Ruger Mark III Problem....or ammo?

[Yehen]

Hey guys, just brought a brand new Mark III about a week ago and took it to the range today. I had so many Problems it was ridiculous. Out of 400+ rounds I think I shot two mags without either a failure to chamber, failure to eject, or misfire. The biggest problem I was having was the bolt catching the ejecting shell. I took the gun to the gun store and it seemed to fire fine.

I was shooting Winchester Xpert22 and Wildcat 22 ammo. I bought both probably about 6 months ago. The Xpert at Wal-Mart and the Wildcats the same store I got the gun.

I can't imagine the ammo being that bad. Most of the time I had 2-3 or even more malfunctions per magazine?

Am I doing something wrong?

 

[Bullseye57]

This situation does happen from time to time. Here's a link to a thread I wrote about magazine positioning. http://www.guntalk-online.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18 Give it a read. The extractor could also be a source of trouble if it is releasing the spent case too soon. I usually replace them with a Volquartsen Exact Edge extractor. The VQ extractor is harder and keeps its edge much longer than the factory one.

Hope this helps.

R,
Bullseye

 

[Neophyte1]

Bullseye

Yehen: Sir; I recommend the Bullseye suggestion.
If he don't know no-one does.

 

[12many]

I would try CCI Mini Mag. That is a common ammo that does not cause problems. If your gun does not function with that ammo, then it is the gun and not the ammo. Yes, it should function with all ammo, but you can you the type of ammo to also ID the problem sometime.

Also, can you try different magazines? That may also help narrow it down.

I may get about 1 misfeed out of 400 rounds of Mini-mag so you do have a problem.

Did you strip and clean the gun before you started shooting? That may be another option.

Part of what is confusins is your problems are all over the place. Feeding is often the magazine, ejecting is the extractor, and mis-fires the firing pin or an open bolt.

Bullseye is the expert. His web site is great.

 

[HOLY DIVER]

does the markIII have the same bolt ass. as the markII?i had a II for many years and the only time it gave trouble was when it got bad bad dirty....clean it and it was good for anouther 500rd or so

 

[M2 Carbine]

Am I doing something wrong?

No, Ruger just took a age old proven reliable design and ruined it with political correct crap.

My new Mark III wouldn't go through a magazine without jamming due to the loaded chamber indicator.
I tried four magazines and a number of different brands of ammo.



The minute I removed the LCI the gun functioned fine.

I can't imagine the ammo being that bad.

IMO Winchester Xpert22 and Wildcat 22 isn't very good ammo. I was shooting some Xpert today in a S&W K-22. It jams feeding in my Ruger MK III.
Of the Wal Mart Xpert, Federal and Remingtom 22LR I get the best preformance with Remington.

 

[wally]

I had the same issues with my MKIII. Left the loaded chamber indicator in and replaced the extractor with a Volquartson or one of its clones.

Problem solved.

--wally.

 

[greener]

.22's are curious beasts. I've found that some heavily lubed .22 ammo will not go through my MKIII's or my MKII. Xpert22 varies from lot to lot. Largely it just stops coming out of the magazine. Sort of the same problem with RGB's. My P22 will shoot RGB's with no problems but I can't get Xpert22's to leave the mag. My Buck Mark not only shoots Xpert22, but does it quite accurately. They all seem to shoot 40gr lrn SV ammo, Federal Automatch, minimags, CCI SV, Federal 510, etc.

I'm not enough of a pistol engineer to figure out why one will shoot brand x and another will not even feed it from the mag. I just figure out what the pistols like and shoot that. Sometimes I look like a travelling ammo salesman with all the "samples" I carry to the range.

 

[1SOW]

My 30+ year old High Standard didn't like Winchester ammo when it was new and still doesn't. Rem., Federal, CCI, and others all shoot fine. Probably less than 1/500 FTE.
12 Many may be right. I've never heard about CCI 22LR ammo having ammo-specific problems.

 

[Buster_NW]

Try CCI Minimags first. If they don't shoot, I'd suggest you contact Ruger directly. When I got my MK III, I was having about a 10% FTF rate. The rounds were nose-diving into the bottom of the feed ramp. Ruger did a great job troubleshooting the problem with me and sent me a new mag release free; it fixed the problem.

 

[kle]

M2 Carbine, my Ruger Mk. II was doing the same thing tonight as your picture shows--I'm hoping that the extractor was just super-dirty (I do try to clean it regularly, though). I'll try it again tomorrow and see if a good cleaning hasn't fixed it...

 

[chris in va]

I had a horrible problem with a new MkIII 22/45 when it first came out. Any 'hollowpoints' would catch on the feed ramp, shaving off a 'smilie'. Talked to a guy at Ruger about it, they sent me a new bolt which, of course, didn't fix the problem.

I sold it and bought a MkII 22/45 which fed flawlessly. I think all that extra lawyer crap adds more problems than it solves.

 

[CajunBass]

My MK III 22/45 would jam once in a while when it was new and I was experimenting with different ammo. After it broke in (about 500 rounds or so) it started to run like a watch. It would jam just like the one's in M2's picture, just not as often, but for a little while I did think I might have a bad magazine. I just kept on shooting it. I've pretty much settled on Federal bulk pack ammo for it. I try to clean it once in a blue moon.

 

[Yehen]

Well..I just field stripped it and cleaned it...and it was the most complicated field strip I have ever done. Took me almost and hour to disassemble clean and assemble....

 

[wally]

Took me almost and hour to disassemble clean and assemble....

You sir, are way above average in speed

--wally.

 

[kle]

I use a paperclip to pull out the mainspring housing. Makes life a bit easier, but yeah, getting everything to line up right on reassembly is annoying...

 

[IndianaBoy]

Maybe I got lucky, but my Mark II loves Winchester Wildcats.

Gobbles them up with aplomb.

X-perts often fail to feed because the large hollowpoint catches on the feed ramp as someone else already mentioned.

 

[Yehen]

So I've tried using different ammo and I"m still having the same problems (slightly less though). The gun's jamming every 10 rounds or so. pretty much all failure to eject's. So far ammo wise I've used (CCI Stingers, Federal Chamion bulk pack, Xpert 22, Wildcats, CCI Blazers, American Eagle, Winchester Super X)...So I don't think it's the ammo. The guy at the gun store said it needs more of a break in period but I've already got about 1500 rounds through it. Not sure if it's a break in thing or an issue with the gun.

Any more ideas?

 

[12many]

I am sorry for the problems you are having. I think it is the gun. Does anything look funny about the ejector? Do the ejected cases have any odd markings? I would suggest either a new extractor or what ever advice bullseye suggests or send it back to ruger. Please keep us posted.

 

[PointOneSeven]

You can try not topping off the magazines. Just run 5-8 rounds in them, sometimes that helps with .22's.

Also try sticking with round nose instead of hollowpoints. Silly, yes. But one of my pistols only jams with .22 hollowpoints, even the expensive stuff.

Starting to sound like you got a turd though...

 

[M2 Carbine]

In the last couple weeks I've been buying out the couple local Wal Marts of 22LR.
I prefer the 550 box Remington.
On one visit they only had 4 boxes of Remington, so I bought 4 boxes of Winchester XPert HP.
The XPert bullet has a flat nose that jams, as described above, on the bottom of the feed ramp, where as the Remington and Federal feeds fine in my Mark II & III.

 

[NGIB]

So far ammo wise I've used (CCI Stingers, Federal Chamion bulk pack, Xpert 22, Wildcats, CCI Blazers, American Eagle, Winchester Super X)...So I don't think it's the ammo.

I would really try the 40gr CCI Minimags before you conclude it's the gun. This was about the only ammo my Buckmark would feed reliably until it got broken in. Most of the bulk packs are hollow points of some type and all of these can cause problems...

 

[Yehen]

Just wanted to give a quick Update.

I tried using Winchester Dynapoint (500 round Wal-Mart bulk box) as per the recommendation of the dealer to use standard velocity ammo. Maybe because of the fact that I've now fired in excess of 2000 rounds through the gun and kept it clean, but I found with the standard velocity ammo I had less than 5 failures to edject over the 500 rounds. Also, all of them came towards the last 200 of the 500 rounds as the gun was starting to get dirty.

I also had some Remmington Viper (Hyper Velocity) ammo with me and tried that and over 200 rounds or so I found I had about 10-15 misfires or failures to fire.

Thus I'm concluding that the Mark III I got prefers the cheap Wal-Mart standard velocity ammo over the more expensive stuff. Also, keeping it clean and oiled seems to have helped quite a bit too. =)

Thanks for all the recommendations.

 

[12many]

5 out of 500 for cheap ammo is not that bad. Not great, but not that bad.

Have you tried CCI mini-mags yet?

 

[collegeb]

I'm sorry to hear this about the MKIII. I just got mine yesterday, i've already called ruger on how to take the damn thing apart. Might get to shoot it tomorrow, hope it works alright. Gotta go to wally world to get some ammo. Anyone had trouble with the magazines ejecting? Mine dont fall out like with a 1911, I have to pull them out and that is pretty hard considering they only drop about a quarter of an inch out of the handle.