Lots of people love the Ruger 10/22. Myself included. But I have to admit I was a bit disappointed when I had a ton of problems with my Ruger 10/22 Takedown model 11100. To be more specific I had a ton of problems with the BX25 Ruger branded 25 round magazines.
Most people like me buy a 10/22 to strictly plink and or to use to teach new shooters the basics of firearms safety. The occasional rimfire problems one would run into are not the same problems I was having with the extended magazines. Granted, I thought some of the problems were related to break in and it very well could have been partly because of the first 1000 or so rounds. After narrowing down the culprit for the many varied issues I had seen it was the BX25 mags. Allow me to explain.
The Takedown came with a 10 round rotary magazine. During the break in period it was proven to be the most reliable. I have 3 of the BX25 mags and the one rotary mag. I had considerably more failures to feed, stovepipes and just all over the place failures and problems with the extended mags. I can also add to be somewhat scientific that the ammo did not seem to be the culprit. We shot a variety of ammo ranging from cheap Remington bulk box, Aguila, Armscore, and a variety of CCI ammos. I also shot some Blazer ammo as well. All of these brands did not seem to make a difference. Less issues occurred with the rotary mags but some failures did occur.
I tried to get through this break in period first before really blaming the mags. But the truth is the mags had a ton of wobble and I figured more than likely all the failures to feed properly were directly related to that. The rotary mag went in and fit very snugly and I thought about it and debated about modding the mags. The alternative to fixing this problem with mag wobble may include some spring swapping in the rifle itself. I really don't believe changing the springs out was the answer. Mostly because Ruger rifles should work with Ruger branded magazines. No question about it. In hindsight I probably should have just contacted Ruger first but I ended up starting the mod to the mags and then ended up calling, emailing, and messaging Ruger reps on facebook.
Ruger said they would back my claims and not only accept my already modded magazines back and replace them but they offered to take my dads 3 magazines as well as part of a tested exchange. The reps said its a known issue to have many problems with them. Even if my mod did not work they would take them back and give me replacements at no cost if I chose to do so. I went ahead and followed through with my mod for scientific reasons. Worst comes to worst Ill send them back. Plus I wanted answers for why mine were not working.
On to the mod.
Here are the supplies I used:
Soldering iron or woodburning kit
JB Weld
Dremel tool
Sanding disc attachment
The process is easy but a little time consuming. First mark the mags in the receiver with pencil. This will give you a line to work down to without having any issues. To eliminate wobble it needed to be enough material with the JB weld to stop wobble vertically and horizontally. To do this I simply wanted squares of the JB weld epoxy. Make sure the JB weld you are using is for plastics as well. To ensure the epoxy would stick I stippled a pattern to the area I needed it. This would make the metal infused product stick much more aggressively to the magazine polymer itself. After all I don't want to have to do this work again if it actually works and neither will you. JB weld takes a full day to dry. Two days is even better. After you dry it out, you can take a dremel fitted with a sand disc and fit it properly to your rifle. I suggest making the epoxy squares slightly ramped so the magazine fits right. Granted your firearm or magazine may be different. Remember to go slow and remove less, test and refit until its right. If you remove too much then you will be stuck adding more JB weld and waiting a full day to get back to working on them.
Note: In the last picture you can see the JB weld is angled like a ramp. It is not flat! This ensures to lessen mag wobble considerably vertically and if done properly will reduce or completely get ride of horizontal wobble as well. This requires patience and constant testing and refitting. Each magazine will be slightly different but the principal is the same for all of them.
After getting all 3 fitted it was time to test. I had cheap bulk Remington Bulk brick ammo. Yes the stuff notorious for causing failures. And I had some CCI Mini Mag ammo. This should give a baseline for cheap vs reliable ammo.
When I took them to the range the modded magazines worked much better. Could it be because of break in period? I think that is slightly possible but doubtful that its the sole variable that played into it running the now modded BX25 mags efficiently. But I have to mention it. For my rifle the wobble was definitely part of the issue. The magazine I assume would rock when a round was fired and the bolt would open and eject the spent casing. The following round would simply not feed or would not exit the magazine properly causing repeated issues because of minuscule rocking during operation. With the mod and the wobble taken out of the picture the magazines fed much better. Not flawlessly but it was well worth the mods to the 3 I owned after testing. Both ammo choices performed about the same. CCI had some minor failures and the Remington did as well. But it was doable for the hundreds of rounds we tested for this in particular.
To add to this whole fiasco, my father has a 10/22. Just a standard black polymer one and his ate all his ammo choices from the extended mags with no issue. Flawlessly, he ran mag after mag. Later he had a few failures but again he gun was not completely broken in yet. But I felt its important to note his had no issues with just stock unmodded BX25 magazines.
Ruger overall was good to me in general about all of this. They did not have to offer to take my mags I permanently modified in the case they did not work. But they did anyways. I plan to keep mine since they work. Only time will tell if the mod really makes a difference anyways. Could it be because I own a Takedown as part of the reason it isn't working properly? Well, that's possible. But I don't think there would be much of a difference since the specs for the guts should in theory be the same as any old regular 10/22.
Its a lot of work for something that should function out of the box. But for me this worked. Its a shame that a firearm wouldn't work with its parent branded magazines and function pretty much flawlessly. We all know rimfire has its quirks but having repeated failure after failure isn't fun for any shooter, new or seasoned. My best advice I can give is that if you have problems contact Ruger first. If you have the gear and stuff to do the mod, try it if you can fall back on a company warranty like I could have. It just takes time and care to fit properly. If you do not have the stuff to do the mod, send your mags back. Ruger said they will test your replacements properly to ensure they will feed and fire in your firearm model before shipping them out.
So what is the solution? The molding for these magazines needs to be changed. It needs bulk added to the back where I did the work to close the gap and kill the wobble. I heard from numerous people that they just do not have this issue. Is it related to the Takedown? Possibly but only Ruger would know about that. As time goes on the BX-25 mags should get better. Ruger knows of this problem. And more than likely they know the solution to fixing it across the board. We just have not seen them do it yet.
Honestly though I don't think many would take the time to do a mod like this unless they really wanted a project to just work on. Each mag will be slightly different but have the potential to run flawlessly after its said and done. For me I had the stuff and the time and no risk if it failed. Hopefully this write up and somewhat instructional project may work for someone else too.
Thanks to Ruger and thanks to the people who have helped me with testing a variety of ammo in these magazines. It helped a lot to have multiple options to test before jumping in to this sort of mod project.
Hail the Old Gods!
Hail the Folk!
Hail the Wolf Pack!
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