Took it to the range today and tested with a variety of ammo. Seems to like Wolf MT best followed closely by Eley Match then Aguila , CCI SV and Mini Mags.
More pics to come.
Wolf is the winner but it's hard to get. Eley is great , expensive. CCI SV looks like the way I'm going to go. I'm still breaking it in and will fire about 500 rounds of CCI Mini Mags before I settle on a round.
What kind of jams? I've run a lot of the SV stuff. It sticks in the mags for me when loaded 8-10rds and doesnt want to push up the next round. I get a lot of empty chambers with it on a full mag after one shot. Its the ammo as well. Same thing in all 6 MKIV mags and all 5 Buckmark mags. Not the springs. No other ammo does this. As far as shooting, it does shoot well for me (very well for $2.19 a box) and for reliability, I had my 6th light strike in probably 6000rds last weekend.
Other than that, the only MKIV jams I had were with a couple different varieties of ammo on the next to last round. Test Engineer here sent a link to a thread on sanding down the followers to level them out, and that took away that problem completely.
I do agree on Blazers being the prime of the bulk though.
I'm getting two types of jams with light match ammo. Either the bullet doesn't come completely out of the magazine and stays about 1/4 inch out of battery or the bullet doesn't go completely into battery even though it is in the chamber. ( It only goes in 1/4 inch and I have to hit the back of the bolt for it to go all the way )
All my mags work perfectly with Blazer and Mini Mags so it's not the magazines.
I think I need to play with the recoil spring. I have the Volquartsen kit and I'm going to try the weakest spring next to see if that helps. I'd like to be able to shoot the Eley or the Wolf ammo. It's so light the gun just doesn't move. It's accurate as can be.
I have a call into VQ to see if I need to polish the chamber. I won't do this until they give me an answer. I'd use some boar past on a patch and use my drill to run it.
Automatch use to run 100 % but the recent batch I've gotten has about a 1 % failure rate. Cases either don't fire and get stuck in the chamber or I get stoves-pipes.
Today I shot 100 roundfs of CCI Mini Mags with no failures, 100 rounds of Blazer with no failures and then Wolf would only feed with the bullet sticking up out of the magazine and I had to drop the mag, manually cycle and run one round and repeat.
Eley had only one jam in 10 rounds and SV had two jams.
To kick it all in the butt, on my last magazine my battery on the C-More died. LOL. They last 1 month. Before each match I have to change the battery and I have a match next weekend. It's just a small inconvenience.
Next trip out I'm going to bring my camera so I can take pictures of the jams.
Just for reference. My LLV4 and its issues and what I've run through it. Pretty limited.
Initially - rear lockup fitment was major tight. Sent to VQ, they filed down the rear a bit and fit it to the frame better. I could shoot it, but would have to mash the upper and frame together at the rear in order to engage/disengage the safety before sending it in.
Initially - First day - factory bolt worked fine. Second day - VQ bolt came in, never used the factory. After sending to VQ to fit, the factory bolt will not fire in the LLV4, the VQ bolt will not fire in the factory standard upper. Major light strikes each way to the point that its a ghost mark on the rim of the case. Go figure, doesn't matter since it works in the configuration that I use it.
Ammunition
CCI SV - works perfect, always has
CCI mini mag - works perfect, always has
Aguila SV - sticks in the magazines, doesn't ride up as fast. only ammo that does this, any mag. Does the same in Buckmark mags.
Golden turds & Browning bulk - used to jam on next to last shot and shave the head on the final round. Cured by grinding and sanding down mag followers to a more even level. Keeps that last round more level. No issues now. I think these rounds were more prone because they had knurls on the bullet that gave more of a bite for the slide. CCI didn't do this but a couple of times. Other ammo did it every time, every mag.
Eley Club Extra - only shot a handful but never a failure.
SK Std. Plus - same as above
I'm not big on Automatch. My 10-22's dont like it. Granted, Mostly last year used it practicing speed shooting on steel, not in a bolt gun. My CZ bolt guns liked it ok, but then again you aren't looking at cycling problems there. It goes bang and it groups is all that matters. I'm off of that train as long as I can get the Aguila cheap.
Final though, I ran 50rds of Aguila SV through my Buckmark the other day fast without issue. But I was also using a mcfadden loader, and I sprayed a shot of rem-oil in there with it and shook it up. The fed through the loader better and I didn't have the mag hang up issue either. May start doing that from now on, seeing as I use it as practice ammo and its reliable and cheap.
Last thought and I have no idea if it would help at all - did you do any work on the magazines ever? I wasted an hour or so doing that mag tune on all of mine from the Tandemkross video on youtube. Who knows if it helped, but it did make the mags function smoother.
I'm probably not helpful, but just trying to throw out info on anything I've experienced in the few months I've had my LLV4.
Very helpful information. Thanks for taking the time to share it. Why did you get rid of your LLV after only a few months?
Your problem with Aguila is the same problem I'm having with all match type ammo.
I did tune all my magazines and they work fine in my stock Mark IV.
I'm thinking it's a bolt thing. Maybe the LLV doesn't like the stock Ruger bolt.
Yesterday I fired 200 round mixed of Mini Mags and Blazers. All worked perfectly. I tried match ammo again but had the failures. It's like the bolt is coming back too fast so I'm going to try the VQ light weight spring and see if that helps.
Oh I didn't get rid of, I was meaning I've only had it a few months. Put it together at the first of October.
The VQ bolt is very nice, but again, you could buy a 10-22 for the cost of just that bolt. It and the comp are the two things that jumped up my build cost from "Hey, $335 for that LLV ain't too bad... to Wow, I've got $1200 in this thing, ***???" But I guess I knew what I was wanting to do going in, and to do it, it adds up pretty quick.
Factory MKIV 6" Standard
4.5" VQ LLV-4
LLV-4 compensator
VQ bolt
VQ MKIV trigger kit
Hogue G10 grips
4 extra magazines
VQ extended bolt release
6 Majestic Arms basepads (overkill right there, but nice)
I finally got tired of fighting the jams and failures to fire with a variety of ammo. I called VQ and they told me to send it back. It only took them 1 day to straighten it out. All they had to do was to replace the magazine catch and tighten the top end. It now feeds everything I've tried from Eley, Wolf, Agulla, Automatch, CCI Mini Mags, SV and Blazer.
I just got a bulk packages of Eley Practice and it didn't work at all before. Now it's 100 % reliable.
I had tuned all my magazines and was really upset that they didn't work. After getting the gun back all of my magazines work.
If you have any problems Volquartsen will take care of it. Great service.
You can pay like $30 for those and the sun shade from Guga Ribas or you can buy the chinese ones on Ebay for like $8 and just wait a month for them to arrive. Did the latter myself. Its just a piece of plastic, so seriously, I never understood the Guga Ribas price. I have a pair, they fit and work fine. Search ebay for C-more sunshade or cover.
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