Glorious fall day in the Missouri Ozarks.

by A K Church, Sunday, September 17, 2023, 15:15 (432 days ago)
edited by A K Church, Tuesday, September 19, 2023, 05:28

Bright and mid-70s, so I went to amigo Mike's farm, and decided to do some fact finding. Beautiful day with useful things accomplished.

My 10/22 registered short barrel rifle has been wickedly unreliable since I put it together, just pre-Covid. It has a 4 1/2" stainless Pike Arms barrel.

Bolt over base failures to feed, stovepipes short stroking being the usual run of woes. Oh, it hasn't been accurate for bodiddly, and doesn't like anything but factory 10 round mags.

I switched from a Pro Mag stock to a Butler Creek, and noticed that the magazine lockup seemed often downright poor and fussy at best. I had a little of that with the Pro Mag, but more with the allegedly better Butler Creek.

It appears the problem never was with the stocks, except that the deeper Butler Creek exacerbates a problem it already had. The magazine lockup in the action itself is poor from the factory. The lug the magazine positions on is apparently too short from the factory, and the magazine catch spring is too light. This is apparently a known issue in later model 10/22s.

It also, now pretty certainly, has too much recoil spring for the short barrel's pressure curve. I had suspected this, but never tested it much. This is certainly not a fault of Ruger's, as they designed the carbine around a barrel 4 times as long. The temporary fix is simple. Run quality hi-speed ammo. I got 100 rounds with 0 failures using some Super-X Hi Speed I got when Bush Senior was President. This is unheard of, never got 30 rounds w/o a failure before. And careful insertion of the previously temperamental Ruger 25 round mags ran perfectly.

It never made it through one magazine today with std vel or subsonics. Bolt polishing, radiusing, reduced recoil springs may all be in the future. But right now, it gets higher quality hispeed ammo.