RIA 22 Range report

roadwarrior

roadwarrior

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Hello gents and ladys, I previously made a thread on my initial impressions of the rifle and it's first informal testing here:

http://www.canadiangunnutz.com/foru...-22-initial-review-and-range-report-with-pics!

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This time around, I actually made it out to a real 25 m range and I was using a lead sled as a solid rest. I tested 5 different types of ammunition, shooting 5 shot groups at 25m. Since the Caldwell took out most of the user error, I only shot 1 group per load. The only exception being the Winchester 333's where I double checked because I got such a different result from my last lot. I don't know if they reduced the quality control since they switched to the white boxes, but they went from a 11/16 group with an improvised rest to...yuk this time around.


From last to first:


To my suprise, the Winchester 333 36gr. HP shot the worst by far with 1 7/8".

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The Remington Golden Bullet 36gr. HP is second to last, but for a value pack, it still presented a respectable 7/8" grouping.

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The Remington Subsonic 38gr. HP printed at 3/4" and fed flawlessly.

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With high expectations, being the most expensive offering that I tested at 9.99$ per 50rds, the RWS 40gr. round nose finished second with a showing of 9/16".

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The suprise of the day came directly from Mexico, not Germany! The Aguila SuperExtra standart velocity 40gr. round nose took the cake with a sweet ragged hole mesuring 3/8", not bad for 7.29$ spent at my local Canadian Tire.

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My rifle seems to have a distinct preference for the heavier bullets and the rn offers more reliable feeding. The Aguila result makes the cheapest rifle in my safe, the more accurate firearm I have ever shot in my life. I ran out of time to test the CCI 40gr. Target standart velocity RN, so I will update when I get around to it.

Who needs to mod a more expensive Ruger, when a 189$ rifle with a pellet gun scope shoots like this? :)
 
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Good report. I have one I have been shooting for a couple of years now, just to see how long it will go without cleaning or repair. While they certainly aren't a high class Olympics competition rifle, they are quite serviceable. CT in Yorkton has them for $169.

Side note to stave off the slagging - I have scads of other .22's, 10/22's, CZ's, and so on. I am not touting the virtues nor am I going to pick the RIA apart. I just thought I would buy one and shoot it until it gets balky. :)
 
I'm sort of surprised by the results of the Aguila. You've proved a great point that cheap accuracy is obtainable for plinking... I'm interested to see what would happen with the RIA when reaching out further....
 
gmctech said:
I'm sort of surprised by the results of the Aguila. You've proved a great point that cheap accuracy is obtainable for plinking... I'm interested to see what would happen with the RIA when reaching out further....
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Me too, I'll definatly see how that works out when I make it out to an exterior range. That might be where the cheap optic becomes a greater factor.
 
Around here SK and Eley Practice is up around that same $7 mark. And a couple of my own rimfires love either of those.

Your RIA sure does like that Aguila though. It just points out that it often isn't the cost of the gun. If we don't feed it quality food none of them will perform.

A long time shooter mentioned early on to me that the bulk .22 is never going to be as consistent and accurate. Why? Simply because the ammo is dropped into a box and then rattled around for a long trip both by the transporting and our own handling. And that's going to shake some bullets loose while others will still be a snug crimp fit. So right there we have a hi amount of inconsistency. And that equals inaccuracy. So I'm not surprised that the two bulk ammo packed loads you tested showed the worse grouping sizes.
 
My RIA rifle works perfectly. It has iron sights, so I have not done an ammo test, except to note that all the brands I tried worked well.

I did do an ammo test in a Nork 522 with a 20 X scope on it. The Remington Golden Bullet bulk pack ammo did best.

I think the moral of the story is that if you have a 22 rifle you should try a box of everything you can find to see what works best. I have seen huge differences, similar to what the OP found. It would eb a shame to shoot a rifle a lot and not know another ammo could shoot groups half the size, or less.
 
Roadwarrior, I notice in one of your pics that your using the steel lips 10rd that comes with the ria and that you have mentioned feeding probs at times. I use to have several fte or ftf in each 10 rds from that mag so I bought a ruger mag for it. Honestly, I have never had a jam of any kind with the ruger mag. I noticed that the horrible inletting in the stock was allowing the butler creek mag to wobble alot side to side. The mag well is way too wide on mine. I used clear hockey tape to build up one side of the butler creek till it was stable and straight and it has helped reduce the jam issues alot. I've probably only run 2-3 mags thu since the tape fix but I think I've only had a couple ftf. Just something to take a look at.
 
I have one of these rifles and so far I only have the 10 round butler creek steel lips mag that was included. I have been having FTE issues with everything I have tried in it, maybe once every 2 or 3 magazines. I am looking to get some magazines for it and I almost bought a Ruger factory 10 round magazine but I was told that they do not work reliably in the RIA by the salesman. I took this with a grain of salt, but I hesitated on the buy. What magazines are people having the best luck with on this rifle? I'd like to have the nice flush fit of the ruger factory mag for hunting and some bigger ones for plinking.
 
caper587 said:
Roadwarrior, I notice in one of your pics that your using the steel lips 10rd that comes with the ria and that you have mentioned feeding probs at times. I use to have several fte or ftf in each 10 rds from that mag so I bought a ruger mag for it. Honestly, I have never had a jam of any kind with the ruger mag. I noticed that the horrible inletting in the stock was allowing the butler creek mag to wobble alot side to side. The mag well is way too wide on mine. I used clear hockey tape to build up one side of the butler creek till it was stable and straight and it has helped reduce the jam issues alot. I've probably only run 2-3 mags thu since the tape fix but I think I've only had a couple ftf. Just something to take a look at.
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Actually I have 2 30 rds Steel lips Butler Creek mags too. The feeding problems only happen once in a while with either mags and it's usually a 36gr. HP that snags on the feeding ramp. I've only had one 40gr. RN get hung up so far. All my mags fit extra snug, I basically have to wrestle them out every time.
 
I have an RIA 22 as well and it frickin hates butler creek magazines, fte every 3 or 4 shots. Runs flawlessly with a ruger magazine though. Mine has the same issue with the mag well being too large, however I have a friend who has an extremely tight magwell on his and runs butler creek mags all day. Luck of the draw as to where the tolerances land on your rifle I guess.
 
I'd be curious to see the tooling that is being used to inlet these stocks lol, mine looks like they trained a beaver with a chipped tooth. Not a very well trained beaver either lol.
MCon, you might want to try shimming the sides of your mags if your magwell is oversized like mine. I try to keep my left hand further out the forend so as to not touch the butler creek mag. It dosen't seem to take much to put the alignment out enough to cause a jam. Personally, I like having the flush fitting bx-1, makes carrying in the field better at the balance point. That flush fit mag is one of the main reasons I like the 10/22.
Ontario Hillybilly....that salesman was full of $hit, the ruger mag works great. But, if your stock mag has a bit of side play you could try that shimming fix. It dosen't cost anything
 
OH, in messing around with my Ruger 10/22 and the TS Xring I bought I found that I was having issues with misfeeds as well. I found that there's a lot of play in how the mags seat in these things. Some of the issue is the mags and some is variance in the guns themselves. I'd point you to a source or two but there's a whole lot of them and the one that you will want is going to be based on a number of things. So the best thing is run your own Google or Bing or whatever search on "10/22 mag seating" and then read through the bucket of links that comes up. Test how the mag seats and remove any play. The easy way to prove the issue is with tape shims. But that won't stay for long. But once you know where you need to add or remove from the tape you can then glob on some epoxy and trim it to match. Or use some other method. It can be as simple or fancy as you like.

In my case I have some plastic no name 25's that were a big problem in the stock 10/22. I found that with just the right shimming they suddenly worked perfectly. But instead of lumps of glue and trimming I went fancy and drilled, countersunk and installed some really small #1 or #0 screws I'd harvested from some old tape cassettes to use as adjustable seating pads. With that setup I was able to level and adjust the height so the mags worked from full to empty. It also stabilized the mags enough that I didn't need to worry about touching them while shooting. And in fact I could use the mag as a hand grip or a resting point without any issue.

It's not always the mags though. I found that a big part of my own issue was too tight an extractor. It wouldn't let the rim slide up under the hook and into place on the face of the bolt. I relieved mine with a slip stone. I posted that over at RFC only to find out that this is pretty rare. USUALLY the stock extractors are either OK or too loose. And when too loose they tend to allow the casing to flip too early and you get FTE's. So there again it's something you need to check. A casing set under the hook should be held well enough to hold in place. But if it's too tight to where you can shake the bolt around without shaking the casing loose that's bad. Similarly if it's so loose that the casing won't stay in place or only stays in place if you hold it just right then that's bad too.
 
I haven't seen a RIA 10/22 for sale locally (Vancouver Island) who has them and what's the best price? I'm not into mods ,so the stock rifle us just fine.
 
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