Ruger Ranch and 7.62x39 factory load accuracy

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*For 7.62x39 common factory load accuracy see my second post*

This might fit into other parts of the forum but I’ll put it here.

I just picked up the Ruger Ranch chambered in our favourite surplus offering. I handled one in the LGS that was chambered in 556 and it felt great! Smooth and crisp ###y action of the bolt and it’s ergonomics for me had me sold. Not a fan of 556 I found one in the Russian offering though I did consider 300 blackout.
I have to say there where some issues I’d like to share for those keen on this rifle and of course the issues may belong to my individual firearm. I would also like to say that I do like this rifle.

The rifle was stiff and dry as hell out of the box. Took more effort than I had put into a cosmoline soaked sks to get it into a good state. Tons of cleaning, oiling, dry firing and working the action to get it feeling like it should and that was before it’s first shots with me.
The magazine fits loose and tilts forward when chambering a round. At first I almost had to punch the bolt forward to feed a round. It extracts beautifully however the unfired rounds that it fed and ejected where scratched and marred as well as the top of the following unfed round in the mag from the bolt making contact with it and dragging up its case. I loaded some fmj and some soft points, steel case and brass case to see if there where problems and the soft points where definitely hanging up on the feed and slightly deforming upon “successful” chambering.
The mag release trigger is stiff and still needs to be pushed or pulled into its positions as the spring is ineffective. Slight annoyance.
Bolts a little sloppy and the trigger I adjusted to its lightest (3#) feels more like 5# but I don’t have a trigger scale it’s heavier than I’d like anyway.
I was certain that I would have to send it to Ruger to get a fix or replacement but I decided to fire some rounds through it first to see if there where any other problems.

Well after about 20-40 rounds of FMJ surplus the rifle started to feed nicer so I broke it in with about 80 rounds of fmj and gave it another cleaning before moving onto different brands of factory loads.

The riffle is now behaving though soft point is still a little rougher feeding than I’d like but I am confident it will soon be corrected after it’s broken in.

Moving on I’d like to get into the accuracy results of the 7.62x39 factory and milsurp load outs in my next post which I will write up in a bit.
 
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The best two things you can do for this rifle are the following:

- Coat the bolt in mothers polishing compound (avoid the lugs). Cycle the bolt a few hundred times while watching tv. This will make the bolt butter smooth. Takes that zipper sound/feeling out of it too
- Buy the Mcarbo trigger spring. Its like $20 at Bullseye north. It took my trigger pull down to a crisp 1.8lbs.
 
REGARDING 7.62x39 Factory Load Accuracy:

That’s a shame I didn’t see that I cannot post attachments so I’ll have to post links to the pictures.
When these links don’t work please PM me and hopefully by then I will be able to post/load pictures here directly. **

I plan on adding this gun to my hunting arsenal next season as it fills a niche nicely in that it is short barreled, light and 30 caliber. Perfect for Black Tail and tight forested brush of Vancouver island where often unforeseen cuts will open a little further.
I decided to test the accuracy of all the factory ammunition I can find and the fmj offerings too cause it’s cheap and interesting to me as well. The results may be surprising to some as they where to me.

The load outs tested are:
- Chinese mil surp, copper washed, 123g FMJBT yes it’s boat tailed, the only BT offering listed here.
- Russian mil surp, lacquered (green) steel case, FMJ didn’t pull a bullet so not sure the weight or shape
- Barnaul subsonic steel case, 196g FMJ
- PPU (psp) Rifle Line, brass case, 123g SP
- Sellier & Bellot brass case, 124g SP
- Dominion (Ukraine) steel case, 123g HP
- SSA (Nosler) brass case, 123g ballistic tip flat base
- Barnaul steel case, 123g SP

I will try more loads and post results as I’m able to find them. I have seen federal and fusion offerings as well as Hornady and S&B fmj s but honestly I can’t believe I was able to drum up this amount of selection locally in one day so.. movin on.

https://ibb.co/M151SyP

https://ibb.co/brK24D1

https://ibb.co/HtnkSbc

You’ll have to follow up the links to see the 5 shot groupings @ 100y until I am able to post them proper.

1 MOA was achieved with SSA and Chinese mil surp!
1.5 moa w/ Dominion
2 moa w/ S&B and Barnaul 123g SP
3 moa to Russian mil surp
And the worst 3.75 moa for PPU Rifle Line SP.

Barnaul subsonic 196g FMJ got a DNQ as it was so low at 100y it didn’t even hit the target or the stand…
Was quiet as hell tho so there’s that.

Anyways hope you enjoyed. Sorry about the pics. Hopefully I can keep doing some tests with these for penetration and expansion and hopefully get some other loads added too.

Till next time.
 
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This rifle handled everything like a champ. No miss fires, no failures to feed or extract. No light primer strikes.
No problems with boxer or berdan primers.
I just wish it had been gtg out of the box. But it is under $1000 cad so is what it is.

Vortex 3-9x40 Diamond back with traditional crosshairs mounted on medium vortex rings.
 
Thanks for the detailed review. I wish I had bought one of the (cz?) x39 bolt guns that were cheap in the country a few years ago. As it sits right now I can't seem to convince the wife that I need another $900 gun just to help burn through some surplus ammo
 
I just bought the same rifle and am working up some loads for it. I bought some Lapua brass and 123gr SST bullets to work up some loads. The only thing I have done is to replace the trigger spring with one out of a ball point pen (saw on Youtube) and this brought the trigger down to 2.5lbs. Thanks for sharing your experience so far with the gun.
 
I decided to part with my 7.62x39 RAR.

Things I did not like:
- you can't have normally functioning 10rd magazine. Because of stupid mag locking system and bolt more loose than beaten to hell WW1 Carcano. Well you can insert 10rd LAR, but you'll have to apply all insanity in the world and push the handle at certain angle to feed first two rounds. Now try it prone. Now when you do the drill with timer.
- accuracy is worse than with my RDB. The best results I had were 1.55MOA with Romanian surplus. And even with Type 81 with iron sights I can do 1.87MOA with iron sights at 100 meters. I glad that OP got 1MOA result, however it would have not changed my decision anyway.
- bolt design is not good for me. Coming from military guns I expect certain level of serviceability and simplicity. Of course the fact it's loose did not help. Like, c'mon, it's 21st century and bolt designs were perfected decades ago, why would one try to make it complicated and not serviceable? And on top they could not manufacture a bolt-receiver pair that would have nice fitting level like for example 19th century Mauser M1871?

Overall poor to mediocre realization of 7.62x39 variant. I guess for most ppl it will be fine, but not for me. I have some hopes for new CZ 600, thought advertised accuracy looks bad...
 
That’s cool spoc. Share your load data if you find a winner. Will you be using .308 bullets or .310?

I’m going to have to look for that video on the trigger spring.

When I get the equipment later in the new year I plan on reloading x39 as well. I shoot a lot and I like this rifle and round.
I would rather be shooting 1000y with my precision rifle but even if I had the cash it’s too hard to find ammo.
 
Thanks for the detailed review. I wish I had bought one of the (cz?) x39 bolt guns that were cheap in the country a few years ago. As it sits right now I can't seem to convince the wife that I need another $900 gun just to help burn through some surplus ammo

I just didn’t tell mine… don’t think I’ll be getting away with that again.
 
My CZ527 absolutely hates any milsurp ammo I've tried in it, shooting most into 5 + moa.

If the Ruger is shooting Norinco into 2 moa for under $700, I think you are doing quite well.
 
My CZ527 absolutely hates any milsurp ammo I've tried in it, shooting most into 5 + moa.

If the Ruger is shooting Norinco into 2 moa for under $700, I think you are doing quite well.

I can get 1 1/2" out of Czech surplus at 100m if I do my part. Quite thrilled with that, actually. No issues hitting the bigger plates out to 500m either.

Can't complain when it costs me less than $20 to shoot 100 rounds.

It's a fun rifle to shoot at low cost. To expect otherwise may be unrealistic.
 
Would be nice to find something that’ll do under 1moa. The Ruger is doing very well as I would expect. It is more likely the ammo is capable in someone’s offering, the biggest variable is me.

There are manufacturers loads out there so I’ll try and keep collecting and posting. This thread was mostly meant to show case obtainable factory load out accuracy that included a little bit on the firearm used.

X39 has a murky mythical misconception about its irrelevance and (in)capabilities I’d like to put to the test.


Also thanks Cheap Thrills for posting a new thread worded almost identical to mine. That’s nice that no other wording could be used. Thanks for that.
 
The Czech ammo has been some of the worst in my rifle.

7.62x39 in itself is a fine cartridge and one capable of decent accuracy, even if it is fleeting range wise.
It's failing isn't with the cartridge design, it is the crap-tastic milsurp ammo that predominates.

Ganderite did a fantastic run-down of much of the current ammo availability and what to expect from the ammo v. what the rifle will do with that ammo in this thread:

https://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/showthread.php/776009-Range-Report-8-different-7-62x39
 
The Czech ammo has been some of the worst in my rifle.

7.62x39 in itself is a fine cartridge and one capable of decent accuracy, even if it is fleeting range wise.
It's failing isn't with the cartridge design, it is the crap-tastic milsurp ammo that predominates.

Ganderite did a fantastic run-down of much of the current ammo availability and what to expect from the ammo v. what the rifle will do with that ammo in this thread:

https://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/showthread.php/776009-Range-Report-8-different-7-62x39

I tried about a dozen different surplus and Russian commercial steel-cased loads and the Czech works the best in this one.

I have some Sako brass-cased Finn surplus that looks like it could be better than the Czech, but I only have a couple hundred of those.
 
Another 1 MOA obtained using Barnaul 123g FMJ

Pic -> https://ibb.co/RycnqXH

I even pulled the trigger on one round and was sure it was going to be 3-4” off group but there it is. All 5 together. I’ll have to do this one again later too see if it has a better group when shot without flinches.
 
The one good thing with the CZ single stack is the fact the ammo feeds exceptionally well. Double stack mags can be a pretty big pain in the a$s on a bolt gun and AR mags are generally sh!t at the best of times. How has the Ruger faired with the Mini 30 mags? How about once it is converted to the AR box?
 
The one good thing with the CZ single stack is the fact the ammo feeds exceptionally well. Double stack mags can be a pretty big pain in the a$s on a bolt gun and AR mags are generally sh!t at the best of times. How has the Ruger faired with the Mini 30 mags? How about once it is converted to the AR box?

Excellent feeding with the Mini 30 mags.

With the AR mag floorplate the LAR mags will tilt fore and aft a fair bit. No issues with 8 or less rounds in the mag. I haven't spent any time seeing if I can sort out using the full 10.
 
So the Ruger x39 digests surplus ammo well?...light primer strikes not an issue?
I am impressed by the accuracy reported with surplus.
 
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