Ruger American Bolt Seizure

conor_90

conor_90

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Hi guys,

Has anyone had any issues with the bolt on their ruger american seizing?

I was out shooting today and my ruger american was having issues with the bolt, it would lift but required force every few shots to pull backwards. I was having no issues with lifting the bolt, and I thought the issue may have come from steel cased ammo I was shooting so I switched to brass case loads. No issues and then it started up again.

I'm fairly certain this is not due to pressure, all of the loads have been fired before without issue and all primers and cases did not appear abnormal. Also this was all factory ammo not that that means much, but it was a wide variety.

Being a dumbass I continued to shoot the rifle, on the final shot of my group it seized so much that I could not extract the round from the chamber.

Am I correct in my wild ass guess that this is an issue with the extractor?

Has anyone encountered this issue and was it easy to fix?

How is the ruger warranty department? Should I just eat the cost and take it to a local gunsmith who does very good work?

I would really like to get it up and running again for wolf season:

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Thanks
 
How does the bolt slide on an empty chamber? I'd give it a thorough cleaning first. I would think it is a dirty chamber or long screws as mentioned above.
 
Any marks or gouging on the empty cases once they were extracted? I had a marlin with little burrs in the chamber that would dig into the cases once they were expanded, making them hard to extract.
 
I had just thoroughly cleaned the rifle a few nights before firing, the rifle has a machined in rail.

There is currently an empty case stuck in the chamber, I might try tapping it out.

The cases seemed fine when I examined them for pressure signs.

I had previously fired approx 150 rounds without incident. At one point the bolt struggled on an unforced round.
 
On the American the bolt body is huge and takes up all the space in the receiver. It wouldnt take much debris for it to bind up in there. The rough machining marks wouldnt do any good for this either.
 
I have had zero issues through 100's of rounds in all kinds of weather down to -31 winchill with bolt operation on mine; other than one time the mag in my pocket picked up a big chunk of debris that got deposited into the feed ramps and made it tough to close the bolt. I was able to clear it out in the field and keep on running.

Definitely check where the bolt lugs lock into the receiver for hidden crap. Something is amiss for sure.
 
The bolt lifts fine, this is why I wasn't worried about over pressure. Along with using factory loads all of which had been fired in the gun previously with no issues.
 
Okay, so I am going to say this carefully because I am NOT intending it as an attack or criticism.

Is the chronology like this?

1. Rifle worked fine with no extraction issues for a long while.
2. You cleaned the rifle
3. The next time you used the rifle you have extraction issues?

If this is accurate then the only change is the cleaning and *something* happened during that process. Perhaps you dislodged a piece of dirt, lost a piece of brush or cloth, maybe scratched the chamber, there could be a number of things.

Just a suggestion.
Dave
 
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