Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Leupold M8 2nd failure, what to do?

My M8 6x42 duplex reticle broke on the 7th shot (25-06) after being repaired by Leupold for the same exact failure(broken lower crosshair), now what? The scope has been gathering dust as I have detailed the failures twice in emails to Leupold and not gotten a response, which I suppose may be understandable given the time of year. I am not sure I can trust this scope and it's a hunting not a range scope for me. Don't feel right about getting it fixed and selling it and have someone need a follow-up shot and have no reticle. Would changing the reticle to another style like Mil Dot give me a better chance of reliability?

Call Leupold. Get names. Be persistent. Treat it like you already lost the scope and have nothing to lose.

Are your mounts/rings in a bind? Have they asked that question?

How far forward of the eyepiece was the rear ring mounted on the tube?

E, you may know, what do you suppose happened to this scope?

maybe this?:

Mule Deer
Campfire Oracle

Registered: 07/24/01
Posts: 29645
Loc: Banana Belt, Montana

I had the reticle break on a 6x42 Leupold in less than 50 rounds, but it turned out I broke it. It was on a post-'64 Model 70 in .280, in Weaver rings.

I sent the scope to Leupold and they fixed it. I remounted the scope and the reticle broke again within a few rounds. This time I called one of the Leupold techs I knew to let him know there was a real problem with their reticles.

He asked where the rear ring was on the scope. I told him it was right in front of the eyepiece. He told me the reticle cell was right there, and I was over-tightening the ring, which compressed the wire reticle, which made it break. They fixed the scope again, and I was more careful about mount-screw tightness, and it never broke again. In fact I believe I still have that scope, but not the rifle.

That was the beginning of various lessons in ring tightness. Have seen dozens of problems since, but with scopes other people mounted--and they always blame the blankety-blank scopes, without a clue that they caused the problem. In fact the head of one custom-rifle shop airily informed me that he'd once encountered Leupold scopes in a row that were bad "right out of the box." Not long afterward I discovered he really reefed on the rings screws whenever he mounted a scope.
_________________________
John

The ultimate concern of a rifle loony is rifle trivia. And why not? What else is as distracting from the really important concerns of everyday life?

The long eye relief on the 6x42 means that lots of people have to have it moved as far forward as possible. Very easy to bind/break it with certain rings.

That's too bad, and may show a weakness with that model.

I am thinking Leupold has thought about that, they have been
around for a while. Just warranty it, and most
know enough not to be a gorilla on tightening the rings.

Many other brands of 6x scopes have the reticle right in front of the eyepiece--or did, when more companies made 6x scopes.

I've owned a pile of 6x42's since then, and even more 6x36's, and never broken a reticle on any of them.

Thanks for the input. Mounts are 2 piece Talley that are lapped in, scope is mounted right in front of the eyepiece. My technique for rings is to tighten up with a screwdriver hex bit set, then check when on the bench for cleaning. It is obviously possible that I overly tighten but arthritis in my hands has my wife opening the jars in the family and with years as a maintenance engineer I have a pretty good feel for torque limits. I think I will get Leupold to repair and then let it take up room on my safe shelf.

I bet you would have no trouble selling it in the classifieds, once it's repaired.

I'll take it. PM sent.

Good buy!

I've done the same....bought a torque wrench and followed Talley's torque specs......no further problems......I've since followed these specs for other rifles and experienced no scope slippage even on 375s.

my only leupold failure was this same mistake. farmer tight rear ring on a 6x42 broke the cross hairs without firing a shot. had it fixed, lightly torqued rear ring but still farmer tight on the front ring and all is well on a .375 Ultra.

This. There are torque specs for a reason.

handsup,

While you may have a "good feel" for torque limits, the 15-20 inch-pounds cited for most scope-ring screws isn't much. I did some experimenting on ring screws, using both regular screwdrivers and an accurate torque driver (let's just say not a $35 model). I'm probably of average strength for an adult American male, and it turned out that if I held a screwdriver ONLY by first two fingers and thumb, and didn't even attempt to tighten them hard, the amount of torque was normally in the correct range.

Oh, and when I broke the reticle on my 6x42 twice, the symptoms were exactly the same as yours, right down to where the same crosshair broke.

Is the ubiquitous $50 model (name not mentioned to protect the innocent) serviceable and worth getting?

I just bought and installed several pairs of Leupold rings. On the package, they recommended 28 inch-pounds. On a torgue wrench, that felt way too tight. Do you find that much less torque to be adequate?

Thanks for the education guys, I have been doing what I always had done for over 40 years and just getting away with it. My small torque wrench is not accurate at these low torques but gives me about 30 in/lbs when I checked another set of Talley rings. I will get a correct range wrench and check everything.

In foot pounds, you might get more perspective.

28 inch-pounds is 2 1/3 foot-pounds (or about 37 ounces of pull at one foot from the screw)