help! promags drum for 10/22 not feeding
- Thread starter mooseman1
- Start date
watch out when you take it apart! wear eyeglass,face mask. they have a wound up bandspring doing the preload. may fly up. remove cover slowly.
they are metal already, and can be shaped "massaged" removing metal slowly with proper files. run it with just 1 of your 10/22's. just give it time to work into your bolt. mine and a friends works just fine.
they are metal already, and can be shaped "massaged" removing metal slowly with proper files. run it with just 1 of your 10/22's. just give it time to work into your bolt. mine and a friends works just fine.
I had the same problem, tried using the steel lips from a butler creek. Marginally better (only failed to feed the last 46). If you take your promag apart you will see that the main problem is that with their design, the bullet changes angle three times as it feeds up out of the main drum body. I then grafted a factory 10 round to the promag.
Works good now, but I built it for my thompson, and as I built it with the feed lips as close to the drum as possible, it won't work with a rifle that has a stock on it. The last thing I did was smooth absolutely everything on the inside of the drum, and sprayed the guts with a silicone lubricant.
I think I have some pics of the process, will try to dig them up. I wasted alot of hours on this project, but the mag was expensive, didn't work worth a crap anyway, and I figured there was nothing to lose but time.
Works good now, but I built it for my thompson, and as I built it with the feed lips as close to the drum as possible, it won't work with a rifle that has a stock on it. The last thing I did was smooth absolutely everything on the inside of the drum, and sprayed the guts with a silicone lubricant.
I think I have some pics of the process, will try to dig them up. I wasted alot of hours on this project, but the mag was expensive, didn't work worth a crap anyway, and I figured there was nothing to lose but time.
I put on my welding gloves when I pop it apart. As for "working" in the feedlips, mine was so poorly cast that the originals had almost worn completely out by the time I tore it apart, both from the rims of feeding rounds, and from the bolt striking it from the top. It sat about 1/8" higher in the receiver than a factory 10 round mag.
If you are still interested in modding:
In the drum itself, the only problem is that the bullets rub on the drum body, and the more you load into it, the more friction you get, resulting in the carrier binding in the drum. A spray-on lube takes care of that.
This is where the major problem is: as the bullets rise up to the feed lips, they have to change angle and work their way forward, resulting in more drag and resistance to the spring. As well, they have a tendency to stack up in the "neck" of the mag, and I found they would often jam, taking all the spring's tension off the top round. This would lead to poor feed angles as the bolt stripped the top round out of the mag.
I don't have any pics of the inside of the revamped version, but this shows how, with the use of a factory mag, the movement of the rounds remains fairly consistent with the rotation of the drum's carrier, as the feed lips are more in line with the curvature of the drum. The factory lips do not feed from underneath as the promag does, but from the side, allowing the rounds to maintain the same angle as when in the carrier, resulting in a smoother transition at the top.
Don't know if this helps, the promag is a frustrating product and I had to see if I could make it work better. Don't mind the beads of hot glue, it was a good way to hold everything together while testing, and easy to tear apart for fine-tuning. Also, as I said earlier, this particular butchery won't work on a 10/22 with a stock because of the way I set the factory body low on the drum. It works on my thompson, which was what I designed it for.
In the drum itself, the only problem is that the bullets rub on the drum body, and the more you load into it, the more friction you get, resulting in the carrier binding in the drum. A spray-on lube takes care of that.
This is where the major problem is: as the bullets rise up to the feed lips, they have to change angle and work their way forward, resulting in more drag and resistance to the spring. As well, they have a tendency to stack up in the "neck" of the mag, and I found they would often jam, taking all the spring's tension off the top round. This would lead to poor feed angles as the bolt stripped the top round out of the mag.
I don't have any pics of the inside of the revamped version, but this shows how, with the use of a factory mag, the movement of the rounds remains fairly consistent with the rotation of the drum's carrier, as the feed lips are more in line with the curvature of the drum. The factory lips do not feed from underneath as the promag does, but from the side, allowing the rounds to maintain the same angle as when in the carrier, resulting in a smoother transition at the top.
Don't know if this helps, the promag is a frustrating product and I had to see if I could make it work better. Don't mind the beads of hot glue, it was a good way to hold everything together while testing, and easy to tear apart for fine-tuning. Also, as I said earlier, this particular butchery won't work on a 10/22 with a stock because of the way I set the factory body low on the drum. It works on my thompson, which was what I designed it for.
nice i was thinking of cutting the steel on the promag using a band saw and then using JB weld sticking the ruger's steel feed lips on top, so that it has the same feed hight as the ruger would have had,maybe dumb idea?can't go wrong that are notworth 5 cent's now
