With all of the different chassis products out to convert from a traditional stock to a chassis system I decided to do this as a thought exercise. Is converting your existing rifle to a chassis cost effective as compared to purchasing a new rifle such as the Ruger Precision Rifle (which is not fully a chassis system, but close enough.

My criteria for selecting the chassis/stock combination were

  • Similar in appearance to the RPR. Meaning pistol grip, adjustable butstock for cheek comb and length of pull and barrel enclosed with shroud.

  • Easy to install with minimal tools.

  • I selected the TAC21 chassis from MDT. This does not include the butstock, or a buffer tube which to use for attaching the butstock.

Parts

  • MDT Tac 21 Chasis. I selected a factory second which is almost half the cost of the real deal (~$425 vs ~750).

  • Standard rifle length buffer tube from Brownells ($25)

  • Magpul butstock with cheek and LOP adjustments (~@450)

  • MTD Magazine (~$50)

  • Victim Rifle Remington 700 in .30-06

As you can see, using the factory second chassis puts the total materials at about $950. With the full chassis, we’re at ~$1275. Total time to perform the conversion was 30 minutes. The most difficult part was getting the pins in the trigger group in with the slave pins, Things are very small, and alignment is critical.

While I’m very impressed with the MDT chassis, in my opinion, unless you have a caliber that is not available in something like the RPR, this is just not a cost effective way to go (using the non-factory second chassis). Using the factory second chassis, makes it more reasonable, and of course you could choose a different buttstock (remember the goal was something that had the similar capabilities to a RPR). So in my case since the RPR is not available in .30-06 (to my knowledge), this was a very cost effective way to go.

MDT has recentely released their “Oryx” platform. While this does not schroud the barrel fully, and does not have LOP adjustments, its overall cost of ~$450 is very appealing. Right now it is only available in Short Action, but their roadmap for other actions is pretty impressive. If i can find a reasonably priced victim, I will evaluate this platform.

As it is winter, I’ve not gone though the exercise of sighting in and shooting for groups so there will be an update to this post once the weather is more co-operative.