The issue has already been posted, but the thread title was misleading (it started as a stripped Spuhr screw). It's still not resolved (despite me thinking recently that it was). Anyone wanting to read through the original thread can do so here: Cluster Fudge . But that's 3 full pages, mostly of nonsense. So here's the relevant points.
September or so of last year, took delivery of my halo rifle. Impact Precision action, Bartlein 20" Heavy Palma profile chambered in .308, Manners PRS1, Leupold Mark 5HD 5-25, Spuhr mount, Atlas bipod, Area 419 Hellfire brake, Triggertech Diamond trigger. Built by Short Actions Customs.
First range day was spent doing the break-in cycle. Tried to put together a group at the end of it, group was really bad, but didn't pay much attention to it as that wasn't the point of the day and I didn't even have a rear bag with me. Got it home, cleaned it up properly. Next weekend though, brought out the Chrono and my Georgia Arms 168gr match load, and went to lay down some baseline groups at 200 yards. Terrible, I was getting around 1.2 MOA.
Over the course of the next few months I did a lot. I purchased about a dozen different match loads (more than half of them being different flavors of FGMM), I took apart and re-torqued the rifle and scope multiple times (thus the 'stripped spuhr screw' that started off the other thread). I threw out my Wheeler Fat Wrench and got a Borka torque wrench. Started keeping velocity data and recording groups. Ended up reaching out to Andrew McCourt of McCourt munitions and had him send over one of his test series which included 14 different loads. Spent one whole day (about 4 to 5 hours) putting together all 14 groups, cataloging them, measuring them, compiling the data and sending it to him.
Something was definitely off. There's just no rhyme or reason to the madness. Some of the groups have almost no vertical dispersion and are all horizontal. Others are mostly vertical dispersion, on average though they're just all over the place. The entire time, and at this point in the story we're up to late March here, I haven't called S.A.C. yet. I didn't call primarily because I assumed it got test fired and left the factory in good condition, meaning that the problem had to do with something I installed (bipod and scope) or it was the shooter. I hadn't shot a .308 in over a decade (I'm primary a handgun shooter) until this rifle came in, but I've held 1/4 MOA before on rifles that could do it and they weren't braked. Plus I shoot a lot and have shot a lot in general. So while I'm sure my skills have deteriorated, I had doubts that this was all me.
I finally email Mark at S.A.C. (on the same day that the other thread got started). He suggested I remove the brake and try again, but I ran into Covid issues before I could hit the range again. Wife's dad died of it, her brother was on life-support, the guy who married my wife and I died from it, the man who ran his restaurant died from it .... people around us were dropping like flies. And the entire tri-state area shut down, meaning no range. Fast forward two months, and the range opens back up.
Head out there on opening day, excited. Find out when I get there that there are new rules including enforced time limits due to them eliminating every other port in the name of social distancing. I drove over an hour each direction to get to this place, and I was able to fire exactly 13 rounds before I got kicked out because of my time limit. The first 3 were to get zero back, get us off the cold bore, and one live practice round, the next 10 were two 5-shot groups. One with the brake for reference, one without.
We had success. The brake'd group measured around 0.8 MOA which wasn't bad, the second group measured just over .5 MOA with one of those being a flyer. Without the flyer, the group measured around .26 MOA and that was at 200 yards with non-match ammo (what I had at the time). I got kicked out immediately after this, but called it a success. Came back to the original thread, posted up the results, and called back S.A.C. to see about next steps. Area 419 is here on the forum, and they were nice enough to offer to ship me out another brake. Mark suggested I take them up on that, so I did. It showed up about a week later, and we hit the range.
Turns out that success was a fluke. I had two different loads of FGMM with me today, expecting really great results. Went to lay down a control group first, brake off. I'm in the groove by the way. Get down behind the rifle and just feel 'on'. Second shot gets sent, and my heart sinks. The two holes aren't close. Finish out the 5 shot group, it ends up measuring right around 0.9 MOA and I'm shooting at 100 yards. That was the 175gr SMK load. Open up the 168gr box, put about 3 rounds down range and what I was looking at disgusted me, so I just stopped that string. Put the new Area 419 brake on for shits and giggles and sent some more rounds, but again, was getting groups just under 1 MOA. Packed up, went home, emailed S.A.C.
Mark wants it back, promises to figure out what's wrong and make it right. (phew!) Then we get to talking about how to ship it back. The cardboard box he sent the rifle in initially was awesome, but I had thrown that out. And now I was shipping it back with everything on it (including the Mark 5HD). I didn't trust Fedex or UPS, so I arranged with Mark to drive it out to him. This past Sunday morning I hit the road and covered the 503 miles from home to S.A.C., stayed overnight at an AirBnB nearby, and dropped it off to S.A.C. first thing Monday morning. The idea here was to let Mark and the crew take a look. Maybe it was something obvious to them and an easy fix. Maybe he shoots it and immediately puts down a 1/4 MOA group and we realize I can't shoot for shit. Maybe its not obvious at all and he needs another few days or weeks to get to the bottom of it. If its quick, I take it from him and drive home that day or the next, if not I drive home empty handed and he ships it to me once its fixed.
I got an email about 5 hours later (just after lunch). Nothing was obvious, and the first group Mark laid down measured 0.872" at 100 yards. He did find that the M16 extractor tension was far too high and was leaving brass shavings all over the bolt face and around the chamber. After fixing that tension issue, the next group with the same load measured 0.650". An improvement, but clearly not where we want to be. At this point though, I'm not sure if I'm happy or pissed. I'm happy that it wasn't me, but pissed that I didn't call him sooner. I went through close to a $1000 in ammo and tools trying to diagnose/fix this, and I could have saved most of that.
I ended up leaving the rifle and driving another 500 miles home Monday night. Mark has a few more things he wants to check including bore scoping the barrel. I'll update this thread when there's more.
September or so of last year, took delivery of my halo rifle. Impact Precision action, Bartlein 20" Heavy Palma profile chambered in .308, Manners PRS1, Leupold Mark 5HD 5-25, Spuhr mount, Atlas bipod, Area 419 Hellfire brake, Triggertech Diamond trigger. Built by Short Actions Customs.
First range day was spent doing the break-in cycle. Tried to put together a group at the end of it, group was really bad, but didn't pay much attention to it as that wasn't the point of the day and I didn't even have a rear bag with me. Got it home, cleaned it up properly. Next weekend though, brought out the Chrono and my Georgia Arms 168gr match load, and went to lay down some baseline groups at 200 yards. Terrible, I was getting around 1.2 MOA.
Over the course of the next few months I did a lot. I purchased about a dozen different match loads (more than half of them being different flavors of FGMM), I took apart and re-torqued the rifle and scope multiple times (thus the 'stripped spuhr screw' that started off the other thread). I threw out my Wheeler Fat Wrench and got a Borka torque wrench. Started keeping velocity data and recording groups. Ended up reaching out to Andrew McCourt of McCourt munitions and had him send over one of his test series which included 14 different loads. Spent one whole day (about 4 to 5 hours) putting together all 14 groups, cataloging them, measuring them, compiling the data and sending it to him.
Something was definitely off. There's just no rhyme or reason to the madness. Some of the groups have almost no vertical dispersion and are all horizontal. Others are mostly vertical dispersion, on average though they're just all over the place. The entire time, and at this point in the story we're up to late March here, I haven't called S.A.C. yet. I didn't call primarily because I assumed it got test fired and left the factory in good condition, meaning that the problem had to do with something I installed (bipod and scope) or it was the shooter. I hadn't shot a .308 in over a decade (I'm primary a handgun shooter) until this rifle came in, but I've held 1/4 MOA before on rifles that could do it and they weren't braked. Plus I shoot a lot and have shot a lot in general. So while I'm sure my skills have deteriorated, I had doubts that this was all me.
I finally email Mark at S.A.C. (on the same day that the other thread got started). He suggested I remove the brake and try again, but I ran into Covid issues before I could hit the range again. Wife's dad died of it, her brother was on life-support, the guy who married my wife and I died from it, the man who ran his restaurant died from it .... people around us were dropping like flies. And the entire tri-state area shut down, meaning no range. Fast forward two months, and the range opens back up.
Head out there on opening day, excited. Find out when I get there that there are new rules including enforced time limits due to them eliminating every other port in the name of social distancing. I drove over an hour each direction to get to this place, and I was able to fire exactly 13 rounds before I got kicked out because of my time limit. The first 3 were to get zero back, get us off the cold bore, and one live practice round, the next 10 were two 5-shot groups. One with the brake for reference, one without.
We had success. The brake'd group measured around 0.8 MOA which wasn't bad, the second group measured just over .5 MOA with one of those being a flyer. Without the flyer, the group measured around .26 MOA and that was at 200 yards with non-match ammo (what I had at the time). I got kicked out immediately after this, but called it a success. Came back to the original thread, posted up the results, and called back S.A.C. to see about next steps. Area 419 is here on the forum, and they were nice enough to offer to ship me out another brake. Mark suggested I take them up on that, so I did. It showed up about a week later, and we hit the range.
Turns out that success was a fluke. I had two different loads of FGMM with me today, expecting really great results. Went to lay down a control group first, brake off. I'm in the groove by the way. Get down behind the rifle and just feel 'on'. Second shot gets sent, and my heart sinks. The two holes aren't close. Finish out the 5 shot group, it ends up measuring right around 0.9 MOA and I'm shooting at 100 yards. That was the 175gr SMK load. Open up the 168gr box, put about 3 rounds down range and what I was looking at disgusted me, so I just stopped that string. Put the new Area 419 brake on for shits and giggles and sent some more rounds, but again, was getting groups just under 1 MOA. Packed up, went home, emailed S.A.C.
Mark wants it back, promises to figure out what's wrong and make it right. (phew!) Then we get to talking about how to ship it back. The cardboard box he sent the rifle in initially was awesome, but I had thrown that out. And now I was shipping it back with everything on it (including the Mark 5HD). I didn't trust Fedex or UPS, so I arranged with Mark to drive it out to him. This past Sunday morning I hit the road and covered the 503 miles from home to S.A.C., stayed overnight at an AirBnB nearby, and dropped it off to S.A.C. first thing Monday morning. The idea here was to let Mark and the crew take a look. Maybe it was something obvious to them and an easy fix. Maybe he shoots it and immediately puts down a 1/4 MOA group and we realize I can't shoot for shit. Maybe its not obvious at all and he needs another few days or weeks to get to the bottom of it. If its quick, I take it from him and drive home that day or the next, if not I drive home empty handed and he ships it to me once its fixed.
I got an email about 5 hours later (just after lunch). Nothing was obvious, and the first group Mark laid down measured 0.872" at 100 yards. He did find that the M16 extractor tension was far too high and was leaving brass shavings all over the bolt face and around the chamber. After fixing that tension issue, the next group with the same load measured 0.650". An improvement, but clearly not where we want to be. At this point though, I'm not sure if I'm happy or pissed. I'm happy that it wasn't me, but pissed that I didn't call him sooner. I went through close to a $1000 in ammo and tools trying to diagnose/fix this, and I could have saved most of that.
I ended up leaving the rifle and driving another 500 miles home Monday night. Mark has a few more things he wants to check including bore scoping the barrel. I'll update this thread when there's more.
