still bother with Sphur if they still cant get it right?
That’s just too easy, duct tape or super glue and best of all no reading skills required.
They also use the shittiest softest torx fasteners ever known to man, it’s the only mount I’ve had to buy replacement fasteners because they were stripping and yes retards, I was using the proper torx bit.
Meanwhile the ARC M-Brace takes 55in on the cross bolt and I must have moved it hundreds of time around and it still feels like new out of the shop.
Pure mystery
Meanwhile the ARC M-Brace takes 55in on the cross bolt and I must have moved it hundreds of time around and it still feels like new out of the shop.
Pure mystery
I feel like asking people their opinion on cracking Spuhrs is the new litmus test to see who the retards are on SH.
Yep. Had the same experience. My assessment is the drive heads are too shallow, terrible design.
Maybe scope mounting is harder than we think, anyone remember this gem?
www.snipershide.com
Edit for fucking typo
Top scope brand that costs 4k+ keeps cracking
About 3 months ago I bought top of the line scope. (I don’t want to use the manufactures name because they’ve been great). I mounted it on my 6.5 creedmoor with ARC m-brave mount, torqued to 49inch pounds. (It’s the fixit sticks limiter I had). I took it out to shoot for the second time and...
www.snipershide.com
Edit for fucking typo
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For the umpteenth time. This is a known issue. It's NOT a design flaw or a user issue. It's a MATERIAL issue. They received a bad batch of aluminum. All the cracked bars can be traced back to that batch of aluminum. MHSA will send you a new bar at no expense to you other than the time to call Kent and ask. This is from Hakan's mouth to my ear when I asked him directly about this issue during a Spuhr training session at MHSA.
Uh huh
Considering new redesigned clamping bars are cracking. And ring top half’s are cracking
People just love beating this dead hobby horse
Spuhr is over rated. Prove me wrong
Price Cracked mounting plates Causes some scopes to lock up the magnification ring. Rare reports of cracked ring top halves. Buy a set of NightForce. More durable and almost as many Mount options for rails red dots etc. and cheaper.
www.snipershide.com
If it's not a design issue, why is Spuhr on Gen 3 of the clamp bar design, and furthermore why are they still using the bad batch of crack prone aluminum 10+ years later based on the reports and pictures?
I've had several 2011-2015ish production thinner design Gen 1 clamp bars crack and saw quite a few pictures of cracked Gen 1 ring caps around that time. I had a 2022ish warranty replacement gen 1 style clamp bar from Mile High crack, and here we are in 2024 and people are still showing pictures of recent production cracked Gen 2 (4 screw, thicker pads, just like in post #1 of this thread) and possibly even Gen 3 (5 screw, thicker pad) clamp bars. Occasionally someone posts pictures of cracked Gen 2 ring caps, just like above.
Spuhr engraves a 4 letter lot/production code on all their parts, if they really got a bad batch of aluminum and had their paperwork in order and knew where the bad aluminum ended up why didn't they post a recall notice saying "all mounts with xxxx, yyyy, and zzzz lot codes engraved on them should contact their dealer for replacement mounts?" A proactive replacement plan would look a lot better for their reputation than 10+ years of people posting cracked clamp bars and rings.
People just love beating this dead hobby horse
Wrong, we're beating a dead *professional* horse. Can't be a hobby horse since hobby implies a consumer item and we clearly established a scope mount is a gunsmith only "professional" item on the previous page.
User error. You’re over torqued. Bring to a gunsmith and have him try 10 inch lbs. Crack free!!Spuhr is over rated. Prove me wrong
Price Cracked mounting plates Causes some scopes to lock up the magnification ring. Rare reports of cracked ring top halves. Buy a set of NightForce. More durable and almost as many Mount options for rails red dots etc. and cheaper.
View attachment 8477673
If that arc zco thread wasnt closed deathbedoredismountingdick could be in there saying you need to “be smarter than a engineer “ and “use half the recommended torque values”
Im thinking by now most probably have him on their ignore list and don't see the responses anyways
Probably a good thing
Not to be a dick, but a consumer good is simply a product purchased by individuals for private use. Hence consumer "a person who purchases goods and services for personal use."
My scope mount isn't cracking in an area that would be affected by over-torquing; it's cracking on the ridge of the plate.
The area around the threads appears fine.
Additionally, if I applied enough torque to crack the aluminum from which the mount is made, the picatinny rail on my rifle would likely also suffer some damage due to the localized stress where the mount attaches on the upper receiver.
Not really, most bolt action rails are steel or titanium. Mounts are aluminum and as designed will fail before the rail is deformed. And yes it is the torque and possibly some vibrational stress that is to blame. Force passes through the mount until it finds a weak point.
No, it's not. What are you talking about?
You're changing the contextual usage in the specific situation where you originally used the term "consumer item."
This is BS to do in a discussion.
By your original use, "consumer" would fall under the definition of "a person who buys goods or services for their own use."
Now you're trying to use other definitions based on context by changing the context of the discussion you started.
Yes, any person can be a "consumer," but "consumer items" are defined as items purchased to be used by an individual.
It doesn't matter what the item is or its intended use.
If I buy a gallon of peanut butter to make sandwiches, I still need to assemble the sandwich and use the peanut butter. Or if I buy welding rods, or if I buy a donut, it's all the same. It's a consumer item, purchased by me, an individual, for personal use.
I still have ring lapping kits from the days of yore before CNC. Anyone who thinks you need a gunsmith to mount rings and a scope is the same kind of person who calls an electrician when a breaker trips or light bulb is burned out, or a plumber when the when the duce in the toilette stops it up.
We're talking about the rifle it's on, which has a forged aluminum upper.
While your point is valid, it's not relevant to this discussion.
You could also damage a mount by hitting it with a hammer, but that hasn’t happened in this scenario.
you will notice that I specifically said bolt action and they are not normally made of aluminum. And I am not sure you actually know what this about except to bang your hairless chest and feel good.
If it's not a design issue, why is Spuhr on Gen 3 of the clamp bar design, and furthermore why are they still using the bad batch of crack prone aluminum 10+ years later based on the reports and pictures?
I've had several 2011-2015ish production thinner design Gen 1 clamp bars crack and saw quite a few pictures of cracked Gen 1 ring caps around that time. I had a 2022ish warranty replacement gen 1 style clamp bar from Mile High crack, and here we are in 2024 and people are still showing pictures of recent production cracked Gen 2 (4 screw, thicker pads, just like in post #1 of this thread) and possibly even Gen 3 (5 screw, thicker pad) clamp bars. Occasionally someone posts pictures of cracked Gen 2 ring caps, just like above.
Spuhr engraves a 4 letter lot/production code on all their parts, if they really got a bad batch of aluminum and had their paperwork in order and knew where the bad aluminum ended up why didn't they post a recall notice saying "all mounts with xxxx, yyyy, and zzzz lot codes engraved on them should contact their dealer for replacement mounts?" A proactive replacement plan would look a lot better for their reputation than 10+ years of people posting cracked clamp bars and rings.
Wrong, we're beating a dead *professional* horse. Can't be a hobby horse since hobby implies a consumer item and we clearly established a scope mount is a gunsmith only "professional" item on the previous page.
So Spuhr shouldn't improve the design as field use exposes any areas for improvement?
I'd assume that the majority, if not all, of the failures of the later design(s) are users over torquing or dropping the rifle. It's a pretty basic design, specifically the ring clamps. Aluminum is used in petty much all rings. There's thousands, if not tens of thousands, of these mounts in use. Many in military and LEO use and have been vetted by those .govs before purchasing. And they continue to use Spuhr mounts. If it was an actual design issue, we'd be seeing these daily here on the Hide and all these agencies would abandon them for something else. Spuhr was nearly the exclusive mounts used here on the Hide for a decade. The amount of complaints vs. users is minimal and we know when something does go wrong, they all come out of the woodwork to let us know. We have one salty customer who has an axe to grind who's made it his life's work to let everyone know and attempt to disparage them at any chance. He's also been banned from this site at least three times. I'll let his reputation speak for itself.
Of course we're going to continue to see failures from the bad batch of aluminum as they continue to happen. That's par for the course with a bad batch of material. There's no expiration date for these mounts and people will get years and decades of use until it fails if it fails at all. It's possible that the batch of bad aluminum isn't a guarantee of failure and there's no real need to recall all of them as it's possible not all are going to fail. Maybe it's a combination of bad material and users over torquing where unaffected material could handle the over torquing. The number of ham fisted users is unlimited. I can only share what was told to me from Hakan.
I have had many cheaper rings fail, generally the screws. I'd assume others have as well. No one creates a thread about it because we (should) know that it's because it's a cheap mount and it's the expectation, or should be, that it will fail. People will complain when an expensive mount fails as their expectations were not met.
I'm sure if you emailed Spuhr w/ your batch numbers from the bad aluminum, they'd be more than happy to provide you with a new clamping bar. You state you've had several. How many is several? Two, three? Were they replaced at no cost to you when you called with a warranty claim? Did they fail to make it right with you when you reported your failure(s)?
Can you provide these pictures of the Gen 3/5 screw bar/ring failures or are you just guessing? How many failures can you account for? Shit breaks and I've seen guys break an anvil with a hammer, so it wouldn't surprise me to see some breakage.
When I state "user error" I'm including everyone, gunsmiths as well. I've met a few "gunsmiths" that I wouldn't let them fill my gas tank at a full service station, let alone touch my precision rifle. It's so pervasive that MHSA now includes the correct Torx driver due to the lack of people's ability to size their own to drive the included screws. I've also had the pleasure of working with some very qualified gunsmiths and their knowledge humbled me.
When I worked at MHSA I had to take all incoming calls and emails, with the help of others of course, including all Spuhr warranty claims. I also sold Spuhr mounts. The number of warranty claims vs. sales is minuscule and their online sales is exponentially more than over the counter/phone sales. MHSA handles all US warranty claims for Spuhr as they are the exclusive distributer of all Spuhr products in the US including any Spuhr products coming from any other US vendors. I would argue my experience with Spuhr products is more than anecdotal.
That's an example one. What was the "story" behind its failure? I never had one warranty claim for rings in my time at MHSA nor am I aware of any.Spuhr is over rated. Prove me wrong
Price Cracked mounting plates Causes some scopes to lock up the magnification ring. Rare reports of cracked ring top halves. Buy a set of NightForce. More durable and almost as many Mount options for rails red dots etc. and cheaper.
View attachment 8477673
They don’t want to hear this! It is the pack mentality at work, they pick a high vis topic and regurgitate worthless accusations and defend them with made up arguments. Everything has a percentage of failures, with a high volume sales product like the spuhr mount there will statistically be a number of failed items. The company stands behind them, so I don’t have an issue with them.
If anything on a $375-500 mount is going to fail, wouldn't you want it to be the cheapest part? The clamping bar or a fastner should be the weakest link in the system.
With a MBRACE mount the weakest link in the actual mount body...and it results complete mount failure.
You don't need a gunsmith to mount per say...but the 50th percentile in intelligence is 100 IQ. That is pretty much retarded and yes they should use a gunsmith becuase they could fuck up a bowling ball. This site is a cross section of society so deductive reasoning would lead you to believe a large percentage of users on this site are too stupid to mount a scope.
You can't assume peoples competence.
With a MBRACE mount the weakest link in the actual mount body...and it results complete mount failure.
You don't need a gunsmith to mount per say...but the 50th percentile in intelligence is 100 IQ. That is pretty much retarded and yes they should use a gunsmith becuase they could fuck up a bowling ball. This site is a cross section of society so deductive reasoning would lead you to believe a large percentage of users on this site are too stupid to mount a scope.
You can't assume peoples competence.
Sadly, my chest is extremely hairy.
I'm told it's attractive, but I don't really enjoy it much myself.
I regularly have to get ECG leads placed, and that hurts like hell. I end up with these little rings of bloody skin from it. I've tried shaving and even using Nair. Nair smells terrible, and shaving just makes everything grow back ingrown, giving me a pimply chest like a kid.
But other than that, I just wanted to rant about how I wish my chest was hairless.
Don't even get me started on my back. Oddly enough, in my 20s, I had very little hair on my chest and back.
Spuhr should absolutely make improvements based on field experience and product feedback, I'm just saying it's disappointing to see the same problem keep happening to users even after 10+ years and at least 3 revisions to the clamp bar design even if it is a very low percentage that's failing. It really sucks getting to your shooting spot and wondering why you're missing only to look down and see yet another cracked clamp bar.
For me, I've have 5 gen 1 clamp bars fail over a period of about 12 years between 11 different mounts. The first two failures I contacted spuhr directly and they sent me the replacements and didn't ask the lot code. Replacements 3-5 came from Mile High with zero hassle and they asked for pictures and where I bought them from.
Once again, I'll offer this data point about the amount of failures I've experienced... I calibrate my Mountz EMT50 and EMT80 torque drivers that I use for gun stuff 2-4 times a year in the NIST-traceable calibration lab at work. I have all the calibration data in terms of as found condition and condition after adjustment (if needed) on them going back to when I bought them 12ish years ago and know they've always been in spec so none of my Spuhrs were ever over torqued. I adjust the drivers to target -6% to +2% of the set value during calibration as I'd rather have small diameter, low torque fasteners be a bit under torque spec than over torque spec since little screws are often easy to strip or break. Regularly calibrating them and having full calibration data back to new is more than most people can say about the accuracy and calibration state of their torque wrenches/drivers.
I've never added any anti seize, grease, loctite, lard, KY warming sensations, anal lube, or any other kind of lubricant to threads or under the heads of the fasteners on the Spuhrs, as any kind of lube would significantly increase bolt strain/stretch at the specified torque value compared to dry thread torque specs-- and unless the manufacturer specifies a lubricant to use I always assume a provided torque spec is a dry thread spec and make sure the threads are dry.
And even with making sure the threads are clean and dry, using a calibrated torque wrench, tightening the fasteners in a criss-cross pattern in 2 increments (50% torque first pass and then final torque second pass) I've had 5 gen 1 clamp bars (no thick pads under the screw heads) crack between 11 mounts over 10 years or so using Spuhr. After the first two clamp bar failures at the specified 45 in-lb I tried backing the torque down to 40 in-lb but had another clamp bar crack, so backed it down again to 36 in-lb but had yet another clamp bar fail at 36 in-lb. All of mine cracked while sitting in the safe, never had one fail during installation or while shooting, and none were ever dropped. A few did get moved to different rifles or had scopes swapped during their lifespan. Some failed as early as 3 months after installation, some went for 7-8 years before cracking.
They were all warrantied with zero hassle, but after having 5 failures and the last 2 happening within about a month of each other even with reduced torque I had no more faith in them and did not want to roll the dice selling all my gen 1 mounts and getting gen 2 mounts with the thicker clamp bars as at that point I'd already seen several pictures of cracked Gen 2 clamp bars.
I had about 4 newer mounts with gen 2 clamp bars in service (4 screw, thicker pad) and never had any of those fail but by then I was torquing to them 40 or 36 in-lb after my previous gen 1 failures.
Other brands aren't immune to failure either, I had a titanium clamp block on a Nightforce ultralite unimount crack at about 60 in-lb. It appeared there was an inclusion in the material which served as a crack propagation point. NF replaced it with zero hassle. That's the only other ring/mount failure I can recall since starting shooting around 2001.
This isn't intended to be personal, I'm just stating what I've had happen along with data to back it up, and I may have even talked to you to get one or more of my replacement gen 1 clamp bars (if so, thanks!) Anything can fail, I just had too many gen 1 clamp bar failures to keep throwing money at Spuhr.
Anyways, I'm going back to shooting ground squirrels as it's more fun than posting about Spuhr issues, lol. Just got #97 of the day, and if any of you neanderthals are hungry let me know and I'll save some for you.
Call Ted. I know of atleast 5 that were returned. 3 were replaced and 2 were full cash refunds.
90% of the shit that happens at matches never makes it on the internet.
By that logic, there must be truckloads of fucked Spuhrs given the amount that have been reported here.
