A little caveat here: I hate bad customer service, of which there is plenty of these days.
So, I drive out to Accuracy Systems today. This is about a 125 mile round trip, but I had to go to Denver today anyway, so that was half of it. I had called Carl, the owner, before, and I had called him yesterday, to tell him I was coming out. This place is 5 miles outside of Byers, so it is the Hinterlands. On the plains. No trees. Flat. Cold. Windy. Dirt Roads. Buffalo. Antelope. That kind of stuff
I had read a little on the 742, and discovered it and the earlier 740 are obsolete, and don't take well to wear, especially the rails. I wanted Carl to take a look at it, and tell me if it was worth shooting/putting any money into.
So Carl is on the phone when I come. I set the 742 on the counter, and he starts taking the trigger group out, as he finishes the call. Says the rifle is in very good shape, although very dirty inside (already knew that
). Said it had not probably ever been cleaned, and although had some pretty serious copper fouling, probably had not been shot much. He showed me a few tips on how to clean it and field strip it, said the trigger was really good for a 742. He and his son were fielding calls while was doing this. The shop is very clean and neat, has some lathes, etc, and a lot of Mini-14 stuff, which Carl said is their bread and butter. He told me to just give it a good cleaning, sight it in with Rem Core-Lokt, and if I still felt like it needed trigger work, or anything else, just bring it back. Spent about 35-40 minutes with me. I told him several times while he was doing this I would pay him shop rate for his time. I brought this up again at the end. He said if I bought the recommended Bore-Snake, $20 would cover everything, including the Bore-Snake.
I can not attest to their actual machine work, but their customer service is genuine and fantastic. Some of the nicest people I've met.
http://www.accuracysystemsinc.com/index.php
