RUGER MK 3

A

ammo.crafter

New member
Anyone experience sporadic misfire/failure to fire with the MK3?

My daughter got her MK3 back from Ruger after they claim to have made all failure to feed repairs and test fired the gun 40-times.

The first time she takes the gun to the range, the gun would sometimes fire and other times not. I will say that the trigger does appear to have significant play.

She was using CCI Standard ammo.
 
I don't know if this is relevant to the problem reported by the OP, but I have not seen it mentioned elsewhere, so, FWIW, here goes.

Some folks, as many of us know, horde ammunition. We just like to have a good supply or we get a bargain by buying in bulk and can't pass it up. During the recent shortages of .22 ammunition, some people who had large supplies sold some off. That ammunition might have been of any age, from six months to ten or more years. Some even appeared to be in poor condition, with sagging boxes, discolored brass, or corroded bullets. Other ammunition, kept in a better environment, looked like new. In some cases, the ammo was in obviously old style boxes but in others the box appearance had not been changed significantly.

In most cases, the old ammo worked fine, but some gave misfires or squib loads. So just a note that one might be careful in buying bargain ammo.

Jim
 
How old is the Mark III? How many rounds have been thru it? I do know that when they are newer, they can have FTE/FTF issues. Also, sometimes the mags when new are the cause as the lips are very sharp.
I now take my new MkIII mags and smooth the edges. Mine will eat most ammo, but occasionally, it will balk at some brands. I also have found it does NOT like hollow point.

Unless the CCIs are hollow points, I am surprised as CCI is some of the most consistent ammo around.

The more info you supply us with, the better we can help.

Rich
 
My three Mark iii's eat everything I've fed them, so far. Ruger just redid my Mark ii Government. I just bought a bunch of Aquilla and had several rounds that took two strikes to fire in the Mark ii. The Aquilla works fine in the Mark iii's.

I ran a couple of hundred rounds of Armscor thru the Mark ii without a single problem. m/b it doesn't like Aquilla. I'll know more about 1,000 rounds down the road.

Last year I found two boxes of .22 ammo in a box. The .22 short could have been bought in 1964; the .22lr was bought in 1970. The .22lr fired perfectly. Still have the box of .22 short; the only gun I have to fire it in is a "Saturday Nite Special" I bought in Texas in 1964.
 
MK III

The number of rounds fired is difficult to ascertain as she purchased the pistol second hand. Outside appearances were excellent.

I compete with a MK I with Volquartsen improvements and it is near perfection with the same CCI standard velocity rounds.

I will have her check the magazines but according to Ruger, the gun functioned without any problems when they tested it and replaced the sear.

Thanks for the inputs, everyone.
 
Since she bought is second hand, I wonder if someone did an action job on it. Did you check whether or not the trigger has a overtravel stop in it. Maybe it's adjusted too tight to allow the sear to reset. Another thing to check is the trigger spring and plunger, it may be broken. That would also prevent sear reset on occasion.
 
Since she bought is second hand, I wonder if someone did an action job on it. Did you check whether or not the trigger has a overtravel stop in it. Maybe it's adjusted too tight to allow the sear to reset. Another thing to check is the trigger spring and plunger, it may be broken. That would also prevent sear reset on occasion.
Click to expand...
It just came back from being repaired by Ruger

It's the second sentence in the OP
 
I have a Ruger Mark II. For some time I had a real problem trying to figure out why the gun would randomly not fire when I pressed the trigger. The pattern went something like this:
click.....click.......click.....BANG....click....BANG....click....click....BANG.BANG.....

I broke it down several times to try and figure this out - couldn't solve the problem. Then one day I decided to break the gun all the way down - remove every single component from the frame. The very last part that could be removed was the trigger and trigger plunger. I discovered an incredible amount of crud that had built up on top of the trigger plunger - THIS WAS THE PROBLEM! Now, there is no way to possibly see this without tearing every part out of the frame. It's a major PITA to do this, but it can be done with lots of patience and not all that much skill.
 
When my Mark III fails to fire my process is to keep the gun pointed down range long enough that I am confident I will not have a hang fire, then remove the magazine, and then carefully eject the unfired round on to the little countertop (there is probably a more correct word for this but I am drawing a blank at the moment) in my stall. Then I check to see if my firing pin left a decent dent in the rim of the cartridge. If it did I just attribute the failure to the cheap ammo I am using and move on.
 
I've got about 4000 rounds through mine with lots of different types of ammo. I still have issues with mine. It's getting better though. I had maybe 4 out of 250-300 rounds today cause problems.
 
I have a MKII Standard 4 3/4" 22/45 and a 5 1/2" Bull Barrel Target....both stainless....

I replaced some of the parts with Volquartsen kits

They have been shot extensively and to be honest there has always been an occasional failure to fire a round or a stove pipe jam. Usually the round that fails to fire will fire when snapped again but this is obviously not a good situation for an auto pistol.....sometimes extraction is difficult on the failure to fire as the case is expanded by the firing pin indent

Some of this is undoubtedly ammo related but I am convoked that .22 auto pistols, for whatever reason, can never be 100% reliable. This has been my experience.

I also have a Ruger SP101 .22 revolver and I can't remember a failure of any kind but with a revolver if there is a failure you can usually just squeeze the trigger again double action on the next round to fire the weapon.
 
To expand on the above post, I would say that with my pistols I can expect a failure to fire (case rim still indented by the FP) or a stove pipe failure to eject about once every 100 rounds. I expect this but sometimes I will fire 100 rounds with no problems......again this can be the ammo or possibly an occasional "limp wrist" on the grip....
 
I'm not sure willikers...just looking for possible explanations...my .22 autos are limited to a MKII and MKIII and are a bit temperamental, for lack of a better description.

I do know that experimenting with as many different brands and types of ammo is necessary with any .22 to find what shoots best. This is generally true with any firearm. This was easier and a lot more fun when .22LR was cheaper and more widely available.

Something else, MY .22 autos will not function with CCI Stingers, all types of failures, they will jam, FTF, fail to eject, etc. I think mainly because the Stinger's case is longer in order to accommodate more propellant. BUT they may work fine in another pistol.

Curiously, although my SP101 (revolver) will shoot a lot of ammo well enough, it's most accurate with Remington YellowJackets. Every gun is different.
 
In the rush to keep up with the demand for .22 lr. during the shortages , some manufacturers were less than diligent about getting the liquid primer compound all the way around the inside rim. She may take one of the offending cartridges and rotate it , then place it back in the chamber so as the firing pin will impact a different area of the rim. This will tell if it's the ammo being used causing the problems. Just thought I would add my .02 cents worth.:)
 
I had misfires in my MkII Ruger. The back of the firing pin had mushroomed from hammer strikes. I filed the sidewalls straight and the pistol functioned normally.

I have had the experience with Rem Target, both standard and High Velocity, the stuff misfires at the rate of 3 rounds per fifty rounds. I have misfires in my pistols and rifles. Try your ammunition in a rifle mechanism and see if the ammunition misfires with a mechanism with a more powerful ignition system. Her problems may be garbage ammunition.
 
T
o expand on the above post, I would say that with my pistols I can expect a failure to fire (case rim still indented by the FP) .... about once every 100 rounds. I expect this but sometimes I will fire 100 rounds with no problems......
Click to expand...

This is my experience even when shooting my S&W 617 .22LR revolver. Although I would say more like every 150-200 rounds. .22LR these days seems to have a bit higher failure rate than a few years ago.
 
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