Glad that was a joke, I'll stop mourning now.Well that turned quickly. That was a joke by the way, I didn't really destroy $4000 worth of stuff or blow it up. Sorry if my joke was only funny to me. Quitting tobacco on the same day as doing my "final test" was pretty miserable and I thought some comic relief would help.
Since Nate got involved I have been defending Bergara regardless of who or what's at fault, so I'm not sure why all of a sudden it's "unfairly targeting Bergara" now. I'm only relaying what info I got from what I have. Once again, thank you Nate, you HAVE gone above and beyond. Regardless of whatever the issue may be you stood out far above what was expected, especially next to NFs customer service.
This thread was massive, but I'm pretty sure in there I did mention I had it checked out by more than one smith. As for saying my handholds were bad...uhh no. Chrono was garbage. My .308s and 5.56 hand loads have been great, and I took far less time and attention to detail making those.
I did try and systematically diagnose as recommended, but tried doing it as cheap as possible without sinking even more money into this mess. For what it's worth today I finally did go out and by a $400 Vortex and new rings, as well as finally finding a sympathetic range employee who let me use an old beat up used Remmington 700 they were selling with my NF.
Once again I can't say anything conclusive but here's what I found. The old used Remington 700 with my NightForce seemed just fine. I used some non match grade ammo and got 0.8-1.3 MOA groups not counting the fliers I felt myself pull.
The Bergara with the new Vortex and rings preformed pretty much the same as the last billion accuracy tests. I really nice group, an ok group, a bad group, and a terrible group. I let the barrel cool as best as I could for an indoor range between groups. I'm not trying to finger point but just hypothesize. Perhaps more than three 3 round groups tested by Bergara would have started opening up. Maybe not. Maybe I just suck at shooting. I really don't know anymore but I've never had this experience with any other rifle/setup other than the times something was confirmed defective by the mfg. The confusing part (and why I think I kept shifting focus on what the culprit was) is that it shoots a nice group, them widen, widen, huge mess, back to nice. So Every time I get a nice group I think I have conclusive evidence but its not. It just seems to yo-yo between group sizes as if the barrel is red hot shotgunning rounds even though it's not. I should have shot far more rounds using the Tasco or any other scope before blaming the optic, but once again at $50 per box this was and is financially draining me and testing large quantities of rounds just hasn't been feasible.
I really don't know and I'm tired of guessing, especially if it sounds like I'm trying to blame everyone. I apologize, but this has sent me near total meltdown trying to figure it out. I'm literally in debt now from trying to figure out a dam rifle that still isn't acceptable for even hunting deer.
Nate has been great. But I wish he wouldn't have sent me a message saying he wishes to refund my money and "part ways" since I surely lost him customers, as I would happily accept a replacement rifle. I really want the HMR to work for me, especially after seeing how much they appear to care, but I'll gladly take a refund and try another company if that's what he wishes.
One last stab.......is it possible the front most scope base screw is in a through hole over the barrel/ threads, the screw is a smidge long and touching the barrel /threads causing more pressure as the barrel heats, less pressure as the barrel cools ?
