what lifts the head of the round, in the magazine, in a Ruger Mark III?

F

flivver

Inactive
Had a series of FTFs the other day. One mag in particular wasn't lifting the head of the round enough to get it onto the feed ramp. You could slide the mag in, pull back the bolt and see the round sitting there, flat -- and know that it wasn't going to feed. The other mag worked mostly perfectly... You could pull the bolt back, and see the bullet end of the round tilted slightly upward, ready to feed nicely.

Wondering if Xavier's magazine tweak:

http://xavierthoughts.blogspot.com/2...ine-tweak.html

will help this. Seems related, yet not quite.

Anybody had this problem?
 
what lifts the head of the round, in the magazine, in a Ruger Mark III?
Click to expand...

Spring tension from the magazines.

Disassemble your mags and inspect the follower to see if there is any plastic "flash" anywhere on the follower. If so, scrape it off carefully.

Then lightly lube the follower by wiping it down with an oil rag or a silicone rag and then re-assemble the magazine and it'll probably work just fine.

Sometimes it takes a few cycles of loading/unloading as well. If you don't want to do it by shooting you can just manually load and then unload the mags about five times and that often seems to help.
 
Last edited:
Ruger Mark .22 pistols will run for only so long without thorough cleaning and then they won't run. The same thing is true for the magazines. Most .22 LR ammo uses a nasty waxy lube that builds up near the top of the magazine and on the feed ramp and bolt face. Some brands are worse than others. I've always had good luck with Federal. PMC is the worst. Almost every Ruger Mark pistol I've seen that had feed problems simply needed a good cleaning to make it run like new. CLP works very well to dissolve this gunk. This also true for most .22 semi auto pistols (and rifles). Learn to take the magazines apart and clean them until no crud remains. They are an excellent design and will give long service life if maintained. They are really an amazing gun for the price.
 
Just for info, and I know it sounds illogical, but the "head" of a cartridge is its back end; the marking on there is called the headstamp. What you call the head is the bullet.

Jim
 
If the rounds are "laying flat" in the bad magazine and not oriented at an upward angle, the lips of the magazine are suspect.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top