Bergara B14R – The Aftermarket Strikes Back

This week, I got a chance to do something we rarely do here on Guns America Digest. I got to take a second look at a rifle, with some upgrades from the aftermarket. This particular rifle really opened my eyes to new possibilities, and I really wondered what it could do with just a little bit of octane booster. I’m talking about of course the Bergara B14R in 22 Long Rifle.

In our last review, I called the B14R the best value in rimfire today. Which got me in a bit of hot water with some of you. Considering my test model has a street price of $1049, some offense was taken. I was in fact educated about how you could buy a 22 at Auto Zone for two wooden nickels and a book of Green Stamps back in the old days after you walked uphill in the snow to school. Both ways. And look, I get it. If the end goal is to plink cans in the backyard or shoot squirrels, the Bergara is no question overkill. Point taken. But for the intended customer, dudes either shooting precision rimfire matches or using it as a trainer for PRS competition, I stand by my words. Nothing even comes close in the price range. To put it in perspective, a barreled action from Vudoo Gun Works starts at $1770. Yes, for a 22 Long Rifle. And by barreled action, they mean no stock. Or trigger. Yes, that is the price in US Dollars, not Rupees or Pesos.

Given that is the market, the B14R is an absolute steal at $1049. Or $649 for just a barreled action, so you can put it in whatever stock you like. And our test gun performed absolutely magnificently, with one notable exception. The factory trigger, while both crisp and adjustable, just wasn’t in my opinion good enough. It did drop down to 2.5 pounds, which is great by some standards. But if we are talking real boy precision gun, I really like to go a bit lighter. I also genuinely wondered if we could squeeze more accuracy out of the Bergara if we eliminated that weak link. In our previous test, we achieved ½ MOA groups. But I had to fight for them. If there was the potential for even better accuracy, I felt obligated to go find the right tool to get it.

Fortunately, the B14R accepts Remington 700 Triggers (and stocks), which is the most prolific bolt action on earth when we count clones. And also helpful in this case, the most used custom actions such as Defiance and Surgeon are 700 actions in fancy dress. Instead of knocking around the local gun shop asking opinions, we went straight to the pros. The Precision Rifle Series is home to the best rifle shooters on earth today. Fortunately for us, they also happen to be data nerds, and there are statistics covering everything about the sport from caliber choice to what the top dogs had for breakfast readily available. Looking at the triggers page, the choice was obvious.

Of the top 100 shooters in PRS, 48% use a single brand of trigger. Seven out of the top ten competitors use it as well. TriggerTech, despite being a young company, absolutely dominates the sport. Not only are TriggerTech triggers fantastic in use, but they are notoriously durable. Thanks to the patented free-floating roller between the sear and the trigger, they are also all but dustproof. In environments where competitors’ products lock up, TriggerTech will keep working just like that annoying Bunny from the ’90s.

In a nod to the fact that we are building on a bargain gun, I opted for once to go with the bargain trigger. TriggerTech makes several grades of Rem 700 trigger, with the Diamond being the flagship.  The Diamond adjusts to below 4 ounces and will set you back $275 to $294 depending on the lever shape desired. For our project, I opted to go one step down. The TriggerTech Rem 700 Special will only adjust down to 1 pound, but shaves off nearly $100. I picked this one for two reasons really. First, 1 pound is about as low as I like to go anyway. I have had some triggers in the ounces of pull weight, and a man has to know his limitations. 1 pound-ish is my sweet spot for personal use. Second, I picked the Special specifically to defeat the Geiselle Super 700 Trigger. I have owned and loved the Geiselle, and it served us well. You may remember the review we did on it, where it replaced an allegedly adjustable factory Remington 700 trigger. And in the process, dropped that rifle’s accuracy from 1 MOA to 1/2MOA in the time it took to install two pins. Well, the world has moved on. Not only is the TriggerTech a full half a pound lighter on the bottom end of adjustment, but it is also $50 cheaper.

True to reputation, TriggerTech is worth every penny. It is so crisp and clean as to defy the description. I don’t pull this card out often, but it bears a little ego stroke creds dropping in this context. I was a military sniper in two services for most of two decades. There is nothing else like the TriggerTech for a bolt action. Buy this one if you want to upgrade. Don’t bother with anything else. And if you can swing it, get the Diamond. If you don’t love the 4 ounces, you can always adjust it back up to a max of 32 ounces if it makes you nervous. The felt difference in our Bergara rifle was night and day after the trigger swap. No dollar you are going to spend on your gun is going to matter more than this one.

Since we had some wait time as the trigger was created for us, I went looking around for other aftermarket modifications. And I stumbled onto an incredible find. The TriggerTech trigger was supposed to be the star of this show, but it was very nearly upstaged by a company called Mack Brothers. A smaller shop out of South Dakota, Macbros.com blew my socks off with their contribution.

Mack Brothers make a wide variety of gun stuff, from suppressors to their own actions (from Titanium no less). And now that I have discovered them, we will be reviewing some other products. But for the Bergara, they have a magazine that is absolutely brilliant.

In our last review, I mentioned that the B14R magazines are the same size and feel like a short action AICS magazine, by design. Not only is that necessary to fit all Rem 700 stocks, but it makes the reload drill the same as with your centerfire rifle. But, as you can imagine, it leaves a lot of space cramming 10 rounds of 22LR in a magazine sized for 308. Mack Brothers, I like to think while having a Mount Rushmore brew and staring at a cornfield, said “hey, what if we just used both sides of the magazine?” So they did. For the same size as a regular 10 round Bergara magazine, you effectively get 20 rounds. Like a jungle mag, you just rotate 180 degrees, and you have 10 more on tap. While the magazine is $95, it does take the place of two $37 Bergara mags for the same space. And the Mack Brothers is CNC machined out of aluminum, unlike the plastic Bergara mag. In a word, magnificent.

With all that done, we headed to the range to find out if the B14R was hiding some more accuracy in that carbon fiber barrel. And the answer was yes, kind of. In our first test, we had ½ MOA groups from both Lapua Center X and SK Match. With our new trigger, we did get to just below ½ MOA this time with the Lapua, but not by much. .46 MOA, which is still very impressive for a 22LR. And I’m not too proud to say, that could very well be all I was capable of that day. But I will tell you this, those groups were MUCH easier to achieve with the TriggerTech on board. Even if we reached the mechanical limit of the B14R, which I doubt, it was still a solid investment.

This combination of the Bergara B14R, the TriggerTech Special, and the Mack Brother’s magazines is amazing. It is the most fun I have had with a 22 in quite some time. Especially given current ammunition circumstances, it may be time to think about a precision 22. If it was my money, this is the setup I would be looking for.  

For more information on Bergara Click HERE

For more information on TriggerTech Click HERE

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