Manticore Arms recently moved from Indiana to South Carolina. But that did not stop Sven of Manticore from designing and coming out with more upgrades for the Springfield Hellion. His Manticore Hellion curved buttpad helps alleviate a common complaint by some online critics and it was just released on Manticore’s website.

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Shorter and Taller, Hellion Curved Buttpad

One constant complaint from online critics, most of whom do not own a Hellion, brings up the long length of pull (LOP) on the Springfield Hellion. While the LOP is longer than necessary, it is not bad. What confuses people is why HS Produkt (designers and manufacturers of the VHS-D2/Hellion) decided that the stock should extend even further for more LOP. Well, now Manticore has made his Hellion Curved Buttpad.

Photo by Manticore Arms

You can see the side-by-side comparison here. Manticore’s Hellion Curved Buttpad reduces the length by 1″ and adds 1″ of drop to the buttpad.

Photo by Manticore Arms

Photo by Manticore Arms

Manticore’s Hellion Curved Buttpad is machined aluminum with a rubber curved buttpad. Similar to his curved buttpads for the X95. The Hellion Curved Buttpad comes with a screw and Allen wrench. This is for installing the bolt locking rod and recoil spring from the factory Hellion buttpad/stock.

Photo by Manticore Arms

I ordered one of his Hellion Curved Buttpads. The Manticore weighs 1.9 oz more than the factory Hellion buttpad.

Manticore Helion Curved Buttpad

Factory Hellion Buttpad

In order to swap the buttpads, you need to remove the buffer, recoil spring and bolt locking rod. Look at the photo below, the recoil spring and bolt locking rod are held in with a pin. You can see it recessed on the side of the buttpad.

The white buffer is just nested into the stock. Manticore recommends using a flathead screwdriver to pry it out.

The cross pin that holds the recoil spring and bolt locking rod is held in place with a c-clip. I could not see it so I just used a punch and tapped the pin out. The c-clip fell out and I put it with the pin in a small plastic baggie since I won’t be using them. When you install the recoil spring and bolt locking rod, you use the 5/32″ diameter, 1″ long shoulder screw provided by Manticore. You need to pay attention to the orientation of the recoil spring and bolt locking rod. The recoil spring sits on top of the bolt locking rod. If you try putting in the recoil spring in first, the bolt locking rod will not fit. See the photo below.

Here is the shoulder screw installed.

Here is the weight with the parts installed.

The shorter LOP is nice but now my face sits closer, almost uncomfortably so. I feel the need to pull my head back a bit.

The Manticore Hellion Curved Buttpad has QD sling holes machined into each side. But Manticore has a note on their website about it.

NOTE:  We have found through extensive testing that Magpul QD sling swivels are slightly undersized compared to most other QD sling swivels on the market, and may disconnect from the QD pockets on the Buttpad while all others stay locked in the QD pockets.  We recommend use of Midwest Industries QD sling swivels for a high quality swivel.

For $159.99 you can upgrade your Hellion to have a curved buttpad with shorter LOP. For more information go to Manticore’s website.

Edit: Sven of Manticore posted some information for people who have ordered his curved buttpad.

Important notice about the Hellion Curved Buttpad (please read if you bought one!)

We discovered that the buffer projects 0.200″ farther forward into the rifle on the Hellion Curved Buttpad than on the OEM buttpad. We are currently manufacturing buffers that are 0.200″ shorter to resolve this issue, and will be shipping a new buffer at no charge to every customer who bought a Hellion Curved Buttpad, anbd will be included in all Hellion Curved Buttpads going forward. We expect these buffers to ship in approximately 14 days. We do not recommend running the gun with the buffer removed. You can in theory cut 0.200″ off of the OEM buffer, but if you can wait we will ship you a new buffer so you don’t have the chop up your existing one. It is safe to live fire your Hellion with the Hellion Curved Buttpad installed, just be aware that when manually pulling back on the charging handle with an empty magazine in or not in the gun, the bolt will not lock back on the bolt catch. If you have any questions at all please email us at info@manticorearms.com So how did this not get caught in testing?

When live firing this is not an issue, and the bolt, which is lightly spring loaded in the carrier, is compressed into the carrier under recoil and will lock back on the bolt catch when the magazine runs empty. When manually pulling back on the charging handle with an empty magpul magazine in the gun, it will appear that the bolt is locked back, but due to the shape of the magpul follower and the bolt teeth, it is actually the bolt teeth catching on the follower. If you reach up into the magwell and try to push the bolt catch up, (something that is not recommended as a manual of arms with teh Hellion, it is not meant for someone to stick their hand in there to do this) the bolt face is too far foward to catch on it as the spring between the bolt and the carrier is pressing the bolt forward. In short, we live fire tested and tested with the included magpul magazines in the magwell, and it appeared to lock the bolt back both ways just fine, but it wasn’t until a customer stuck their hand up the magwell to lock the bolt back that they noticed the issue, and let us know, and we were able to backtrack the issue to the buffer projecting a little bit too far forward. My apologies for not catching this in testing, but we are correcting it at no cost to everyone and as a bouns you will not have to harvest your OEM buffer out of the original buttplate going forward!

Sven

Manticore Arms