qc issues didn't stop you from buying a mountain hunter at twice the price...... but bcl is the devil, **irony**
Yes it did actually.
The early MH's had a few small issues that were addressed and since all previous run rifles are given free upgrade to the latest specs if you're willing to pay to send it in to them (which I can guarantee BCL will not do for first batch owners), and since I own a fairly new production rifle and have four buddies that also have a newer MH and all are happy with them I'd say I picked the right rifle to buy.
I got the chance to shoot four first run MH's shortly after they started shipping them and noticed the deficiencies, I emailed Rick with my observations and I'm guessing that between what I said to him and some feedback from others he made some corrections, that's what I like to see a manufacturer do with his product. He didn't get mad, didn't get offended that I was pointing out issues, he took it constructively and made the product better. Once I saw that the rifles were performing better I started shopping for one on the EE, found the rifle I wanted for a great price and the rest is history.
My MH is way more than 2x the rifle anything BCL will ever put out so the price is pretty decent if you look at it objectively. The 102 has a crappy barrel, a crappy trigger, sounds like a crappy BCG with all the gas ring failures. By the time you upgrade all that stuff to the level of the parts that come standard in a MH that price difference is pretty much gone and you now have a franken AR-10 with an NEA receiver which means that it's still worth more parting it out than it is as a complete rifle.
The MH runs perfectly if you run quality ammo and maintain it correctly. Don't forget, the MH is not and was never advertised as a NR AR-10 battle rifle, it's a NR precision semi auto that uses the same DI operating system as an AR-10, it was advertised from day one as being a little picky with ammo, ATRS posted right on their website right from the start that they don't recommend running surplus or soft point ammo. How can you blame the rifle or the manufacturer for reliability issues when people ignore the manufacturer? If you want to run cheap ammo buy an M305 not a MH.
Gee, my Corvette runs like crap on regular unleaded, what a piece of sh!t, I'm never buying a Chevrolet again. Ya, sounds reasonable.
If you want to quote tiny snippets of what someone posts and use it out of context then go for it but it means nothing. I stated that I would be interested in buying one but not until they get their sh!t together. Why is that unreasonable?
I love AR-10's and when BCL starts making a consistently good product I'll add one to the collection but I'm not buying a rifle that there's a good chance will need to be sent back just to get it to work and I'm not spending $1750 just to throw away everything other than the receiver set to do a full build so I end up with something reliable. I already have two NR semi auto precision rifles (MH 6.5CM and a custom M305 with Krieger barrel), what I want a 102 for is for general blasting. I don't want to have to replace a bunch of parts to make it reliable, I just want to buy it and shoot it. So when they make them reliable 99% of the time I'll look into buying one but not before then.
If you bought a 102 and you're happy with it then I'm happy for you but if you try to tell me it's as good as a MH for half the price I'll tell you to stop smoking crack.
Read your own sig line, reliability? something NEA is not well known for. Hopefully they can turn that around soon but I haven't seen it yet.