DeserTech 7.62mm MDR Teardown

hi guys thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons comm I'm Ian McCallum and today we're going to take a look at a brand new rifle instead of an old one this is a desert tech MDR which they say stands for micro dynamic rifle I think I'll ignore that and just call it an MDR for the duration of the video this is a rifle that has been in development for quite some time it was first unveiled at shot show in I think 2014 and has only just recently really gotten into commercial sales so I'm not sure exactly what what took the time but I can certainly understand it taking a couple years to get design and production of a gun up and running I think that's something a lot of people don't don't fully appreciate is the first off the amount of time it requires to make a reliable semi-auto rifle and I'm assuming this one is I have not actually fired it yet also then all the the time that it takes to go from having a hand-built or a couple of hand built prototypes over to having an actual production line there are a tremendous number of engineering issues involved in that transition very much an underrated part of firearms design I think and at any rate they appeared to have finally gotten all of that worked out they're selling the rifles now it is chambered for 7.62 NATO they apparently are planning to have a conversion kit two five five six NATO available I think actually pretty much now like any day now it should be out and available and in theory also a 300 blackout conversion so they're all gonna use the same basic frame they're all gonna work the same way so we're gonna take a look at the 308 because it does a couple things that are pretty neat there are a couple of endemic issues with bullpup rifles and as a left-hander I'm probably at the core of several of them actually I guess they're really two the first one is ejection you either have to have some sort of system for ejecting cases not straight out the side of the gun or an easy way to swap the gun from left to right side ejection you can't judge with a standard traditional firearm the ejection ports up front so basically as long as the cases don't go backwards when you fire it can eject out either side left hand right hand doesn't matter Oh pups it does matter there are some like the British l85 that are simply completely incompatible with left-handed shooting and if you tried to shoot it left-handed you will get a charging handle right in your face and split your lip open Wow didn't happen to me personally but secondhand story blood all over the rifle not a good day anyway the MDR does a has a really cool setup for that which we'll take a look at and then the other thing that not a whole lot of that that's particularly difficult to to do in conjunction with a clever ejection setup is being able to just look in the chamber so these sorts of bull pups often have issues of how do you tell if the things loaded you have to go through some weird contortions if it's a forward ejecting gun like an F mm or kel-tec RDB you have to like flip the gun over and pull the magazine out and look up inside the the magazine well or pop the toilet bowl cover on the f2000 again desert tech has clever interesting solution to that so let's dig right into this pull it apart and show you how it works a couple things off the bat the bipod is not part of the rifle this is a Magpul bipod that I put on there so it would stand up nicely and because I've been wanting to experiment with one of those bipods the magazine is a standard 308 P Matt that's cool that makes things nice and easy the optic is on here this this is kind of an interesting choice and interesting aspect of the design this looks like it's a copy of a Burris fastfire it's a it's actually not specifically a fast fire but it's something like that it's one of the little micro red dots and this shipped with the rifle now you'll notice it's got this little teeny kind of really weird weird least small mount in comparison to the rifle and it's mounted to a single block of Picatinny rail right there that's not the receiver or the handguard and the reason for that is this is actually directly mounted on the barrel you'll see that when we pull the barrel out which means that it retains zero perfectly when you remove and reattach the barrel because right on the barrel so that's actually kind of a cool feature like this is done in lieu of iron sights so I think when we start shooting this substantially we will take this thing off and replace it with probably some sort of different optics but we're gonna go ahead and start with that guy on there and see how it runs I like the fact that all of the controls are ambidextrous we have a safety that drops nicely under the thumb here that's safe that's fire we have a magazine release that is actually you've got three magazine release controls so you've got a button on the front of the trigger guard left and right and that actually can be reached from a firing grip and you push in both sides so it's it's a really you'll see how it works in a second it's a slick system and then we also have kind of the traditional bullpup magazine release which is here on the front of the magazine well so if you want to do it that way you can grab the magazine like so depress the button it's a little stiff and pull this out I like the fact that it's a little stiff because one of the failings one of the issues with a lot of the Bullpups with this kind of design is the possibility to accidentally drop the magazine with rearward pressure from your hand this is far enough back that that's unlikely to happen and it's stiff enough that it's really really unlikely to happen I don't see that ever being a problem you then have a bolt release button back here so this will lock open on an empty magazine like so and then when you drop the button closes the bolt it looks like it ought to have a little storage section in the pistol grip but if that's what that actually is it is so tight and difficult to remove that I was unable to get into it I kind of marred it up with a pair of pliers I don't think so yeah practical manners not a storage area alright now let's get on to the mechanical bits we have a junction that can be swapped from side to side extremely easily there are two plates on the side of the rifle one of them is static I have already set this up to be left-handed and the other is your actual ejection port there's a little cover on the front of it right there once we pop this open cases eject forward out of this thing and let's start by taking a look at how that works so I can remove this by pushing this button in and lifting up and this holds our spent cases see best way to do this is probably pull them both off show them to you and then put them back on and demonstrate them this is the actual ejection mechanism now what's neat about this design is that it actually ejects cases laterally they don't pivot out of the or off of the bolt they just slide straight up straight off the side of the bolt so you can see that there is no recessed area for the case head there we have an extractor on the top and then a bolt that is free to slide side to side there is then a lug on the bolt and when the bolt travels rearward unlocking opening pulling the empty cartridge out it's going to push this lever down which is going to push out this sort of scissor type to to bar ejector right there and that is going to physically shove the cartridge case sideways off the bolt face and into this guy let's see that's gonna be facing this direction so that is going to slide it right into there this little spring tab holds it in place and then when the boat goes forward there's another lug on the opposite side so when the boat goes forward again it's going to chamber the next cartridge to fire and the lug on the side is going to push this case forward right out that ejection port and out of the gun so it's a clever system and in addition to just the cool design it has this added feature that it's ejecting the cases right out the front and this is far enough forward that in order to just switch shoulders for a temporary thing you know for a few shots MDR or desert tech designed this as far as I can tell with military applications in mind like there are some small militaries out there that are concerned about using would like to use 308 because of armor penetration capabilities and so there is potentially a military market for this rifle which it's kind of unused with five five six rifles isn't really the case at any rate in a military setting there are certainly times when you would want to switch shoulders and shoot this thing off of your left or right to go around a corner the tactically correct direction and while you can easily swap this from left hand to right hand eject simply by swapping these two on different sides the gun you don't even actually have to because your face is is kind of resting back here and this ejects straight forward so you don't even have to switch this around which is pretty cool alright so I've got an empty case in the bolt face here which I should be able to feed and then one of the other problems that I mentioned with the bullpup is being able to check the chamber well there's this little front cutout that doesn't have to be there for ejection purposes this is actually a window into your ejection port so there we go when you've got the rifle in battery chambered you can just do a little bit of basically a press check and you have to get the light right but you can see that there's a brass cartridge case in there this is a little bit easier in the real world than it is on camera but you've got that little window and so you can do a press check on this kind of like you would do on a traditional rifle and not have to flip this thing over look in through the magazine well or do some other weirdness to chamber check it and that is a really cool element now to take a closer look at that ejection mechanism when we pull the bolt back right in there you can see those two fingers lifting up and they're going to push the cartridge case off the bolt face and see them there at full extension with the bolt locked open I've got an empty cartridge case on the bolt face and when I open this up we will be able to see it pop out this actually takes a fair amount of force to do so you can't do it gently and slowly but there are those and you can see those two ejectors lifting up if I reinstall the other side ejector plate and do it again we are now going to have our our empty case stuck inside well locked inside this ejector plate I don't know if I can pull this out with the bolt back yeah all right so yeah there it is and then when the bolt goes back forward I have it locked to the rear right now the lug on the bolt will kick this forward and out and I can show you that as well so just let this down ooh there it goes that is one kind of quirk of this thing if you shoot a magazine empty the bolt will lock open when you fire the last round but it will leave the last case in this side part of the rifle so when you load the next magazine and drop the bolt it will kick that empty case out at that point or if you just drop the bolt adminstrative Lee it will kick the empty case out all right enough of goofy ejection hijinx let's go ahead and actually take this apart the rifle comes with a single tool which has a star wrench on one end and a hex wrench on the other and this is all you need to completely take the thing apart which is pretty cool we also have a series of captive pins so we'll start with the front handguard there is a star star style of screw one on either side we just have to loosen those and those are basically M lock screws that help to lock the handguard in place note that you also have M lock attachments on the side and on the bottom and that's how I put the bipod on there once I've loosened these two you don't want to actually take them out just loosen them then we can punch this pin through tools good for that go and it is captive there once that's out then there we go handguard comes off you can see the two little tight the M locks style locking pieces right in here that just lock the handguard into place along with a cross pin at the bottom next step is to remove the barrel so I'm gonna go ahead and lock the bolt open and then we've got three screws on this side you have a lock and unlock and this is actually just a cross pin that has a flat on it so in the unlocked position the barrel can come out but you always want to undo these two screws first so they tell you don't mess with the locking screw until these two tension screws are loosened so these are just loosen about it turn there we go that's loosen to the trunnion and then we'll take this and go from locked to unlock there's a little click and there's a little notch in the screw right there it tells you which position it's in and then there's that next step in disassembly is the lower separating the polymer lower from the aluminum with steel reinforcing upper we've got three pins in that here here and here start with these two the rearward to just pop them through we go with these two pins removed and they are captives they don't actually come out loose you can break this thing open kind of like an ar-15 if you don't want to separate the pieces that's all you have to do if you do want to separate the pieces you just have a third pin right up here at the front that one at least on this rifle is pretty darn tight area with that pin out then the upper separates from the lower we'll take a look at this in a moment now that we have our upper alone we can go ahead and pull out the bolt and carrier assembly so that's got an integral recoil spring got a bit of a metal shield up there and the upper assembly here the upper receiver is aluminum but with steel inserts or a steel insert so the rails here the rails here that the bolt is riding on those are steel here's your trunnion block this is the two screws that you tighten before removing the barrel that's a steel insert this front one is actually our barrel lock mechanism when I rotate it you can see the flat right there we'll leave that in the unlocked position the charging handle is just a flat tray inside there you can lock it in position by lifting it up like that the bolt assembly is quite simple this takes basically the ar-15 idea of multiple multiple small lugs which means you only need a small bit of rotation angle in order to lock and then we have the same sort of cam and cross pin system to disassemble this I'm going to push out this that there we go that little guy that's the firing pin retainer we can then pull out there we go I can pull out the firing pin then we can rotate the cross pin here pull that out and then the bolt head comes off note that we have a big extractor on the top we have a pair of lugs on the bottom for feeding a cartridge but the bolt is flat across the side so that a cartridge can slide it'll get picked up like so but then it can be pushed laterally off the bolt face for ejection in context here these two lugs on the back of the bolt are what activate the ejection little scissor ideal and what then push the cartridge out the other side the captive recoil spring is really nice the idea that this all comes out as a unit is quite nice the bolt is nice and simple that's a good thing looking at the barrel here we have an adjustable gas plug it's a little difficult to read there but there are actually six different settings to the gas system and there's a little detent right there so we can use a cartridge tip to rotate between those settings although you do have to take the handguard off the gun in order to do it this semicircular cross cut is where the barrel lock holds in and then of course the two tensioning screws tighten this down in the trunnion to hold it firmly in place interesting to note there is a hole right here that see it there that is just behind the chamber and that is basically a vent hole in case you have an overpressure event which would primarily most likely be caused by a bore obstruction which will cause the brass the cartridge case to fail or extract under very high pressure and then fail as soon as it comes out of the chamber if that happens gas will vent out that hole from there it will continue up through the matching little hole right here in the trunnion you can see it right above my finger there and then into the top section of the receiver up here and then it up in that area and we have a pair of blowout plugs here and here so in case of a ruptured cartridge or a significant overpressure failure gas will vent straight up here and those two plugs which are sufficiently in front of your face that that won't hurt you and it will prevent catastrophic damage to the rifle and that's a really nice safety mechanism mechanism to see installed this is more than just we're gonna decide to try an armor the thing by putting a big steel plate inside next to the shooters face as I believe that what least one bullpup design did and instead actually has a remediation a way to remediate that problem well the whole foam pad cheek rest is kind of nice too little incongruous on a military pattern rifles but neat nice its comfortable a few things to look at on the lower receiver this is all a polymer shell I mentioned before that this is not an accessible storage compartment however if we look closely here the pistol grip is actually a separate piece from the lower frame and if we look down in there you'll see a screw so the pistol grip should actually be replaceable and that's something that I know a lot of people will inevitably complain about you know everyone will decide that they don't like this pistol grip for any number of reasons and they will want to replace it and this normally would be one of those gripes that you hear when people just you know don't like the price of the rifle and say they say things like wow you know I'd buy one if it didn't have that obnoxious pistol grip well they're desert Tech's ahead of you because they put a replaceable pistol grip on I don't know of anyone actually offering different ones yet but that's planning in advance to support aftermarket features which is a good idea the magazine release button at the front is connected to this bar right here which comes all the way back yet there's an interaction right here with the rear magazine release and when you push that all the way back it's going to push pull this log out of the receiver and thus drop the magazine so this is an l-shaped piece connected to that metal bit down there when that goes down this bar goes forward which pulls this connecting bar forward which runs all the way back to the actual release the trigger is on the other side here and it is just going to pull this connecting bar forward our safety is very simple in that you can see it brings that little lug up so you can no longer pull the trigger far enough forward to release unfortunately this trigger kind of sucks this the manual says this has a two-stage trigger to my mind this is really a single stage trigger you've got a little bit of slack just until the trigger catches up to this bar but once once you're there you've got just one long creepy sort of trigger Pole until it releases that bar of course comes all the way back here where it meets up with the actual fire control group and that bar pulls this connecting rod here backwards so which is going to release the hammer to go forward I was wondering what possibility there might be of some sort of aftermarket trigger for this to improve over what I think is having not fired at at least the weakest point to the gun and that's the trigger and much to my happiness you can take this bar and it just comes off the hammer there and then we have a plastic spring here so if I pull this back I can then pull the trigger pack out as a unit so this is a nice easy design for someone to create an aftermarket improvement - should that they want to you've got basically just your one control here that releases and then this is a metal an aluminum frame or housing for the whole trigger group so yeah easy to duplicate the outside dimensions of that frame and create a new drop in improved trigger whether desert tech wants to do that themselves and they do have a corporate history of making a bunch of really high-end precision rifles so I would think that a good trigger would be something they would appreciate or if some other company wants to do it for them having taken the whole thing apart now the obvious question is well that all looks fine and dandy does it actually work so Carl and I are going to take the thing out to the range in fact by the time you watch this we have taken it out to the range and I'm filming this first so I don't know yet how that's gonna turn out if you want to see our first impressions shooting video head on over to in range TV and take a look at that it will be up today the same day that this video publishes so you'll find a link in the description and at the end screen of this video check it out and hopefully the thing runs great because it seems like a pretty cool design thanks for watching

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 680,328

Rating: 4.9588351 out of 5

Keywords: desertech, deserttech, 7.62, 308, 762 nato, nato, bullpup, battle rifle, modern bullpup, modern battle rifle, ambi, ambidextrous, design, development, history, disassembly, rifle, new, review, mccollum, forgotten weapons, mdr, micro dynamic rifle, inrange, inrangetv, first impressions, teardown, kasarda, pmag, rotating bolt, unique, interesting, engineering, ejection, fs2000, f2000, keltec, rdb, rfb, famas, tavor, x95, tavor 7

Id: DbrH_S2Nppo

Length: 24min 45sec (1485 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 13 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/FoxramTheta]

• Marketed as a military rifle.
• Over six screws and 2 pins to access the chamber.

Hmm...

[u/NoNameFist]

I'd call it a takedown not a teardown. I look forward to watching this later.

[u/[deleted]]

I had some hope for these when I first heard about the MDR...

That hope was dashed long before their completion when they fired the lead engineer for not meeting their insane time constraints.

[u/Uniqueusername5667]

It'll sure as hell be forgotten soon. What a piece of junk.

[u/shake_n_bakesteak]

It is sad but it probably would function just fine if it weren't for the"innovative" part. I wonder if it would work with the ejection plate thing removed.

[u/Monkeyfeng]

Yikes, here is Desert Tech's glassdoor review:

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Desert-Tech-Reviews-E1444695.htm