Weapon-Mounted Garmin Chrono

[6ShotsOr5?]

I’ve noticed at least a few different companies are selling mounts so that you can attach the Garmin chrono directly to your weapon (Area418, GrayOps). I don’t believe Garmin “recommends” this. I’m not sure if that’s because they think it will hurt the unit, or maybe it’s just an attorney / warranty liability thing.

I’m sure there are lots of opinions about why attaching the unit to your rifle is a bad idea, but that’s not the kind of feedback I’m looking for in this thread. I’m grateful at least most of you can respect that. Also, I don’t currently have any reason to mount my Garmin chrono on my rifle, but I understand very well why some guys want to do this. I’m just interested to hear about experiences from those who have already done it. What kind of weapon, which mount, how many rounds, any problems, etc?

 

[Svashtar]

Normally I wouldn’t respond to a year old thread, but since no one else has….

So I just got my Xero a couple of days ago, and really liked the looks of the Kinetic Development Group QD MLOK mount for the Xero. Beautiful solution. But I called Garmin just now and asked them about it. They would only say that the unit was NOT designed or most importantly _tested_ for repeated recoil hits or jarring, or any brake concussion, and that any warranty claim would be disallowed if it was determined the chrono had been rifle mounted.

I described my brake and rifle setup to him, and he just recommended setting it up under the front handguard slightly off to one side.

By the way, I have seen a couple of posts on other forums saying their Garmins haven’t broken mounted on the rifle, but that they have given more bad or inconsistent readings on shots that had to be cleared, whereas they didn’t have the same issues on the tripod. At least one of those reports of errant readings came from a user shooting a target .22LR, so not much recoil at all there! His issues resolved when he put the Garmin back on the bench.

Bottom line, the unit is well built enough that it has shown it can take a lot of abuse, and many are mounting it on the forend / hand-guard with no problems to date, but after repeated recoil bumps who knows what will happen over time? Right now there’s just a couple years of data, with only a certain percentage of users having mounted them on their rifles. And with so many other easy user options I don’t see taking even a small chance. It’s not a riflescope.

YMMV, and I know this isn’t exactly what you were looking for as I don’t have personal use with one mounted. I’m only letting you know what Garmin said and my take on it.

 

[hoz53]

i have no reason to mount my Garmin to a rifle so I dont think ill try it. I do usually have it mounted to my rest though. this seems to work good and i havent had missed shots.
the thing i wonder about in your post is brake concusion. i havent used my garmin with a rifle shooting a brake yet but plan to in the future. i need to find out how if theres anything special i need to do in that case. Thanks