Stove pipe issue cured in my 10/22

35904 Views 61 Replies 25 Participants Last post by VampireMilf, 3 mo ago

DBenn

Discussion Starter · Feb 19, 2018

I recently purchased a slightly used Ruger 10/22 carbine with a BX trigger. I love it for its light weight and its accuracy.
BUT I have had this nagging issue of 25% of my rounds stove piping. I have spent many hours reading here and got a ton of tips and ideas.
I have buffed, polished and basically cleaned up all the rough surfaces. I then installed an extractor and a Spartan charging handle plus the poly bolt buffer that I bought from TK.
All this brought me down to 10% of my cartridges stove piping.
Cartridges used have been CCI, CCI Mini Mags, Blazer, Winchester target black box, Federal Auto Match with the same results for them all. I even ran some Remington dirty bulk with the same results.
Now somewhere on here or maybe another site I read that the lip on the magazine was the main ejector and after observing the bolt when pulling it back it certainly is.I made sure the mag was fitting snug and secure as well. The ejector in the bolt is for when there is no mag installed.
Why do we need one on the magazine?
So what I decided to do was use one mag as a sacrificial lamb and carefully grind that lip off. I made sure I maintained the angle so as to leave material there to retain the cartridge in the magazine.
That steel casting is as hard as nails by the way.

I have put just over 300 rounds of Federal Auto Match and 100 Winchester Target through that modified magazine with NO stove piping at all even with rapid fire.
This is now a fun gun to shoot.

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DBenn

Discussion Starter · #21 · Feb 19, 2018

minuteshaver said:
personally I think its a reliability issue addition, the mag ejector.

MOST people who get a 10/22 never clean it, and if they do clean it, they never clean those annoying little bolt parts. For most, IF they take the stock off, and pull the bolt, they just wipe the outside down.

The gun is clean and I have been cleaning guns after every outing for over 50 years now.

In my first post I stated it was slightly used with a BX trigger.

I do believe it is a mag ejector issue as some mags seem to have very few if any problems and others are just a PITA.

DBenn

Discussion Starter · #22 · Feb 19, 2018

Wiley Coyote said:
If you have any more Extraction problems, try a Volquartsen Edge. They work.

Well I haven't modded any more than the one mag yet so I'm going to see it they ship international and order it.

I doubt I will get it before next Tuesday thought to test.

I go in for rotator cuff surgery and will be out for at least six weeks.

Tsb3

· #23 · Feb 19, 2018

You've got a week...

Better get out there and burn up some ammo! :AR15firin

wonshott

· #24 · Feb 19, 2018

DBenn said:
This one I got from TK and is the Eagles Talon. The other was a new OEM extractor. Both worked about the same with 10% stove pipes.

Yes they both held the case tight to the bolt and pull out the case even after 300 rounds without brushing the chamber.

Ive never seen an OEM extractor that wasnt way to long and causes stovepipes. Are you saying you pulled the bolt and placed a fired brass against the bolt and the extractor helds the case tight to the bolt ?

Hawkeye57

· #25 · Feb 19, 2018

You said that your magazines are snug.
I hope that you don't mean on the sides.

You should be able to get at least a .015 feeler between the stock, and magazine on each side of the mag. If not that is why your mod worked, because pressure one side was raising the ejector lip to high.

DBenn

Discussion Starter · #26 · Feb 19, 2018

wonshott said:
Ive never seen an OEM extractor that wasnt way to long and causes stovepipes. Are you saying you pulled the bolt and placed a fired brass against the bolt and the extractor helds the case tight to the bolt ?

Yes they both held it tight.

Hawkeye57 said:
You said that your magazines are snug.
I hope that you don't mean on the sides.
You should be able to get at least a .015 feeler between the stock, and magazine on each side of the mag. If not that is why your mod worked, because pressure one side was raising the ejector lip to high.

Gaps are good and the mags do not wiggle at all when firing.

minuteshaver

· #27 · Feb 20, 2018

dimensional tolerance at play guys. only possible solution.

your rifle was made on a Monday, when the factory held to .001 tolerance and the mags were made on a Friday when .01 was good enough to get stuff off the assembly line and onto a waiting truck.

rc.

· #28 · Feb 20, 2018

some thoughts

First of all I've never seen one that needed that extreme modification to the magazine to run. I know people say the magazine is the primary ejector but I'm not sure that's true. I'd have to see high speed film to convince me. I've always just rounded the ejector tip on the trigger housing because the stamping usually has a rough bur on the tip that can cause erratic ejection in my opinion. Usually taking care of the bur at the tip and beveling it slightly will take care of the stovepipes along with ammo with enough oomph to kick them out. I'm going through a lousy batch of Federal Champion right now that has a lot of jams but not just in my 10/22s, also in my buckmark which can fail to feed with some rounds leaving an empty brass in the chamber. I have one well worn 10/22 that usually is flawless but even that one chokes on that ammo. Other better ammo including cci Standard Velocity is 100% in that gun because it's consistently at or above the power level needed to cycle this gun. It sounds like you tried several different types of ammo so I agree that's not likely your problem since it happened with every one.

Now it's possible you got a bad magazine that was out of spec slightly. It sounds like you only tried 1 magazine and that would have been an easy test to see if it was causing your jams. Butler creek magazines with the plastic lips don't have an ejector on the magazine BTW. Spring tension in the magazine may play a part in reliability. Also make sure the extractor has proper tension and that it moves smoothly when you push it to the side. It should spring back smoothly on it's own. Sometimes grit gets in there and gums it up.

One of the other things you may or may not have looked at is the smoothness inside your receiver and of your guide rod. I bought a used 10/22 with rough internals and it was a jammomatic until I smooth down the internal surfaces a bit and replaced the guide rod and handle with an aftermarket product. Scotch bright or 400 grit sandpaper with elbow grease will usually buff out any problem areas on factory parts. The ones with the crappy painted receivers are more likely to have rough bubbles of paint that need to be removed inside the receiver for things to smooth out. I prefer the older anodized models made in the 90s or before if given a choice of two used guns close in price as they ran better out of the box. True walnut stock guns from before about 1980 are even better in quality with true aluminum but pads.

The 10/22 is a fantastic design but materials and quality control at the factory has varied a lot over the years. I'm not a fan of the most current plastic version.

rc

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DBenn

Discussion Starter · #29 · Feb 20, 2018 (Edited)

rc. said:
First of all I've never seen one that needed that extreme modification to the magazine to run. I know people say the magazine is the primary ejector but I'm not sure that's true. I'd have to see high speed film to convince me. I've always just rounded the ejector tip on the trigger housing because the stamping usually has a rough bur on the tip that can cause erratic ejection in my opinion. Usually taking care of the bur at the tip and beveling it slightly will take care of the stovepipes along with ammo with enough oomph to kick them out. I'm going through a lousy batch of Federal Champion right now that has a lot of jams but not just in my 10/22s, also in my buckmark which can fail to feed with some rounds leaving an empty brass in the chamber. I have one well worn 10/22 that usually is flawless but even that one chokes on that ammo. Other better ammo including cci Standard Velocity is 100% in that gun because it's consistently at or above the power level needed to cycle this gun. It sounds like you tried several different types of ammo so I agree that's not likely your problem since it happened with every one.

Now it's possible you got a bad magazine that was out of spec slightly. It sounds like you only tried 1 magazine and that would have been an easy test to see if it was causing your jams. Butler creek magazines with the plastic lips don't have an ejector on the magazine BTW. Spring tension in the magazine may play a part in reliability. Also make sure the extractor has proper tension and that it moves smoothly when you push it to the side. It should spring back smoothly on it's own. Sometimes grit gets in there and gums it up.

One of the other things you may or may not have looked at is the smoothness inside your receiver and of your guide rod. I bought a used 10/22 with rough internals and it was a jammomatic until I smooth down the internal surfaces a bit and replaced the guide rod and handle with an aftermarket product. Scotch bright or 400 grit sandpaper with elbow grease will usually buff out any problem areas on factory parts. The ones with the crappy painted receivers are more likely to have rough bubbles of paint that need to be removed inside the receiver for things to smooth out. I prefer the older anodized models made in the 90s or before if given a choice of two used guns close in price as they ran better out of the box. True walnut stock guns from before about 1980 are even better in quality with true aluminum but pads.

The 10/22 is a fantastic design but materials and quality control at the factory has varied a lot over the years. I'm not a fan of the most current plastic version.

rc

Done all that and checked all that.

Now as for the ejector, put a round in, get a bright light, pull the charging handle back slowly, you will see the rim will not go past that lip on the magazine because it is the ejector. End of story on what is and isn't the ejector.

Put 200 rounds of Federal through the modded mag today and didn't have one stove pipe.
Put 10 rounds in a unmodded mag and got one then got 10 rounds clean the last 10 rounds I had 2.

I'm going to mod my mags as it seems for this gun it is what works.

I got 1/2" groups at 36 yards today so that is just fine for ground hogs and squirrels this summer.

wonshott

· #30 · Feb 21, 2018

Now as for the extractor, put a round in, get a bright light, pull the charging handle back slowly, you will see the rim will not go past that lip on the magazine because it is the extractor. End of story on what is and isn't the extractor.

i think your confusing extractor with ejector. the magazine is an ejector.
i just hope nobody reads this and starts chewing up their magazines.
best of luck to you

Hawkeye57

· #31 · Feb 21, 2018

DBenn said:
Now as for the extractor, put a round in, get a bright light, pull the charging handle back slowly, you will see the rim will not go past that lip on the magazine because it is the extractor. End of story on what is and isn't the extractor.

Sorry but you got that wrong.
The extractor is in the bolt, and extracts the round from the chamber.
The lip on the magazine ejects a fired round.
If you pull the magazine while a live round is in the chamber, it will be ejected by the ejector in the trigger group, which is solely for that purpose.

That is the end of the story.

Hawkeye57

· #32 · Feb 21, 2018

In this thread Midwest swiss shows a alteration of the magazine lip to fix stovepipes. But the alteration is minimal, and you can see where the problem is. It only appears on a small amount of magazines. http://www.rimfirecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=806601&highlight=fix

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DBenn

Discussion Starter · #33 · Feb 21, 2018

Hawkeye57 said:
Sorry but you got that wrong.
The extractor is in the bolt, and extracts the round from the chamber.
The lip on the magazine ejects a fired round.
If you pull the magazine while a live round is in the chamber, it will be ejected by the ejector in the trigger group, which is solely for that purpose.

That is the end of the story.

Sorry slip of the tongue. Change extractor it ejector.

LDThornton

· #34 · Feb 21, 2018

wonshott said:
Now as for the extractor, put a round in, get a bright light, pull the charging handle back slowly, you will see the rim will not go past that lip on the magazine because it is the extractor. End of story on what is and isn't the extractor.

i think your confusing extractor with ejector. the magazine is an ejector.
i just hope nobody reads this and starts chewing up their magazines.
best of luck to you

No....I won't be chewing up any of my 52 year old magazines. I've been reading his posts in disbelief.

DBenn

Discussion Starter · #35 · Feb 21, 2018

wonshott said:
Now as for the extractor, put a round in, get a bright light, pull the charging handle back slowly, you will see the rim will not go past that lip on the magazine because it is the extractor. End of story on what is and isn't the extractor.

i think your confusing extractor with ejector. the magazine is an ejector.
i just hope nobody reads this and starts chewing up their magazines.
best of luck to you

Brain fart and is now corrected.

DBenn

Discussion Starter · #36 · Feb 21, 2018

LDThornton said:
No....I won't be chewing up any of my 52 year old magazines. I've been reading his posts in disbelief.

Well some after markets do not have it on and I ran one from a club member and it worked fine.

Why the disbelief? It works like a charm and it's not as it it will blow anything up.
I shouldn't have to spend another 400 bucks on a 400 buck gun to get it to reliably eject a case.

Here is an old thread and it's obvious Ruger still hasn't cured the issue and has no plans to.

http://www.rimfirecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=305913&page=2

Flash_80

· #37 · Feb 21, 2018

Such a pain in the butt to diagnose the different jams. In 01 I bought a Walmart special 22" model. And it was a jam-o-matic out of the box. Before I had gotten into replacing parts and such myself, this one went back to Ruger 3 times over the next few months. First time they replaced the magazine - uh, thanks but no thanks. 2nd time they said they replaced the bolt. Both times it jammed ever shot or two. Never ran a full mag through it clean, and all I had was the factory mag. Third time I wrote them a big note about all of the stuff that they did and how it didn't work. They replaced the barrel that time and said the extractor groove was cut too shallow in it. No more problems with it after that.

DBenn

Discussion Starter · #38 · Feb 21, 2018

Hawkeye57 said:
In this thread Midwest swiss shows a alteration of the magazine lip to fix stovepipes. But the alteration is minimal, and you can see where the problem is. It only appears on a small amount of magazines. http://www.rimfirecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=806601&highlight=fix

Thank You sir for that link. Looks like I have to look at my mags more closely and see if they are like his.

DBenn

Discussion Starter · #39 · Feb 21, 2018

Video showing the mag ejector.

Code:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooq-LyqC0Pk

DBenn

Discussion Starter · #40 · Feb 21, 2018

Another thread that might be of interest to anyone else that has this issue.

http://www.rimfirecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=562539

I am now a happy :AR15firin

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