ecadwallader
CGN Regular
I’m not one to leave a rant, but I figured that I would share my pain with this rifle in hopes of preventing someone else from buying one.
I bought a basically new Ruger ranch in 350 legend. For those not familiar, it’s the 16” barrel, ar style magazine and threaded barrel. I knew that it was a lower end rifle, but it was almost 2 lb lighter than the scout, and what I thought would be a perfect first deer rifle/cal for my sons. The main feature for me was the size and weight. I mainly shoot Tikka T3 for long range, and my hunting rifle is a Ruger m77 frontier in .358.
The rifle arrived, and immediately I noticed the poor machining. It brought me back to the $99 tokerev I bought as a first pistol 15 years ago… there were burrs on the bolt and action, and when cycled sounded like a zipper. I went to purchase some ammo and the shop advised that they had sold 6, and 4 had to come back for warranty. The issue was light primer strikes. They disassembled the bolt and found machining metal in the firing pin tube. So before I went to the range, I disassembled mine, and low and behold a half curl of metal and a few other metal chips inside.
So, I went to the range. The rifle fed like ####. The bolt had to be forcefully thrown forward to overcome the round being slammed into the feed ramp due to slop in the magazine well and feed ramp profile. There was so much slop in the bolt and magazine that the mag canted downward about half inch when loading. It had a bit more recoil than expected with the federal 180gr (young kids) so I order a brake for it.
So… I looked online and the loading seemed to be a common issue with 350 legend. The issue was most likely derived from the same feed ramp profile as the 223 rifle (parent cartridge). The solution was to get an aics conversion. Being that most of my rifles are converted to aics, I jumped at this. Ruger sent me the conversion parts under warranty. I guess I can’t call it bottom metal if it’s made of low end plastic. I installed the new mag well, and again there was so much slop in the aics mags, they too canted down and loaded even worse. I used multiple aics mags, and adjusted the feed lips to allow the rounds to sit higher, still no dice. Too much play in the mag well.
The only way that I could get it to load reliably with the aics conversion was to put a wrap of electrical tape on the top of the mag. I don’t tape my guns, but just wanted to see.
In the end, I converted it back to the ar15 style mag, and it was less unreliable.
What a piece of ####.
Update November 2022
PTG bottom metal and donor rotary mag stock. Finally runs like it should.
I bought a basically new Ruger ranch in 350 legend. For those not familiar, it’s the 16” barrel, ar style magazine and threaded barrel. I knew that it was a lower end rifle, but it was almost 2 lb lighter than the scout, and what I thought would be a perfect first deer rifle/cal for my sons. The main feature for me was the size and weight. I mainly shoot Tikka T3 for long range, and my hunting rifle is a Ruger m77 frontier in .358.
The rifle arrived, and immediately I noticed the poor machining. It brought me back to the $99 tokerev I bought as a first pistol 15 years ago… there were burrs on the bolt and action, and when cycled sounded like a zipper. I went to purchase some ammo and the shop advised that they had sold 6, and 4 had to come back for warranty. The issue was light primer strikes. They disassembled the bolt and found machining metal in the firing pin tube. So before I went to the range, I disassembled mine, and low and behold a half curl of metal and a few other metal chips inside.
So, I went to the range. The rifle fed like ####. The bolt had to be forcefully thrown forward to overcome the round being slammed into the feed ramp due to slop in the magazine well and feed ramp profile. There was so much slop in the bolt and magazine that the mag canted downward about half inch when loading. It had a bit more recoil than expected with the federal 180gr (young kids) so I order a brake for it.
So… I looked online and the loading seemed to be a common issue with 350 legend. The issue was most likely derived from the same feed ramp profile as the 223 rifle (parent cartridge). The solution was to get an aics conversion. Being that most of my rifles are converted to aics, I jumped at this. Ruger sent me the conversion parts under warranty. I guess I can’t call it bottom metal if it’s made of low end plastic. I installed the new mag well, and again there was so much slop in the aics mags, they too canted down and loaded even worse. I used multiple aics mags, and adjusted the feed lips to allow the rounds to sit higher, still no dice. Too much play in the mag well.
The only way that I could get it to load reliably with the aics conversion was to put a wrap of electrical tape on the top of the mag. I don’t tape my guns, but just wanted to see.
In the end, I converted it back to the ar15 style mag, and it was less unreliable.
What a piece of ####.
Update November 2022
PTG bottom metal and donor rotary mag stock. Finally runs like it should.
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