Gear Review: Ultradyne UD Rifle Chassis and Accessories

Ultradyne got its reputation building world class precision iron sights and quality, innovative muzzle brakes. They’ve gone well beyond that now with an impressive, complete catalogue of items. Chief among those is their new UD Chassis and chassis accessories.

The value of any chassis system is in its unrivaled modularity and Utradyne has taken advantage of that feature like no other. The UD chassis isn’t just the high quality we’ve come to expect from Ultradyne.  It’s as innovative as any of their other products (no small feat) and quite possibly more modular and adaptable than anything else on the market.

Right off the bat, Ultradyne distances itself from much of its competition by offering both short action and standard action Remington 700 and Savage footprints.  The whole thing is made from a single bar of 6061 T6 Aluminum and finished in 11 different Cerakote colors of your choice.  Like most chassis on the market it works with AICS magazines and accepts an barrel with a maximum diameter of 1.35″.

There’s plenty of real estate for a wide variety of bolt handle positions.  I put 4 different bolt guns with Remington 700 footprints through the chassis, and every single one of them fit just fine.

The UD chassis includes a full-length ARCA intrinsic to the bottom of the chassis itself. That bottom also includes M-LOK slots all along its length, but if you haven’t tried an ARCA system yet, you really need to give it a shot.  Like a lot of shooters, I was iffy until I tried it, and now I miss it on every rifle I have that doesn’t incorporate a rail with the stock.

Ultradyne gives you several options in the total handguard/rail length, 15.3′, 18.5′, 21.6″.  The chassis weighs between 17, 19, and 21oz, depending on handguard length.  There’s also M-LOK slots along both sides of the handguard. If that rail length isn’t enough for you, UD offers an extension, called the UD Spigot.

The UD Spigot attaches to the end of the rail and gives you an additional 3.25″ of forward rail, and also includes two M-LOK slots in the middle. That gives you not just additional ARCA rail space out in front, but if you could also attach a Pic rail piece onto the spigot itself. There is a tiny space between the spigot and the rail, but it’s all so solid and smooth

I had no problems sliding the full length of the rail with any accessory or ball head.  Depending on your barrel length and chosen rail length, the spigot could extend your bipod or tripod beyond the muzzle.  This is a bit more challenging to move around but, from the prone, offers a shooting platform even more solid and still than heavy bags.

The UD chassis stops at the rear of the receiver.  After that, the receiver terminates in an AR style mil-spec buffer tube attachment.  You can run any AR style stock you want, or you could put on a buffer tube-to-pic rail adapter and increase your options even further.

Alternatively, you could just run with a color matched UD Adjustable Stock. That would be my choice.  In fact, this stock would be my choice for this chassis as well as almost any AR.  It locks up with a castle nut, as well as a completely unnecessary set screw.  Once in place, the stock adjusts for comb height, length of pull, and cheek rest position.  You also adjust the position of the recoil pad itself, including the cant.  Beyond these adjustments, you can further alter the weight and geometry of the stock itself.

The bottom rear of the stock has two M-LOK slots for attaching accessories.  You could add a folding mono-pod back there, or any of Ultradyne’s bag riders. These are triangular pieces that flatten out the bottom of the stock.  One of them (attached in the photos) is aluminum and weighs very little.  It just provides support.  Alternatively, Ultradyne offers bag riders in multiple weights, up to 2lbs.  This is a pretty neat way to not just add weight to the gun to reduce recoil and increase stability, but also to alter the point of balance for the gun to change its handling.

A pretty helpful item is a barricade stop.  These are helpful just as much for hunters as for competition shooters, and perhaps even more so. It’s great to be able to lean in and push up against a tree stump, a limb, or the windowsill of a hunting blind.

Ultradyne has a couple of clamps that attach to the chassis via the ARCA rail or the UD Spigot that you can attach their barricade stop to.  Knurled and rock solid, it does a great job holding as much weight as you want to drive into it and quickly and quietly repositions to whatever balance point you want to achieve.  If not the Ultradyne barricade stop, you can choose to attach a variety of pillows and accessories to the clamp.

Ultradyne offers two grips to go along with the UD Chassis, both right and left hand.  The angle on the grip allows for a natural bend of the wrist, as well as a straight back pull into the trigger shoe.  If there was anything I don’t love about this chassis and the accessories, it’s this grip. It does all the things it’s supposed to do.  It provides a solid grip, but also allows the hand to relax and pull back naturally. It’s just not particularly sturdy. Hollow, but with no enclosure at the bottom, I can squeeze the bottom of the grip together a good bit with my hands.  A good drop onto a hard surface would almost certainly damage the bottom of the grip.  That’s the same for a whole lot of the grips out there, it’s just when everything else on the chassis shines so well, the grip is mediocre.

The user can also add weight anywhere along the fore end of the gun with a variety of M-LOK attachable weights.  These simply attach right on to any of the M-LOK slots along the rail.  Again, this changes not just the overall weight but the balance point of the rifle.

Taken all together, you can see where Ultradyne has provided the shooter with an extremely modular system, especially when it comes to weight and handling.  If you wanted to throw your rimfire bolt gun into the UD Chassis, no additional weight is really necessary.  Using the same chassis, now replace that rimfire with a 7mm SAUM. You can keep it light for mountain hunts, or you can weight it way down for long days at the range, or anything in-between.  It’s a great system.

Forward night vision optic compatibility has also been accounted for with the UD Bridge.  This is a simple enough bridge made of 6061T6 Aluminum and hardcoat anodized that attaches via the M-LOK rail to the UD Chassis. It should line up pretty well with most NV devices. What’s great here is that, since there’s plenty of M-LOK slots, you can mount an IR laser to the UD Bridge and an IR torch to the chassis.

If you wanted to be super nerdy you could run an off-set NV capable reflex optic on one of the closer M-LOK slots and just roll with NODs and your daylight optic in place.

There are quite a few chassis on the market, but very few, if any with this level of modularity and customization.  If you wanted to create your ideal chassis, Ultradyne has included just about everything for you to do just that, all from one online catalogue.

Everything fits, everything works, and it all works well together.  Every bit of it is quality and absolutely first rate.

UD Adjustable Butt Stock – $279.00 – $364.00 (Depending on Cerakote finish)
UD ARCA Clamp – $68.00
UD Single Thumb Rest Grip – Right or Left Handed- $29.00
UD Spigot – $38.00
UD Bridge – $129.00
UD Forearm Weights – $59-$79 (Depending on weight)
UD Weighted Bag Rider – $99-$119 (Depending on weight)

Overall * * * * *
Ultradyne’s been able to do what most other companies fail at. They’ve branched out and extended their product offerings while maintaining an exceptional level of quality, not to mention the intelligent “American Ingenuity” their motto claims.