The "New" Barrett MRAD Thread!!!!!!

[bigbore]

My first day owning a MRAD/ MK22. Unfired.

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Does yours have the "dimple"?

 

[jmar]

Does yours have the "dimple"?

No its an earlier serial in the 200s

 

[71firebird400]

No its an earlier serial in the 200s

You're going to get a brand new revised chassis, Barrett CS is excellent. Honestly, probably the best thing to happen to anyone with the early chassis'.

 

[JB.IC]

I haven’t followed the timeline of the “dimpled” vs “non-dimpled” receivers, but it looks like late 2023 is when it was first implemented?

I’m curious why retailers are still selling “non-dimpled” receivers? Or are we seeing a lot of used “non-dimpled” receivers changing hands?

Partly curious because Barrett’s warranty is for the original purchaser only and for only 1 year. Or are they waving this policy for the cracked receivers? Really this last question is what I’m interested in.

 

[bigbore]

I haven’t followed the timeline of the “dimpled” vs “non-dimpled” receivers, but it looks like late 2023 is when it was first implemented?

I’m curious why retailers are still selling “non-dimpled” receivers? Or are we seeing a lot of used “non-dimpled” receivers changing hands?

Partly curious because Barrett’s warranty is for the original purchaser only and for only 1 year. Or are they waving this policy for the cracked receivers? Really this last question is what I’m interested in.

Unless the dealers are scanning through one or two forums, they have no idea what a "non-dimpled" receiver is. Barrett has never made a statement about it as far as I know. 99% of FFLs out there have no idea it's a thing to watch out for.

 

[JB.IC]

Unless the dealers are scanning through one or two forums, they have no idea what a "non-dimpled" receiver is. Barrett has never made a statement about it as far as I know. 99% of FFLs out there have no idea it's a thing to watch out for.

That makes sense. I wouldn’t expect FFLs to do much of anything if there is no official recall.

 

[Watthem]

My first day owning a MRAD/ MK22. Unfired.

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Did this come out of the box looking like that? Super unfortunate

 

[Cra111772]

The dimpled ones crack too

 

[JB.IC]

The dimpled ones crack too

Wonder how Barrett handles warranties if it’s beyond 1 year of ownership or if the rifle was sold second hand

 

[jmar]

It was purchased preowned but unfired, previous owner never recalled seeing the crack so it may have happened during shipping. Who knows. Barrett is going to take a look at it I'm sending it in to them.

 

[Zigjib]

Wonder how Barrett handles warranties if it’s beyond 1 year of ownership or if the rifle was sold second hand

Can say, whilst the MRAD is a bit of a hit and miss for me, NIOA and Barrett CS is top tier. Huge fan. That doesn't take away from how frustrating it is to have a new (to you) gun break straight up. But if my dealings with them are anything to go by, i'd have 110% confidence they will look after you.

 

[Swatdude1]

I ran into something similar to this, but it was operator error. Confirmed operator error. In my instance.

******TACTICAL PAUSE******
I'm not saying that it's not flex. If you look at it from a physics perspective, the only thing that holds the gun together is 2 screws clamping the barrel. The MRAD weighs 9kgs loaded. Is it possible for a 9kg weight to flex an aluminum chassis? I think so. And considering the barrel, and only the barrel, affixes to the chassis, instead of the receiver on normal guns, it makes sense to me that flex could change enough how either the clamping is working and/or how that clamping force is being applied to the barrel, changing POI.
Thats just a thought experiment. i'm not saying its the case.

Last year I changed it from a pure prone gun to a field gun. To do that i had to make changes to the stock's setup. When I say field gun, I need to be able to shoot this from multiple positions, including unsupported with a sling. The MRAD hates this idea and it's not made for it. We refer to the MRAD as a fair weather gun now. If it's nice and flat and prone. MRAD is fine. By trying to set the gun up once for all positions, I ruined it. Especially prone. I thought i'd actually broken the gun or there was some mechanical issues. It wasn't. It was me.

The problem ended up being the buttpad. If i didn't have that right smack bang where it wanted to be, my gun would throw rounds. Literally. I shit out a 4 MOA group at one point. As soon as I abandoned the "one size fits all" approach and went back to a dedicated prone setup, the gun went back to trying to 1 hole and I went back to ruining that for it.

As someone who's literally sat down with a medical protractor to measure arm angle and everything, I know that just by moving the LOP out 1 notch, it'll change my arm's orientation and just that little click will change my elevation between 1-2 mils. And I think what's causing the problems. Where flat or slightly shaped buttpads are more forgiving, when hte MRAD recoils, the shape of the buttpad causes it to slip in the shoulder until it hits a very specific point.

If you're not smack bang behind the gun in the sweet spot when the gun fires, when it settles in the spot it wants to be in, it usually causes a vertical shift. You can see that in my group, even the good one, I have vertical stringing. So if you don't have the rifle orientated exactly so that the shoulder is indexed into the buttstock exactly the same every. single. time. You'll get what you're seeing. Because this is what happened to me (albeit you at least can shoot a decent group).

I don't think it's flex necessarily, even though it makes sense to me that it could be an issue, I think what you've done by moving the forward support, is altered the recoil path into the shoulder. Your fundamentals are good which has held the groups together, but the way you have the gun setup isn't funnelling the recoil directly back into the shoulder like the MRAD needs. I think this is what is more likely to be causing the POA shift when the position changes. I could be wrong though.

This is my experience. It might not be the cause but just FYI that is what i've seen. The fact that there's so many posts complaining about MRAD POI shift, LOP etc etc to me suggests that, for the most part, this isn't the optimal solution.

Compared to every single other gun in the safe, the MRAD is EASILY the hardest to setup, hardest to use, and worst for varied positional shooting. Its the longest, heaviest and tallest as well. The short dudes completely loath it. I personally don't think it's a good design because of how hard it is to use and it kind of defies a lot of what we have settled on as a community for the optimal way to shoot a sniper rifle.

Maybe I'm old. Maybe i'm just shooting a dated way and we've discovered some new fangled way to shoot, and my enfeebled brain is too small to comprehend it (FIRMLY in the realms of possibility). I do realise that maybe i'm pushing this gun in a direction or use case that it's just not made for, but in my opinion, this is a step backwards. Other magnums like the Mk13 or even other guns in the ASR/PSR program like AXSR do everything better than MRAD. So I don't know how we got here, but if the world ended tomorrow, the MRAD would be the last gun i reach for.



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I'm 59. Your experience is totally different than mine. You admit that you're not using the rifle as intended. I'm trying to think of a scenario where you would need to fire a rifle that heavy from the shoulder. Why not leave that to your 6.5 Creedmor competition build or your .308 AR? It seems something must be amiss with your MRAD. I've never had vertical stringing with my MRAD. In fact, I got 2 consecutive hits on a 60 x 48" target at 2 miles in gusty wind with Chase Stroud spotting. I was running a Bartlein 33" barrel in 33XC (from Bugholes), which is several pounds heavier than a stock 338 LM Barrett barrel. I never had an issue with flex-except maybe in front of the mirror. Shooting was done prone. And at the time, I had a crappy bipod. The best counterintuitive tip I got from Stroud was to UNLOAD the bipod. FYI, I have the older MRAD version which was bought a few months before they changed to M-Lok. I love this rifle.

 

[Swatdude1]

Damn bro. That sucks

Barrett will look after you but it's frustrating.

It seems like the new M-lok chassis sees this happening a lot. I don't ever recall the previous gen have any issues with cracking, which is what I own.