I apologize up front for the long post. I'm well aware of Eotech's past issues so I'm not trying to start a battle between those who like or dislike their product. I'm simply looking for opinions on what caused the failure, whether it was my fault or would any optic fail under the circumstances I will describe below.
Now let me give a quick background of my gear. I have an Eotech EXPS2 manufactured in 2014 which spent most of its life on a 16" mid-length 5.56 rifle which saw about 2000 rounds of various factory ammo. A few years ago I build a suppressed 16" 300 blackout rifle and put the Eotech on it which saw another 200-300 rounds of subsonic factory ammo. I had a lot of malfunctions with the 16" build so I reused as many parts as possible and built a 10.3" SBR in 300 blackout with the Eotech on top. This build includes a Superlative Arms adjustable gas block and a David Tubb's lightweight flat wire buffer spring and standard carbine buffer. This build has worked great and saw another 400-500 rounds of subsonic factory ammo.
Just last week I took my SBR to the range to tune it to see if it could handle combinations of subsonic/supersonic ammo with and without the suppressor and still function reliably. I shot 20 rounds of subsonic through the suppressor to make sure everything was working fine and then moved on with my testing to include tuning for subsonic ammo unsuppressed. That went fine so my next step was supersonic ammo unsuppressed. I fired about 10 rounds when the reticle of my Eotech suddenly shifted to the far left. I tried to readjust it, but quickly realized that even a light tap on the Eotech would cause the reticle to shift all around. At this point I knew it was broken so I fired another 10-20 rounds to see what else would happen. The piece of glass inside, that I assume projects the reticle, then came completely loose and was floating around between the front and rear lenses. I removed the Eotech and finished up with the iron sights.
I assume the combination of a lightweight recoil spring and supersonic ammo was the issue even though the recoil didn't seem that much different or should the Eotech have been able to handle the recoil? I did check the buffer and the nylon tip was intact.
I contacted Eotech to see what they would say and didn't expect any type of warranty work because the unit is eight years old. Eotech said they are going to repair the unit and send it back to me. My only expense was the cost of shipping the unit to them. Under the circumstances I though that was more than fair of them.
I'm still thinking about buying a new optic and was wondering if a red dot or prism optic would be less prone to failure under these conditions. Thanks for your input.
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