22 Pistol Reliability

First topic message reminder :

I have some general and some specific questions for the group concerning 22 pistol reliability. I am a beginning Bullseye shooter using a one year old Ruger Mark III stainless steel Target pistol and have had a few problems during competition with my equipment. Twice yesterday I have had round number 4 nose dive into round number 5 on magazines loaded with five rounds. I also had a cartridge (round 2, 3 or 4) fire and not move the slide. The pistol and both magazines were clean at the beginning of the day (no cartridge residue anywhere), chamber brushed out, all parts had been wiped with a Remoil soaked patch for an oil film but not wet, and the ammo was recent manufacture SK Standard Plus. All machined edges on the pistol and magazines have been conservatively dressed to remove burrs but not change shape or dimensions. The magazines are marked but I was unable to connect the feed fault to a particular unit. I plan to check for friction again where the button on the magazine follower travels in the magazine.

At this point I am not very impressed with Ruger's design. It looks like a high school machine shop project built to fingernail tolerances, and I don't like that the first round in each magazine has to be carefully nosed up before loading to avoid nose dive jams on the first round. It is a very easy pistol to disassemble and re-assemble after reading Bullseye's instructions at http://www.guntalk-online.com/detailstrip.htm .

Being a mechanic and desiring reliability in my equipment, which 22 pistols are considered to have good reliability when maintained properly and which tend to have chronic faults? Any suggestions to improve reliability in 22 pistols and in Rugers?

Cecil,
I think you are on track with a geometry issue. Today I had many jams and took notes. It looks like a round is being chambered and the bolt is shaving the bullet beneath the chambered round. My Ruger Mk III came with a loose receiver (no mallet required to disassemble). I am now thinking the magazines are too close to the bolt, letting the bolt touch the next lower round to the top round. No more stove-pipes, 7 shaves with two magazines, and one bent case stuck in the chamber after using the third magazine. I had a lot of lead shavings on my mat at my shooting station.

More to come, and I promise pictures.

A friend loaned me his stock lower to compare to, and I found that a combination of a BAM hammer bushing and a Volquartsen Magazine Ejector I had installed before getting into competition shooting was causing the front of the magazine to tilt up. Since I am in no danger of squirrels and chipmunks assaulting my position while changing magazines and wanting to have a competition legal firearm, I reinstalled the Ruger hammer bushing and magazine disconnect lever. The magazine disconnect lever also works to position the magazine forward in the magazine well so the lower bolt edge doesn't hit the second from top cartridge (which is now parallel to the bolt and not angled up) during feeding. The Volquartsen Magazine Ejector was removed and placed in the box of bad purchase decisions under the workbench.

I'm looking forward to getting to the range to practice. Besides looking to see if reliability has improved, I am wondering if 40gr bullets will group better than 37.85gr ones did.

I too started out with a Ruger; a target government. I later bought a Competition model that I still have. While I don't shoot it much anymore, it was always very reliable and accurate. The last season I used it I had one alibi all year with one failure to feed. I shot CCI SV and Wolf/Sk mostly. The only thing I would also suggest is to take the magazines apart and give them a good cleaning if you haven't done that. The lube off the bullets collects a lot of dirt. Hope this helps and here is 10 shots from my Ruger to show they are as accurate as anything out there. Get a trigger job and it will deliver good scores.

The SK Standard Plus seems to have been the problem. Not enough recoil to move everything reliably.

CCI SV and RWS Rifle Target ran great today.

Just joined the forum and read this post and I'm not sure if you still have the problem.  I had a similar problem (4th round being shaved and jammed ) and came up with this theory. I think there was too much pressure on the magazine spring.  I had 6 magazines and had the problem with 4 of them.  What I did was shorten the mag spring (took off 3 turns).  Not one problem since!

Welcome to the forum rgwellsjr,

Yep, I think the fault was failure to harmonize magazine spring tension to cartridge power/cycling speed. The Sk Standard Plus was too soft for the springs in the Ruger. During the course of this problem I acquired a Hammerli X-esse. With the same ammunition it would consistently jam the fourth round into the top of the chamber with aftermarket magazine springs and do it after about 90-100 rounds with stock springs. The same ammunition would run fine in a friend's older Ruger Mark III that is used for plinking and gets loaded to full magazine capacity.

The SK got sold at cost to a local 3p rifle shooter, so everything has worked out well just before the new season.

Wow!
Was not aware mkIII's were giving such feeding issues.  I'm a MKII aficionado, currently own 5, 3 set up with dots and decent triggers for BE.  My first one I bought used and have put over 100k rds through it myself with minor adjustments to the magazines.  I've several Hi Standards and a Marvel unit one and have put thousands of rounds through them, but I still keep coming back to the MKII's.  If you feed them any kind of good quality target ammo, the only thing keeping you from a clean target is good practice.

If it's a magazine related issue, follow & try this link.  I did it to all my mags and they work flawlessly in every one of the mkII's.  Perhaps the mkIII's are a horse of a different color.

http://www.1bad69.com/ruger/stovepipe.htm

Al

I suspect most do not have issues with Ruger Mark IIIs.  I have one that I have put over 6,000 rounds through over the last year and had ONE round jam.

Chip

Sometimes crud builds up in the extractor recess (the area next to the chamber). I usually clean it out with a pipe cleaner or dental pick. I've only had extraction issues with Remington Thunderbolt (there are other more descriptive terms for this ammo), which also seem to have about 10% duds.

A similar story here:

http://www.targettalk.org/viewtopic.php?t=42784

except mine was due to a single type of ammo. After I was able to acquire and test other ammo I had no more jams. Before this problem I was running the Ruger Mark III pre-Bullseye on CCI Mini-Mags with no faults.

For total reliability, I have found that Hammerli 208 und 208s to have perfect reliability with standard velocity and pistol match ammo.  Never use HV ammo!  The only bad 208s was one that an AH shade-tree gunsmith had F&*%#d up by running a full size rifle chamber reamer in the chamber.  No wonder that Tenex produced 3 inch groups at 25 yards!

That gunsmith is no longer with us.  I sold that pistol for half price.

The only chronically unreliable pistol for me has been the S&W 41 in all it's iterations. All barrel
lengths and types. NG

The KART with a Nygord reliability job has also been total perfection except with Aguillera ammo (not enough recoil)

jerry lehrer wrote:
The only chronically unreliable pistol for me has been the S&W 41 in all it's iterations. All barrel
lengths and types. NG

That's what makes life a horse race....
 
I have a couple of M41's and a M46.  After smoothing their slide rails (5 minutes with a diamond hone), smoothing their feed ramps (5 minutes with a round ceramic stone) and swapping out their recoil springs to a slightly lighter Wolfe unit; I get one hundred percent reliability.

Jim

The only 41 I had that was marginally reliable was one that Jim Clark had setup for me with a 7and 3/8" bbl shortened to 6inches, BoMar ribbed and a 2#
trigger pull.  It only was reliable with Tenex.

Funny, I have been shooting a 41 since bought new back in 2007 and have never had an alibi do to reliability and only one dud with CCi SV in all that time. Shoot around 3000 rounds a year out of it.


Virgil

Virgil Kane wrote:Funny, I have been shooting a 41 since bought new back in 2007 and have never had an alibi do to reliability and only one dud with CCi SV in all that time. Shoot around 3000 rounds a year out of it.


Virgil

+1

From what I understand; Brian Zins gave up his M41 only when "asked" to do so by his current shooting team.  It must have had a certain level of reliabilty for him too.  LOL.

Jim