Tikka mountain tactical bottom metal

[kpk]

I've got the mountain tactical bottom metal on my 7mm RM. Anyone else have one of these that makes like 2 half clicks when you put the magazine in rather than 1 solid click?? It does this with 3 factory mags. The magazine release is like a hair trigger - touch it twice and the mag drops. Makes me nervous about losing the magazine while hunting.

I'm thinking it's the way the notch is machined on the mag release lever, but I no longer have a factory one to swap it with. Or is it not designed to work well with the factory mag?

 

[thinhorn_AK]

I have one on a 6.5 creedmoor, it’s been on there at least 5 years now and I’ve never noticed or cared about the clicks it makes. I slap the mag in and it’s good to go. I’ve never had an issue with it and it lets me torque that thing down real good.

 

[hiker270]

I bought 1 for my Tikka 300 mag and the both factory magazines wouldn't latch at all.

 

[kpk]

I have one on a 6.5 creedmoor, it’s been on there at least 5 years now and I’ve never noticed or cared about the clicks it makes. I slap the mag in and it’s good to go. I’ve never had an issue with it and it lets me torque that thing down real good.

If you've not noticed, then you likely don't have the issue mine does. It's really obvious that something doesn't seem right.

 

[MAP1]

I replaced 2 rifles bottom metals with the OMR version. Both very tight fit engaging the snap for magazine vs factory plastic version. Design is very robust.

 

[mxgsfmdpx]

Give the High Desert Bottom Metal a look. I tried all of them for my Tikkas and this is where I landed.

 

[bombhunter]

I also had issues with the MT bottom metal, on a Stocky's VG stock and the factory stock for my Tikka. My factory mags (4 of them) wouldn't even click into place. Next time if I want one I will get the High Desert.

 

[bullnose]

I had some issues with mine at first, but I found the culprit to be the magazine retention spring. My problem, discovered by trial and error, was that the factory spring pushed too hard on the magazine, preventing it from moving past the release on the MT bottom metal and fully seating.

I ended up buying an additional factory spring and a mountain tactical spring to try.

Just by eyeballing them, you could see the hole placement was slightly different as compared to how close it was to the bend in the spring - one was closer to the bend, one farther away, and one more or less in between. I measured the distance from the back of the spring to the hole with digital calipers and verified there were differences. I also measured the spring angle with a protractor, and all three were slightly different.

Bear in mind that it's possible to have the opposite occur, wherein the spring hole location is too close to the bend or the angle isn't enough to push the magazine with enough pressure to where it solidly engages the release and seats properly.

The spring that worked in my instance was the one with the least angle which also happened to have the hole approximately equidistant from the bend and the rear edge of the spring. I can't tell you anymore if that was the new factory spring or the MT spring. I'm inclined to say it was the MT spring, though.

In the end I was lucky that it only cost me $40 in springs to get it figured out, although one could argue the time and money I put into solving this problem was more than I should have had to do to make the dang thing work.

That was my experience, and yours may differ.

 

[kpk]

Got this figured out. It was the "step" machined into the top of the mag release lever preventing it from fully seating. The bump out on the mag was basically hitting the corner of either step rather than sitting on top of the step. Hard to explain but super obvious when looking at it. Would not surprise me at all if this same issue caused a lot of the above issues as well. I have no idea why it would be machined this way.... maybe a step got missed during machining? I pulled it out and filed the step off so the the top is completely flat. It now functions 100%.