Thought it would be cool to get a thread going of our bing bangs in a Backlight.
This is my Bergara Crest Carbon 7PRC, 22" barrell weighing in at 10.5 lbs with a couple bullets on the chassis side. Timney 2 stage trigger, Athlon Ares BTR 4-20, Tricer RP bipod and a Backstrap covering a Bergara BTI30.
Nice looking setup! Shoot it yet?
Tomorrow hopefully
Yeehaw! Looks great! I’m excited to hear your thoughts on how the recoil feels in a 7 PRC. It’s pretty crazy 
I already had it tamed quite a bit, but was still hard to see impacts. That’s what I hoping for.
Flung 35 rounds down the 100 yard range in 7PRC in the Backlight. Here are my initial thoughts:
Compared to the factory stock, it’s night and day and the original was a carbon fiber stock. So much less recoil and much less bounce off target. Compared to the chassis it was in (Ultradyne OG chassis) it is an upgrade but not as significant. The biggest gain is the weight, it’s a pound lighter. Also less bounce from the table, which kept me on target better. Still couldn’t spot impact but at 100 yards that would have been amazing.
I could feel the screws against my face but they didn’t impact my shooting nor scrape against my face on recoil. I think the option to have them on the right side would be nice since I could care less about the stock’s magnet feature.
The grip feels small (length not girth) compared to my previous and other chassis rifles. Didn’t impact my shooting but it caught my attention.
Getting the chassis setup took a moment, but that is also in part because I forgot part of my normal shooting gear at home, so getting the feel right took longer than usual. For future reference, screws with a bit of a bevel would be great for the comb locking function so they start easier.
The MDT mag goes in and out of the chassis so easily, and I could tell it made feeding so much better than what the magpul mags did in the ultradyne. I mean, just perfect.
Great job Jim and Backfire team. I pray this venture is highly successful for y’all.
Hey Ben! GREAT review! I’m gonna read that to the team on Monday.
Cool that you noticed less bounce of the rifle off the table—especially compared to your old chassis that was a POUND heavier and even still, bounced more.
A note about the toolless heads. I still haven’t had anyone say it bothered them but if it ever did, we could just get headless screws to have available for people. You’d loose the toolless adjustability but if you’re the only one who shoots it, it’s an option.
We’ve found that there is a LOT of user preference in grips. We heard too fat, too short, too long, too skinny, etc when we showed the SAME grip to lots of people Took us tons of iterations to come to this. Eventually we’d like to make two more grip shapes so people can get one to suit individual preferences, but so far this one has been the design that people most universally liked.
Anyway, fun to see these finally getting out in the wild. Thank you for posting!
I forgot to mention that most of those rounds were my first reloads I ever did. 3 shot groups and all stayed under 1.25" except the first shot which was 1000 ft/sec slower than the rest. Not sure why.
However, I wanted to compare apple to apples so I did shoot the first shots on the round I know shoots well out of this gun, the Federal Premium 175 Eldx.
5 shot group was .571 including the cold bore “fouler”. I never shot a half minute group on this gun cold. So, that was awesome.
Beautiful rifle, Ben! Well done on the build and the shooting!
John
What magazines are you using Ben? You mentioned MDT, are they metal or polymer?
I bought both, metal for the range and polymer for hunting, though I used the polymer at the range, not the metal.
Awesome post and sweet rifle! I too want to see everyone’s backlight builds!
Maybe a dumb question. How important is it to torque action screws to spec?
I would always torqued to spec to make sure they are even and approximately correct. Having said that, if it’s 40 or 60 I don’t think you’d see any difference. Our spec is 60.
Thanks man, bergara is saying 55. Which is hard to achieve I’ve heard.
Has anyone seen anything on the new federal + peak6.5 cm ammo that makes
it 300 fps faster. Terminal assent 130gr 3100FPS
Fusion tipped 155gr 2900FPS
I torqued mine to 55, wasn’t as issue. In’lbs, not ft’lbs.
6.5 Creedmoor ? Oh man, that’s is interesting.
Has Jim mentioned when the backlight chassis will come in black?
We are going to focus on FDE for the first several months. However, we do have some black parts for REM 700 long in black. I could make it happen for a Plus member. If you get one of the rem 700 longs, email us right away and tell them I said we’d do a black for you.
