Chris from United States, WY Public Profile

It sets the vortex spitfire back just the right distance so I can comfortably use the optic. The absolute co-witness puts the optic height at roughly the same position as the vortex OEM high mount.

The mount is rigid and has a good quality appearance.

The optic itself is fine. It’s compact, lightweight, has reasonable eye relief, and is acceptable quality for the price.

The issue is the fasteners for the mount.

First, the manual calls for torquing the 10-32 cross bolts to 55-60 in-lbs. I did this, set the rifle down, and 15 minutes later, a fractured cross bolt pops out of the hole.

Second, the 10-32 x 5/16 low profile screws have a 2.5mm hex socket. The threaded holes in the mount have locking helicoils with a ~15 in-lb running torque. The manual specifies 25-30 in-lb installation torque. These tiny hex sockets will strip at around 20 in-lbs.

I contacted the PA customer service. The service reps were responsive and easy to work with. They informed me that the torques in the manual were erroneously high, gave me lower torque values to use, and offered to send me a replacement mount. I received the new mount within a few days, free of charge.

I ended up using a screw extractor to remove a few screws and I replaced all the 10-32 x 5/16” ones with off-the-shelf alloy steel button head screws with 1/8” hex sockets. I had to machine down the head diameters to fit, but otherwise, these worked so much better than the OEM screws.

It’s frustrating that PA did nothing to fix this product flaw or alert customers about it. There are Reddit posts dating back 3 years describing this exact same issue. And all of the PDF versions of the manual on the PA website still list the higher torque values.

I have trouble trusting the produc