Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Failed scope (leupold)

Hope you can work out a deal. I like mine.

DF

as many guns as you have I"m surprised you have had perfect L scope luck. I don't have quite as many L and have quit them also. But in the stable 2 of them have gone bad over the years. One never saw a thing over 243. The other went onto an AR but the AR is known for double recoil and to be a scope killer anyway.

Seems I’ve had better luck with the old friction adjustable L scopes, set and forget. Some of those are still doing right, no trips to Beaverton.

DF

Me too.....and vice versa for that matter.

While I agree that there are a lot of other things in the system most of them are still in the system when using iron sights which do not wander. Pretty much leaves the mounts or scope.

Leupold is a a solid company with a solid warranty. Every company has issues with their products from time.to time...they will make it rght

And many definitely need it often!

I've had at least a dozen Leupolds over the years, but I'm not dialing with them for the most part. I've only had one failure and that with a 2.5-8x32 VX3 handgun scope that I had on a .260 Remington Encore barrel. I purchased it new with the new barrel and used it for load development and it worked great. Adjustments were spot on, held zero perfectly. Did a final check before the Minnesota deer season in 2010 on a Wednesday. Right where I wanted it - 2.5" high at 100 yards. Five shots touching. Saturday morning I took it to the deer blind, cased, just as I left it after Wednesday. A nice 8 point wandered out at 150 yards. Rock solid rest. Put the crosshair in the armpit and squeezed off. CRACK! The buck dropped like a stone. I reloaded and watched, as normal. He got back up about 5 seconds later, shaking his head, missing part of an antler. I took another shot. Nothing. He took off. I left the blind and went to find my chunk of antler. Immediately packed up and went to the gun range. Impacts were all over the place. It barely kept 5 shots on a 36"x36" target. I took the scope off and sent it back to Leupold. They said a spring broke inside. They said they fixed it, purged the internals, and sent it back to me. I mounted it back on the gun and went to bore sight it in my shop. I started to twist off the elevation adjustment cap and the whole damn turret came off and I was looking at the inside of the scope. WTH. I called Leupold and told them what happened. "Send it back. We will make it right." And they did. I've been using that scope for over a decade now on the .260 Rem barrel or the .357 Max barrel. Perfect tracking and holds zero perfectly. But it makes me trust Leupold a little bit less. The only scope I've dialed with is a Leupold VX-II that I had them put an M1 elevation turret on, mounted on a Ruger M77 MkII .260 Remington. That thing tracks up and down like it's on greased rails. Always returns to zero and adjusts where it should.

Have you had a Leupold failure?

Two M8 6x42s that developed rattles. A VX-III 3.5-10x50 with a dead spot in it's windage adjustment. A VX-II 4-12x40AO whose adjustments got loosey goosey. A VX-III 4.5-14x40LR that stared shifting focus between shots. An M8 6x42AO Target model that needed a rebuild after much use and turret twisting.

I guess I'm a hardhead, I got them fixed and still use them.

Yes 2 Mark 4's 4.5-14. A vx3 4.5-14 and a varixiii 3.5-10. The latter twice. All went back for lack of tracking and rtz . All had busted erectors.

Thanks for all the replies. Leupold after a bit of discussion and stating that a 3" shift in impact was within specs sent a recall ticket. My friend is mounting a straight 2.5 power to try. Lots of opinions expressed and even some good information. I had a 2x to 7 fail on my .375 and Leupold replaced it with a new scope. Matt of course. I am sure dialing puts greater strain on the scope than sighting it in and never changing. I am also sure that a .416 or .458 is harder on a scope than a .222. Mostly the resulting issues from a scope failure on a .222 or even a deer caliber are not as serious as a failure on a heavy rifle. Again thank you for all the suggestions.