Bergara B-14R Review

[Natureman]

View attachment 7616460Wish Remington would have built this gun instead of a foreign outfit. Even if it meant costing a tad more. But I guess if they would have been smart enough to do that. They wouldn't have went bankrupt now would they?

The rifle is built in Lawrenceville, GA.

 

[viking78]

300-meters with SK long range match and ZCO 420.

 

[143lrsd]

300-meters with SK long range match and ZCO 420.
View attachment 7616684

What MOA base are you using? Thank you sir.

 

[viking78]

What MOA base are you using? Thank you sir.

Audere 20 MOA picatinny rail on the rifle.

 

[143lrsd]

Audere 20 MOA picatinny rail on the rifle.

Thank you sir

 

[MilSpecOkie]

Also is this also chambered for lapula cases. Has I have a V22 on order but looking for another toy that will shoot Cci sv mainly cause I have 10-15k rounds of it and a heap of mini mags.

I know vudoo do a Cci chamber but it's $3500 landed in Aus

I have never been able to find out exactly which "match" chamber Bergara uses. These guns have pretty significant engraving of the bullet as the round is pushed into the chamber and engage the rifling. MyB14R chambers SK/Lapua better than the CCI rounds. I can feel more resistance closing on a CCI SV round.

 

[The4GunGuy]

I picked one of these up last Friday and have put about 200 rounds of CCI SV through it alongside 400 rounds of Aguila SuperExtra Subsonic HP's. At 50 yards average groups were between 0.5" and 0.6" with the CCI SV and between 0.6" and 0.7" with the cheap Aguila stuff (just picked up a brick of it to have fun plinking really). Haven't gotten around to testing out a bunch of different flavors yet, but I imagine the performance will be similar since what I've seen

Something to note is that the action really does seem to break in. When you first pick it up and cycle the bolt, it feels surprisingly stiff to open and close. After the first hundred rounds or so you could feel it start to lighten up, and it's much smoother now that I've put more than 500 downrange. The forwards/backwards bolt travel was always pretty slick, it's just the opening and closing that have eased up.

Probably the most interesting find was that attaching a Thunderbeast .22 Takedown led to a HUGE point of impact shift. In the past the .22 Takedown has shifted POI by maybe 1-4 tenths for me depending on the gun, but this Bergara shoots 1.3 mils higher with the can attached than with a bare muzzle. I didn't chronograph any ammo to see if there's some kind of velocity change going on, but I was very surprised by that. I love shooting subsonic suppressed .22lr though, especially from a bolt gun, because it's just an unbeatable level of quiet.

One last thing I'll likely try, after testing out the various ammo brands, is re-torquing the action screws as well as swapping it around into my MPA chassis to see if those affect the accuracy in any measurable way. I know some rimfires seem to respond quite well to that so I may as well check it out and see if there's a torque level the action prefers or if dropping it into a known quantity (the MPA) makes any difference either.

Thanks very much for the detail Pretzel!

 

[CaseFinder]

Ramdom: I tried a number of different Aguila 22lr varieties and found all to be fairly consistent with the B14R really liking:

Tried the Aguila Competition variety, below, and loading into the chamber was VERY resistant; most likely due to a slight overbore courtesy of a wax(?) coating Aguila puts on them:

Tried Norma TAC-22 (below) which has a light sticky vaseline-like grease layer on the bullet. Never had a misfeed, but other non-greasy ammo (basically anything other than Norma) had trouble with multiple failures to extract after encountering the Norma grease in the chamber. Once chamber was cleaned, issues resolved:

Posting for those who do not wish to spend as much on Eley Match, SK Standard Plus, or Lapua Center-X and for those who can chime in what brands/varieties worked for them.