Delta 14 Chassis is a small, family owned business doing new school things to old school long guns, like their Delta 14 Chassis Legacy Rifle Upgrades, including M1A and M14 packages — and they’re good people too. Breach-Bang-Clear

Delta 14 Chassis

Michigan Based Small American Business Builds Eponymous Delta 14 Chassis M1, M14, and Other Upgrades

Being in the “Tactical” arm of the shooting sports (capitalized intentionally), sometimes it’s easy to forget that we represent a relatively small piece of the industry, gun-owning pie. It’s easy to get caught up in the world of “duty ready” and forget that for most folks, that’s just not their world.

I have a good friend with very different firearm needs than I do. He owns a pretty good-sized piece of property and worries about predators. Not the two legged kind, the four legged kind. He owns several M-1As and M14 clones, and he’s not interested in the AR platform. Yes, I know. Heresy.

You know what though? He shoots them a lot. He’s really good with them. And he’s got the logistics to keep his M-1As going, to include magazines and spare parts. He also has decades of training on the platform. Jim is going to be just fine with the M-1A.

Mission drives gear – the various Delta 14 Chassis legacy rifle upgrades help modernize M1As, M14s, and other long guns.

When we were talking about shooting a while back, he mentioned he wanted to put a light on one of his rifles. Because the M-1A is what some might call a legacy platform (not that there’s anything wrong with that), there aren’t a lot of quality options out there to increase its usefulness. The Sage stock, for instance, is fantastic for what it does, but it’s heavy and expensive.

When these guys go retro, they really go retro. Think warrior archetypes.

This article was originally published in 2018.

Meeting Delta 14 Chassis

During that conversation, I remembered a product and more specifically, a couple I met at SHOT a couple of years ago. SHOT is usually a huge pain in the ass, and during one of my tactical retreats to a hotel bar, I struck up a conversation with Bill and Dawn. Bill and Dawn happen to own a company that produces exactly what a guy like Jim needs — the Delta 14 Chassis for the M-1A. We had a couple of drinks and shared some stories about the people of SHOT (it’s like the people of Wal-Mart, but with more NRA hats and wheeled pull carts), and then went about our business. But this conversation with Jim had me remembering their product. I dug out the card and gave Bill a call. He had one sent out in no time at all.

The chassis itself is made of a lightweight glass-filled nylon. It’s rigid enough to provide support and it certainly seemed solid enough for its intended mission. That’s an important thing here. When I talked to Bill about that, he said,

“You know, I just wanted to make a stock that would give the regular M-1A owner some options. I’m not re-making the Sage stock. If the Sage is a Ferrari, I’m making a Chevy.”

Old school workhorse – new school tack and harness.

Your mission should always drive your gear. You should know if you need a Ferrari or a Chevy and jock up accordingly — and if you’re building a hard use rifle to steal souls in faraway lands, you might want to be considering something other than the M-1A anyway.

M1A, M14, EBR, and other mags are all available at GunMag Warehouse (and you’ll be supporting us).

M1A Chassis And Other Upgrades

However, for what 99.9% of M-1A users need (and those carrying other older rifle platforms too), this is absolutely tough enough. There’s also a steel ferrule embedded in the chassis, so the rifle’s action fits tight and stays where it’s supposed to, and there are three sections of aluminum rail (mating at the 3, 6, and 9 o’clock on the chassis) that can be installed at the shooter’s discretion.

Jim and I decided on 9 o’clock for the Surefire Scout Light that I donated to the project, and the entire upgrade took less than five minutes. The rear of the chassis provides a mating platform for all Mossberg 500 attachments, so the user can choose from a standard rifle stock to a Magpul stock and even a collapsible AR style stock utilizing some Mesa Tactical furniture. The rig Bill sent had a standard stock, but the pictures that I’ve seen with the Magpul SGA stock on it make me want to order one of those for Jim just because I know how comfortable they are to use.

After re-assembly, we took it to the range, and while it’s not a match rifle we had no problems hitting steel out to 600 yards with iron sights. With the attached Surefire Scout M600, Jim can ID predators and still get good hits past 100 yards in the dark on his property.

Problem solved, problem staying solved.

While I’ve read that some people have seen accuracy improvements with the Delta 14, we noted that Jim’s rifle shot the same with the chassis installed. Minute of Coyote as far out as he was willing to take the shot.

Look, the M-1A might be a legacy platform, but there are thousands of shooters out there that love their rifle and have no plans on giving it up. For them, the Delta 14 is a solid option and provides lots of value for the shooter. It’s available in black, tan, and grey and you can go full on Homer Simpson, filling the rails with as much tactical goodness as you care to.

Some may think it’s heresy to dislike or even disdain the AR/M4 platform, but many a solid shooter prefers an older, “legacy”, platform.

No, don’t, please, I was just kidding.

Bill and Dawn at Delta 14 are great folks, great ambassadors to the industry, and remind me why I got into the industry in the first place.

You can connect with Delta 14 Chassis on Facebook at /D14CLLC/.

JS

Now, questions for the crowd:

Have you upgraded a legacy weapon in some way? 

M1-A or M14? Which would you rather run?

What other upgrades for other breeds of rifle have you built with? 

We want to hear from you. Join the conversation:

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