RUGER 45ACP / 45LC Doesn't like .45 ACPs

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Dave Nickum

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Recently bought a used but very good condition Ruger Convertible. At the range yesterday, it handles 45lc very well, but doesn't lilke 45 ACP with Remington Golden Sabre bullets. They went all over the place. Not a leading problem, since i and previous owner never shoot lead. Any thoughts.
 
Any thoughts
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Have you tried loading up 45 ACP cases with (the slightly wider) 45 Colt bullets?
You'd have to be really careful, they wouldn't be safe to fire in any other gun.
 
I would suspect the design of the gun. That cylinder is essentially freebore for the shorter ACP cartridge, allowing it to wobble or drift slightly before it enters the barrel.

A slightly larger bullet may fix this to a degree, but I doubt impressive results would be possible without extensive load experimentation, even then, it is highly probable the ACP would still trail the LC in accuracy.

That's my speculation for the day. :uhoh:
 
I just acquired a used similar Blackhawk and experienced the same results, probably for the reasons Trueblue mentioned. The former owner said he used 45acp so I started shooting the 45acp because I had lots of the ammo about the house. I switched to 45LC just to try it out and noticed a significant pick up in accuracy--at least between 10-20yds.
 
Same issue here with mine - 45 Colt is more accurate than .45ACP. I guess it's just the tradeoff of cost for a range trip vs. satisfaction at the range :)
 
I have just the opposite experience. I have a blue 45 acp cylinder in a sst ruger and it shoots better than the sst 45 colt cylinder
 
I've got one and had the same experience (more accurate with .45 Colt). My .45 ACP cylinder now sits in my parts box. That's OK, revolvers were meant for rimmed cartridges. ;)

These guns also often have undersized throats in the .45 Colt cylinder, which can cause a loss of accuracy in that caliber as the bullets get squished below bore size. I had mined reamed out and even the .45 Colt accuracy improved quite a bit.

-- Sam
 
Ruger 45/45acp.......

I Have two (2) of these fine handguns that have never had the 45 colt cylinders installed!!!:) One is the 5.5 inch and the other is the 7.5 inch. Both of them shoot the 454 acps that I load for my bottom feeders. They shoot very well, especially the 5.5 incher. I already load for 44 mag. so don't want to get into loading for 45colt. I don't know how these handguns shoot as well as they do considering the length of free bore involved. But Mine are great!:) All I ever shoot is cast 200-230 gr.'s in them.
 
I have several of these with 5 ½” and 7 ½” barrels. The .45 Colt cylinders had small throats and required reaming. The .45 ACP cylinders were also a little tight. I had to open a couple of them, too. One .45 ACP cylinder measures .451”, but shoots so well with mil ball I don’t want to change anything.
In the .45 Colt, you can get some inconsistency due to the large case and small powder charge. The .45 ACP has a smaller case with less excess case capacity, but the bullets have a longer freebore. If the throat is not too tight or too large, the bullet can make the jump from the case to the rifling consistently.
My .45s shoot well with both .45 Colt and .45 ACP cylinders. The S&W 25-2 and 625s also have long freebore and they shoot well, too.
 
Handloadiing .45 Colt is cheaper for me than buying .45ACP at Walmart, especially since I cast my bullets from free range scrap. I have absolutely NO use for a .45ACP cylinder. My best loads using the Lee double cavity 255 grain flat point over 8.3 grains of unique or 300 grain Hornady XTP JHP over a heavy charge of 2400 yields 1" 25 yard six shot groups, 4 moa accuracy. It don't get no better than that for me with iron sights.

If I wanna shoot .45ACP, I have a P90 for that.
 
I picked up some GS bullets in .38 caliber a few years ago. As I recall they had an odd jacket design in which the diameter varied in a bottleneck fashion, and I had trouble handloading them--somewhat loose crimp or some such. In any event I quit fooling with them. If the .45 caliber ones were similar, that combined with a long bullet jump and fairly shallow rifling might give poor results.

The Convertibles also had some problems with undersized and/or nonuniform throat sizes, and many people have had them reamed to .4525 which helped matters. I had big problems with .451/.452 bullets leading until I had the work done. (I also went to the old .454 diameter for .45 Colt which eliminated the problem.)

The .45 Colt cylinder shoots extremely well, as does the .45 ACP cylinder with .452 dia. 230 gr. RNL cast bullets. I rarely shoot it with jacketed so can't speak to that. You might try another jacketed ACP load and see what it does with those.
 
I have a convertable blackhawk .45 made in 2002 4 5/8" barrel length and bought used by me in 2006. It shoots .45 acp extremely well, 4.5 grains of trailboss and a 230 grain lrn, or 5.2 gr trailboss and a 200 LSWC.

It also shoots my .45 colt trailboss loads well.

Thry different bullets before you decide its not accurate, it may just be that it doesnt like the golden saber bullets.
 
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