mini 14 magazines

pawcatch

New member
I just got six magazines for my mini 14 3 20s and 3 30s.The 30s ar fine but the all 3 20s barely go in empty and they won't go in loaded.They are western brand and has anybody had this problem with these magazines?
 
Return them for a refund. Aftermarket magazines can vary from excellant to garbage with some being only good as storage containers - albeit expensive ones at that. Hi-capacity Ruger factory magazines are virtually impossible to find and expensive when they're found. PMI is one of the better ones and there is another brand which I can't recall at this time.
 
pawcatch; Go to www.gunhoo.com then look under "magazines" and you'll get some results. However, I just used two John masen mags for target practice!! Is it that difficult to duplicate Ruger mags!! Oh, sorry. IMHO, the only good after market mags are PMI's (precision). I have two thirty rounders that have never, never, and further more NEVER malfuntioned!! The PMI's are out there but you'd better hurry. Best, J. Parker
 
The 30s are fine it's the twenties that don't work.I've used u.s.a and they are o.k.Can anyone tell me why the 20s don't work?
 
Either the dies used to form the body are too large or the operator is sloppy. Thus, it mag body comes out too big. There's also the issue of quality control. Ruger uses guages to check the length and width of the magazine, spread of the lips and also height of the lips. I don't think a lot of aftermarket folks exercise this degree of quality control.
 
You can usually tweak the lips on some the aftermarket mags to get them to work. One of the heavier duty mags is the USA and tweaking the lips will get them to work fine. PMIs work great as is and from what I can tell all the rest are junk. Too light gage of metal, malformed, etc.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by 4V50 Gary:
Ruger uses guages to check the length and width of the magazine, spread of the lips and also height of the lips.[/quote]

I bought a horde of USA Magazines once and found that all I had to do was use a little judicious work with a file, vice, and calipers to get them to work just as good as the Rugers. There's also the little divit cut out of the forward end of the Magazine that acts as a Feed Ramp of sorts. I ground that with a dremmel. I used my Vice with dowels to close up the magazine first so that it was the right width. Then I adjusted the height (of the lips above the rear and front magazine latches). I followed this by tweaking the lips a bit and then filing where necessary. Finally, I cut the little feed ramps in the front of the magazine and polished up the whole deal. It takes about fifteen minutes per magazine and they all fed flawlessly.
 
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