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Ruger 10/22 problems and fixes, join in and share your experiences.

steve123

Lt. Colonel
Full Member
Minuteman
Mar 16, 2008
9,587
2,339
none of your business
It'd be cool if we Hide members could come right here in the rimfire section and troubleshoot our 10/22's together.

I have a mostly stock Ruger 10/22 Race rifle. I put a Jard trigger in it a long time ago and glass bedded the front and back of the action. It had hummed along for the last 15 years then all of a sudden last year it started malfunctioning in two ways. Good ammo wouldn't go off all the time, like every 15 rounds or, which was rare beforehand and cases quit ejecting all the time which was also rare beforehand. Well the good thing was it still fed correctly.

Trying to figure out what was wrong I took it apart a couple times, cleaned it well "or I thought so", then lubed, reassembled, and it was still malfunctioning. I got frustrated and put it away.

I got my gumption back months later, and did a few mods. I shortened the space between the barrel and bolt .002" by milling off the bolt face and polished it as well as the rest of the bolt. I also took the extractor out, stoned it, and stretched the spring a tiny bit. This seemed to solve the ignition problems but not the ejection problems. I got frustrated once again and put it away.

So today, months later again, I got it out for a try at fixing it. Putting the loupe on and looking real close at everything, then peering into the extractor cut in the barrel, I saw something, a big clog of gunk. It was so clogged that when I tried to dig it out the clog just got pushed in deeper. Getting serious by now I resorted to taking the barrel off. I took a screwdriver and brush to the extractor cut and got it cleaned out.

Reassembled everything, lubed it, and what do you know, the gun works again! What I'm guessing happened is that gunk held the bolt back a tad by pushing against the end of the extractor so it wasn't sitting against barrel all the time. That would explain both problems, because the bolt wasn't flush all the time the cases primer compound wasn't igniting consistently and also the extractor wasn't going forward enough to grab the rim of the case every time.

Time to mount a scope back up and go to it.

Your problems, fixes, solutions or mods?
 
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My Ruger 10/22 Takedown bolt sounds like I’m closing a zip tie. First guess was the screws from the base plate. That doesn’t appear to be the issue. Second guess was the spring/guide rod. It was out of the box doing this. Rifle functions great even though. My plan is to replace the spring/guide rod. I’m just seeing if anyone else has had this same experience.
 
I completely forgot about this post!

I do have more to add.

Shortly after I thought my 10-22 rifle was fixed, it started malfunctioning again. The ignition problem was fixed but not the ejection problem, it was improved but not 100% reliable. As usual I put the rifle away, lol.

A friends 10-22 started having ejecting problems during this time as well. He decided to order a Kidd extractor with spring, I asked him to order me one too. They came in, were installed, and our 10-22's have worked perfectly since then!

Thanks Jason for giving me that extractor!

Magic, I hope you get some help.