Ethan, I’ve got to ask: why not just return it to Ruger instead of spending more money, time and effort on it?
Giving Ruger more money for the new mags just isn’t right.
Ruger will immediately know what’s wrong with it and fix it for you on their dime. (Except shipping to them)
Put it back to stock first, or they’ll do it for you. ;-)
You bring up a good point, however
I did have my reasons for being hesitant to send it in directly.
The main reason is I was worried they would create another problem, while attempting to fix the initial problem. I don't say this without good reason to feel this way, and here's why... I have received two primary replacement components from Ruger thus far, while trying to fix this gun, and both had major QC issues in of themselves that would have resulted in even more problems for me down the road.
One was a brand new slide that they sent me, along with the new rust-free barrel (my original barrel looked like it spent a week at the bottom of the ocean).
They send out both a barrel and slide as a set, even though I only needed a new barrel, because they claim that these parts are headspaced at the factory and are a matched pair. The new barrel was perfect, however the new slide had HUGE burrs on the back, due to what I believe was a misaligned CNC machine. I tried this new slide, and it was scratching the heck out of the aluminum receiver rails, and felt extremely gritty. If they popped this slide on there at the factory, fired a couple times without malfunction (while tearing up the receiver in the process), and sent the gun back to me, I would be very unhappy and frustrated. The original slide was perfect, all I needed was the new barrel... so I took the new barrel, and paired it with my old slide. Everything fit perfectly, and my accuracy since then has been fine (also, my FTF malfunctions are not related to the slide)... so I'm assuming this claim they are a headspaced pair is inaccurate, specifically with the QC I'm seeing at Ruger I doubt they would take the time to headspace slides and barrels.
The other part was a brand new polymer frame. This new polymer frame was not molded right; for whatever reason a component of the mold had not been aligned properly, resulting in a portion of the internal frame geometry being very far out of alignment. I noticed how poor the fit was when trying to install my aluminum receiver into the new frame. It took an unusual amount of pressure to install the frame, and upon further inspection I noticed a portion of the internal frame protruding abnormally, in comparison to my original frame where these two portions aligned perfectly
apart from the thin mold-component seam line. I can imagine the factory just forcing it back together, calling it good, and shipping it back to me completely unaware... until the frame cracks some 100 or so rounds later (possibly when my life depends on it).
I
don't trust Ruger to get it right, without messing something else up that had, just by chance, already been fine from the start. Their QC is an absolute crapshoot, and I just want to get lucky with those dice... because I like the product idea (a 10 round pocketable 380) and
really want one that works. So I'm choosing to do all the work myself, even though it's costing me more than it should. I think it's finally working at this point, so everything paid off in the end.
